In Eleanor Smith’s Hull House Songs: The Music of Protest and Hope in Jane Addams’s Chicago, the authors republish Hull House Songs (1916), together with critical commentary. Hull-House Songs contains five politically engaged compositions written by the Hull-House music educator, Eleanor Smith. The commentary that accompanies the folio includes an examination of Smith’s poetic sources and musical influences; a study of Jane Addams’s aesthetic theories; and a complete history of the arts at Hull-House. Through this focus upon aesthetic and cultural programs at Hull-House, the authors identify the external, and internalized, forces of domination (class position, racial identity, patriarchal disenfranchisement) that limited the work of the Hull-House women, while also recovering the sometimes hidden emancipatory possibilities of their legacy. With an afterword by Jocelyn Zelasko.
Between 1873 and 1935, reformers in Chicago used the power of music to unify the diverse peoples of the metropolis. These musical progressives emphasized the capacity of music to transcend differences among various groups. Sounds of Reform looks at the history of efforts to propagate this vision and the resulting encounters between activists and ethnic, immigrant, and working-class residents. Musical progressives sponsored free concerts and music lessons at neighborhood parks and settlement houses, organized music festivals and neighborhood dances, and used the radio waves as part of an unprecedented effort to advance civic engagement. European classical music, ragtime, jazz, and popular American song all figured into the musical progressives' mission. For residents with ideas about music as a tool of self-determination, musical progressivism could be problematic as well as empowering. The resulting struggles and negotiations between reformers and residents transformed the public culture of Chicago. Through his innovative examination of the role of music in the history of progressivism, Derek Vaillant offers a new perspective on the cultural politics of music and American society.
Although women have been teaching and performing music for centuries, their stories are often missing from traditional accounts of the history of music education. In Women Music Educators in the United States: A History, Sondra Wieland Howe provides a comprehensive narrative of women teaching music in the United States from colonial days until the end of the twentieth century. Defining music education broadly to include home, community, and institutional settings, Howe draws on sources from musicology, the history of education, and social history to offer a new perspective on the topic. In colonial America, women sang in church choirs and taught their children at home. In the first half of the nineteenth century, women published hymns, taught in academies and rural schoolhouses, and held church positions. After the Civil War, women taught piano and voice, went to college, taught in public schools, and became involved in national music organizations. With the expansion of public schools in the first half of the twentieth century, women supervised public school music programs, published textbooks, and served as officers of national organizations. They taught in settlement houses and teacher-training institutions, developed music appreciation programs, and organized women’s symphony orchestras. After World War II, women continued their involvement in public school choral and instrumental music, developed new methodologies, conducted research, and published in academia. Howe’s study traces this evolution in the roles played by women educators in the American music education system, illuminating an area of research that has been ignored far too long. Women Music Educators in the United States: A History complements current histories of music education and supports undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of music, music education, American education, and women’s studies. It will interest not only musicologists, educational historians, and scholars of women’s studies, but music educators teaching in public and private schools and independent music teachers.
This is an exhaustive reference work of sheet music published in the United States from the late 18th century to the year after adoption of the 19th amendment to the Constitution granting women the right to vote. In chronological order, the entries present bibliographic data (words by, music by, published in, published by, copyright, size, cover, inside, key, location) on each piece of music, a photographic depiction of the cover or first page (where available), and the complete lyrics for each piece. Included are early music of a rebellious nature, music surrounding the early woman's rights conventions, and pro and anti woman's rights and suffrage pieces from 1795 on; a limited number of entries on non-U.S. sheet music are presented also. General music about women, sentimental and love songs, and songs related to traditional roles and stereotypes have not been included.
