Musicology Commons^™

Songs Of Wartime: An Anthology Of Music Composed By Women During The Second World War, Brittany Weinstock

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

During the Second World War, female European composers wrote a prolific amount of music which often goes unrecognized in favor of their male counterparts. The composers that I focus on are Elsa Barraine, Ilse Weber, Josima Feldschuh, Germaine Tailleferre, and Grażyna Bacewicz. The goal of this study is to collect an anthology of five pieces, one piece by each composer, in order to highlight and celebrate their contribution to the musical canon, as well as to understand how the conflict in Europe affected them.

For my research, I first found five female composers who were in some way affected by …