Introduction

Abstract

Abstract The collection’s introductory chapter situates the eight composers featured in this volume and their music in the early twentieth-century environment of the female composer. The chapter briefly summarizes the composers’ careers and introduces the analytical approaches taken by the contributing authors to the compositions they explore in their essays. The editors consider aspects of the early twentieth-century social, cultural, and historical contexts in which these women lived and worked, including the benefits and difficulties that came with women’s newly granted access to institutions of higher music education, the connections between women composers, and the additional challenges faced by Black women composers pursuing their livelihoods in a field overwhelmingly controlled by White men. The problem of the “genius trap” is discussed, and the chapter closes with consideration of the role analysis can play in encouraging not only increased performances of music by women but also increased participation by young women as composers themselves.