Christopher Reynolds

Christopher Reynolds
Department of Music
University of California, Davis

Women Song Composers: A Listing of Songs
Published in the United States and England, ca. 1890-1930



Women composers of earlier generations and centuries now enjoy a substantial degree of esteem and interest, as is evident in new recordings, books and articles. Awareness of the sociological problems encountered by these women has only enhanced the regard for their achievements. The difficulties they faced in getting their works performed by orchestras and professional chamber ensembles meant that modest levels of success could be achieved only by women with the rare combinations of social standing and musical ability-such as Amy Beach-or musical ability and extraordinary determination-such as that shown by Ruth Crawford Seeger. But in the early decades of the twentieth century women composers were neither uncommon nor necessarily extraordinary in one arena, that of song writing.

This searchable database contains 5116 songs (and song sets and cycles) by women composers active in North America and England between 1890-1930, songs by fully 515 composers. I initially chose the years 1890 to 1930 because my own experience as a collector suggested that these years are arguably the zenith of women's activities as song composers, at least in the United States. Writing in Boston in 1900 or shortly before, Rupert Hughes observed that one music publisher had seen compositions by women grow from "only one-tenth of his manuscripts a few years ago" to "more than two-thirds" (Contemporary American Composers [Boston: L.C. Page, 1900], p. 425). This publisher could have been either Arthur Schmidt or Oliver Ditson, both of whom increased the number of songs by women that they published in the 1890s as shown below in Table 1 (this table accounts only for songs and therefore is just one part of their publishing efforts). But because, as indicated in Table 2, Schmidt evidently published considerably more songs by women than did Ditson-330 as opposed to 136 in my list-I am inclined to think that this quote stems from Arthur Schmidt.

This database makes it possible to document the extraordinary rise and decline of women song composers that occurred in the years before and after the First World War. The decrease is broadly evident in the bibliography of Adrienne Fried Block and Carol Neuls-Bates. For the years 1870-1920 they compiled 542 titles as opposed to 232 published between 1920-1950. For the songs present in my database, Table 3 charts the sustained increase in songs published beginning with twenty one new titles in 1890 to a peak of 200 in 1912, tapering off to just eighteen in 1930. Aside from the immediate impact of World War I on the market for such songs in England, this decline likely stems from the replacement of the piano by the phonograph and (later) radio as the source of family music making, especially after World War I and in the 1920s, and to the advent of "talkies." The affect of these technological changes on publishing houses is well recognized. It seems probable that this pattern of rising and falling numbers of songs published also exists for male songwriters, and that the societal changes affected songwriters in general, especially in light of the number of music publishers that went out of business in these years. Nevertheless, since male composers had easier access to Broadway theaters and film studios, the narrowing of publication opportunities had a far more severe impact on women songwriters.

I at first set out to identify songs only by Americans, yet it soon became clear that songs by women published in England circulated widely in this country and, conversely, that songs of some Americans were published in England. If it was not completely a common market, there was at least a great deal of interest on both sides of the Atlantic. For that reason I have included songs published in North America and England. Doubtless a stylistic study of this repertoire will identify influences moving in both directions. And although the focus is on women who wrote songs between 1890 and 1930, the list also includes songs that women active during this period wrote before 1890 (such as Mary Grant Carmichael and Mrs. Joseph F. Knapp) or after 1930 (such as Mary Carr Moore, Elinor Remick Warren, and Mabel Wayne). I have included children's songs only if the composers also wrote songs for adults.

The titles I have compiled come from several sources: from sheet music in the extensive (and catalogued) collection of the British Library, both from the sheets themselves and the songs advertised on the covers of individual songs; from songs contained in the bibliography of Adrienne Fried Block and Carol Neuls-Bates (eds.), Women in American Music: A Bibliography of Music and Literature (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979), and some as well from that by Miriam Stewart-Green (Women Composers: A Checklist of Works for the Solo Voice (Boston, Mass.: G.K. Hall, 1980); and for Alice Barnett, Amy Cheney Beach, Lily Strickland, and Elinor Remick Warren, I have incorporated titles from lists in the following sources:

Susan Kathleen Smith, The Art Songs of Alice Barnett (PhD diss., University of Northern Colorado, 1996);
Jeanell Wise Brown, Amy Beach and Her Chamber Music: Biography, Documents and Style (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1994);
Ann Whitworth Howe, Lily Strickland: South Carolina's Gift to American Music ([Charleston?,] South Carolina: R.L. Bryan, 1970); and
Virginia Bortin, Elinor Remick Warren: Her Life and Her Music (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1987).

This list only begins to suggest how many songs were written by women during this period. Not only are there many more songs yet to be listed by the vast majority of women composers I have included, but I have not attempted to identify women from among the many composers who published music under names that used initials rather than first names. And of the women who had male pseudonyms, I have included only two, Montague Ring and Guy d'Hardelot (see Table 5). The twenty-five composers with the best representation have no fewer than fifty songs or cycles listed in the database. In the totals shown in Table 4, I have counted cycles and sets of songs as well as the individual songs of the cycles. And I have omitted multiple listings of individual songs (for later editions and re-issues). Teresa Del Riego is also likely the "T. D. R." who composed "To Lesbia"; if so, the database contains 177 titles by her.

The information in the bibliography includes title, composer, publisher, and date and city of publication. The publishers and also several collections that include songs, are designated in the database by abbreviations; these are listed separately in Abbreviations of Song Publishers and Collections. Approximate dates of publication are either marked "ca." or "by" (as in "ca. 1903" or "by 1911"). This indicates either that a song was published by this date (as gleaned from cover advertisements) or that some other evidence has helped determine the date. In the column "Publisher 2" I have indicated when a song was reprinted, either by the original publisher or another; a dash (-) before a date in this column indicates that a song was reprinted as late as that year. Records of multiple editions are an important means of establishing a song's popularity and longevity.

I am grateful to Tamsin Nutter, Rhio Barnhart, and Judith Tsou for help at various stages of this project. This database replaces an earlier list of more than 2700 titles that I had posted on the Internet in February 1996. I would appreciate hearing from anyone who can add new titles and composers to this database or who can correct erroneous listings.

Christopher Reynolds
Department of Music
University of California, Davis
1 May 2000



Table 1 --

Comparison of Number of Songs Published by Arthur Schmidt and Oliver Ditson, 1890-1900

Year Schmidt Ditson
     
1890 6 0
1891 9 0
1892 8 1
1893 24 2
1894 13 4
1895 12 7
1896 2 12
1897 9 16
1898 9 0
1899 6 2
1900 26 3

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Table 2 --

The Leading Publishers of Songs by Women, 1890-1930

Publisher Number of Songs
Chappell & Co. (London) 557
G. Schirmer (New York) 464
Boosey & Co. (London, New York) 371
Arthur P. Schmidt (Boston) 330
M. Witmark & Sons (New York) 233
Carrie Jacobs Bond [Bond&Son; Bond Shop] 138
Oliver Ditson Publishing Co. (Boston) 136
John Church Co., Inc. (Cincinnati, New York) 135
Clayton F. Summy (Chicago) 128

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Table 3 --

Number of Women's Songs Published Each Year, 1890-1930

The figures below are based on the 5116 entries in the database. They do not include dates signified either as "Published by" (eg. "by 1903") or "ca." They do include duplicate listings that occur when cycles or sets of songs have separate entries for the individual songs and also the set as a whole. There are 369 songs for which I have no date, 217 with approximate dates, 124 published between 1867-89, and 271 published between 1931-67.

1890 21
1891 24
1892 35
1893 56
1894 58
1895 88
1896 58
1897 95
1898 70
1899 90
1900 102
1901 113
1902 106
1903 120
1904 134
1905 135
1906 116
1907 192
1908 148
1909 177
1910 198
1911 156
1912 200
1913 165
1914 163
1915 125
1916 150
1917 147
1918 99
1919 114
1920 82
1921 90
1922 65
1923 108
1924 61
1925 59
1926 52
1927 77
1928 34
1929 32
1930 18

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Table 4 --

The Top Twenty-Five Women Song Composers, 1890-1930


Composer Number of Entries Nationality
Lily Strickland 290 USA
Liza Lehmann 266 UK
Carrie Jacobs Bond 178 USA
Teresa Del Riego 176 UK
Mrs. H. H. A. Beach 145 USA
Mary Turner Salter 144 USA
Frances Allitsen 133 UK
Florence Aylward 123 UK
Guy D'Hardelot 115 FR (UK)
Eleanor Everest Freer 102 USA
Margaret Ruthven Lang 101 USA
Maude Valerie White 99 UK
Caro Roma 97 USA
Dorothy Forster 95 UK
Amy Woodforde Finden 90 UK
Kate Vannah 85 USA
Jessie L. Gaynor 79 USA
Gena Branscombe 75 CAN
Harriet Ware 63 USA
Alicia Adelaide Needham 61 IR
Alice Barnett 58 USA
Clare Kummer 54 USA
Anita Owen 54 USA
Clara Kathleen Rogers 51 USA
Hattie Starr 50 USA

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Table 5 --

Pseudonyms and Variant Names of Women Composers

Names are cross listed; thus, Montague Ring occurs both in the alphabetical column on the left and in the right-hand column (as the pseudonym of Amanda Aldridge).

Aldridge, Amanda = Montague Ring
Beach, Amy Cheney = Mrs. H. H. A. Beach
Beach, Mrs. H. H. A. = Amy Cheney Beach
Bear, Gilly (poet) = Florence Turner Maley (?)
Beecher, Clare Rodman = Clare Kummer
Brahe, May H. = Morgan, Mary Hannah
Del Riego, Teresa = T. D. R. (?)
Guy, Helen = Guy d'Hardelot; Mrs. W. L. Rhodes
Hardelot, Guy d' = Helen Guy; Mrs. W. L. Rhodes
Harper, Mrs. Sydney = Ellen Standing, Ellen Wright
Hullinger, Litta = Litta Lynn
Knapp, Mrs. Joseph F. = Phoebe Knapp
Knapp, Phoebe = Mrs. Joseph F. Knapp
Kummer, Clare = Clare Rodman Beecher
Langtry, Jennie = Jeanne Malcolm
Lynn, Litta = Litta Hullinger
Malcolm, Jeanne = Jennie Langtry
Maley, Florence Turner = Gilly Bear (poet) (?)
Maude, Caroline Anna Mary = Viscountess Hawarden, Caroline Anna Mary Maude
Poldowski = Irene Regine Wieniawski
Rhodes, Mrs. W. L. = Guy d'Hardelot; Helen Guy
Ring, Montague = Amanda Aldridge
R., T. D. = Teresa Del Riego (?)
Standing, Ellen = Ellen Wright, Mrs. Sydney Harper
Wallace, Mildred White = Mildred Carey Wallace
Wieniawski, Irene Regine = Poldowski
Wright, Ellen = Ellen Standing, Mrs. Sydney Harper