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

by Helen Walker-Hill (Author)

African-American women composers remain largely unknown despite their important musical contributions. Active in the United States since the late-19th 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.

Author Biography

HELEN WALKER-HILL has been studying, performing, and writing about the music of black women composers since 1987. She was the recipient of a resident fellowship from the Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture in New York and a Rockefeller Fellowship from the Center for Black Music Research in Chicago. She is the author of Piano Music by Black Women Composers: A Catalogue of Solo and Ensemble Works (Greenwood, 1992).