From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and Their Music

Surveys the history and scope of concert music by African-American women, including instrumental, choral, and chamber works, as well as symphonies and operas. African-American women composers remain largely unknown despite their important musical contributions. Active in the United States since the mid-nineteenth century, several gained national and international recognition during their lifetimes, only to have their work neglected after their deaths. From Spirituals to Symphonies is a unique, extensively researched examination of the history and scope of musical composition by African-American women, focusing on the implications of race, gender, and class for their musical creativity, and demonstrating how this important, underappreciated category of American art was shaped by the unique individual personalities of its participants. Their particular times, communities, families, racial heritages, economic circumstances, education, and musical training were all brought to bear on their music, and author Helen Walker-Hill challenges the assumption that black women’s only important musical contributions have been in folk, jazz, and pop. With unprecedented detail, she charts the lives and the output of a group of artists whose work has gone unnoticed for too many years.