By Naomi Stephan – IAWM Journal (2005)
The composing world harbors a hierarchical mindset: At the top, orchestral music reigns, followed by ensemble and solo music, literature for SATB (mixed), TTBB (men’s), children’s chorus, and finally, SSAA (women’s chorus—or WC).1 Why am I writing this for the IAWM? Isn’t this preaching to the choir? Yes, but as I intend to show, composers, conductors, teachers and even some publishers may unwittingly neglect women’s choral music (WCM).
Evidence of neglect is strong and compelling. Just consider: Despite women’s fuller participation in composing, conducting and teaching, the status of WCM, at least in the United States, is still underrepresented or undervalued in virtually every category imaginable: compositions, choral and composition departments, methodology books, competitions, programming, touring, recordings, radio broadcasts and scholarly journals.2
First, some background disclosure. I do not have a traditional degree in composition. I know the human voice from years of singing as a soloist and as a chorus and ensemble member, and from numerous Kantorei, collegium musicum, art song and oratorio performances. My musical training includes a degree in voice specializing in German Lieder (earned with the help of two Fulbrights) and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in German Studies and music history. I also founded and directed two women’s choruses and one mixed chorus (SATB) over a ten-year period from 1994 to 2005.
For reasons beyond this article, I elected not to go into music full time, abandoning a potential career in voice and composition for a professorship in German Studies. After a successful career, I resigned from academics to return to my true love, music—bills to be paid instead by a business that I co-founded with partner Sue Carroll Moore.
In 1991, amidst a riot of flowers, I was sitting on a friend’s porch grieving over my musical neglect, and spontaneously set Spring Song, a poem by Sue, for SAA. Several other SSAA works followed, even though my singing background had been exclusively with auditioned SATB choruses.
The illness and death of my mother intervened, so it was not until 1993 that I heard Spring Song performed under the cupola of Los Angeles City Hall, barely one day after my mother’s memorial service. I thrilled to the sound of women’s voices singing my music; I wished my mother Irene could have been at my side. That back-to-back emotional experience would lead ten years later to Mater in Memoriam: For Irene (MIMI), an eight-movement work for SSAA and chamber ensemble that begins with my birth and ends with her death, incorporating all the music we shared and loved together.
I was entering the composing side of choral music with no idea what this portended. In 1994 I founded AWE, the Asheville Women’s Chorus, and began teaching music and German part time at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. I had two wonderful resources for music: Brodt Music in Charlotte and Mary Lycan’s Treble Clef Press in Chapel Hill, N.C. In 2004, I founded Life Mission Press together with my life partner, Julie Sibson.
My first clues about the status of WCM started when I attended a World Music Festival in Vancouver, B.C., in 1993, and a GALA (Gay and Lesbian Choral Association) Choral Festival in Tampa, Florida, in 1996, both featuring far fewer women’s choruses than SATB, always smaller in size and attendance. As yet, I had not quite connected the dots. But a major awakening occurred at a concert featuring works by women commissioned by the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus in 1998. I was astonished that half the customary audience boycotted the concert because it featured “women’s music.” The conductor took pains to explain the differing way women and men come to singing, and how this affected their music. His apologia raised my eyebrows and piqued my curiosity to learn more about these two differing paths.
Over the next seven years I discovered that the origins of the bias against women’s participation in choral music are deep seated and entrenched. They have to do with politics, power, economics, gender and the church. Unlike the unbroken history of men’s singing, the developmental course for women in Western music has been uneven and bumpy. From the 1st to the 4th century, women participated as singers in church services. “By the 4th century a girl choir had become a well established institution. Any group that did not have one fell behind in popularity.”3
With the Edict of Milan, and Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, congregational singing soon became the sole purview—and power—of men and boys. St. Paul and his pronouncement of mulier taceat (Let your women keep silence in the churches) had staying power far beyond its theological arrogance. From the 4th century on, WCM arose in contexts that were for women only. Women sang within their own spiritual confines: in nunneries and convents, where females composed for each other and sang together, happily ignoring Paul’s edict. An outstanding example is, of course, Hildegard of Bingen (1081-1179), who wrote behind closed doors.
Hodie, which I set to a text of Hildegard in 1996, has special significance for me. Through theological metaphor she describes what would take WCM another seven centuries to achieve (and perhaps presages her silent hope?). Hodie text and literal translation:
Hodie aperuit nobis Today has opened to us
clausa porta a closed portal (door)
quod serpens in muliere which the serpent on a woman
suffocavit slammed
Indeed, men continued to slam the door on women by dominating singing and choral composing, made possible by the development of notation (largely in the hands of monks) and polyphony (taken over by the singing of men with boys).
In the 16th and 17th centuries, as music began to move into the courts, particularly in Northern Italy, some female composers of renown emerged, but they wrote little or nothing for WCs. Outside the nunneries, there was a conundrum. To perform, women needed four prerequisites: a cohesive group (WC), training, compositions and performance opportunities. Composers were motivated to write for WCs only if they had direct contact with females who sang together and were trained in music. Thus far, no such quartet had materialized for WCM.
A tiny crack in the clausa porta occurred in the 17th century, when infirm, terminally ill, or poor girls were housed in the Venetian Ospedali, and given musical and singing instruction as well as performance space. Compositions, such as Nicola Porpora’s Magnificat in A Minor for the girls, followed.4 Nevertheless, for public performances, sacred or secular, females had to wait until the 19th century, since through Mozart’s day, treble parts were still sung by boys and men.
In Germany, a further opening of the clausa porta developed, spurred by secular singing and musical training in the home. Four masters of song, Schubert, Mendelssohn, R. Schumann and particularly Brahms with his own Hamburg Frauenchor, began composing for WCs, opening up limited concert exposure for women. Compositions for WCs by women, however, were few and far between.
In the United States, women’s colleges in the 19th century afforded students the opportunity to learn singing, albeit to prepare them for future roles as wives and mothers. Only from the early 20th century on did WCM began to emerge, particularly within the confines of civil rights, the Women’s Suffrage Movement, peace activism, worker’s rights, barbershop, and women’s colleges and clubs. As a child, I heard many fine concerts with the Bloomington (Indiana) Friday Musicale, a women’s musical club, which opened doors for Indiana University faculty wives and otherwise marginalized women.
With the advent of SATB, women finally found a setting in which they could legitimately sing on a par with men. With this newfound acceptance, the die was cast for women to sing with each other in their own right. In the second half of the 20th century, riding on the second wave of feminism, women unconsciously reconnected with their sisters of old, as WCs began to emerge in their own right. Lesbians and feminists began forming choruses in the 1970s and 80s, and communities soon followed with their own WCs. Granted, there had been progress, and WCM had come from “behind,” and into its own, but it still did not explain the stubbornly maintained current attitudes towards WCM.5
I had some hunches but wanted further input. I surveyed choral journals for information on WCM; discussed the topic with friends, colleagues and performers of my music; posted two surveys to IAWM and to the ACDA (American Choral Director’s Association); and finally, joined the IAWM women’s advocacy committee for gender equality and programming. Under the aegis of this committee, I challenged many directors whose posted choral programs featured few or no women composers and no compositions for WCs.6
Here are my conclusions from exchanges with these four sources.
1) All things being equal, the prevailing notion is that instrumentalists perform with a higher level of musicianship than choral musicians:
Many survey respondents, more often singers and choral directors, wrote enthusiastically about choral music, but IAWM folks were not always of a similar mind. When it came to the issue of quality of musicianship, one member explained: “I expect an amateur level [of performance] for choral music, but professional level for instrumental music.”
The choral music niveau [standard] itself is also challenged by this IAWM member: “I have grown up listening to bad choirs sing bad music…the music is just sickening…just cute arrangements of 50s pop songs. Of course I’ve heard very few good choirs in my life so it is ‘my bad’ most likely not ‘their bad.’”
A conductor weighed in on WCs: “Many women’s choirs these days have performance ‘quality’ as a second level goal and define the success of a concert or their singing together differently from a ‘traditional’ chorus.” Most composers preferred writing for WCs that are musically literate enough to sing their works. One composer confided to me that she no longer writes for gay and lesbian choruses (and presumably also non-auditioned choruses) because of their inadequate reading ability.7
2) IAWM respondents on average showed less interest in composing choral music than instrumental:
“I enjoy writing choral music…the human voice is an amazing instrument. I rarely write choral music, however.” “I have found that it is not easy to format and print choral music correctly.”
Most respondents reported that roughly 10 to 15 percent of their oeuvre was choral music, but with rare exceptions, even less of it was for WCs. To be sure, composers did report writing for SSAA, yet many preferred groups that could perform their work—SATB or SA. A vicious circle. In a rare case, one respondent listed over 80 percent of her works as choral because she directs numerous choirs.
This repertoire shortfall makes it harder for conductors to find WCM, particularly by women composers, as noted by three ACDA conductors I queried about their all-male-composer choral concerts: “The proportion of available music by female composers remains small, especially from earlier periods.” “To my great chagrin, I don’t seem to have come across too many compositions by women composers. I must admit, I do not actively seek such pieces out.” “I can’t say a large percentage of our music is composed by women. Why is this?” “I am not so familiar with many compositions by women. They are usually newer, harder to find recordings and scores, more expensive to perform, require research. The usual excuses.”
The head of a leading university choral department, defending a very long all-male program at an ACDA convention, said he had to select pieces that showed off his chorus, and because two of the male composers he used in this program “exhibit an uncommon interest (and gift) for writing for the voice and specifically the choral ensemble. This in itself is unusual for contemporary composers, who are typically more interested in instrumental composition.”
Many programs, if they had a woman composer, featured Alice Parker. Sometimes Alice Parker is listed on the program as “Shaw-Parker” for the following reason: “As far as the arrangement by Alice Parker and Robert Shaw, I think it is pretty common knowledge that Alice Parker did the bulk of all of their collaborative arrangements, with Shaw only adding his name because of name recognition for commercial purposes.”
3) WCM is believed to have less well-written, challenging and complex music than SATB.
A composer/conductor explained: “Interestingly enough, I haven’t found a lot of well written music for female chorus by some of our prominent female composers. There are techniques that treble voice writing needs, [and] that many composers, m or f, don’t seem to recognize.”
A number of respondents from ACDA and IAWM thought there was no essential difference in ability between SATB and WCs, but according to one respondent, a typical WC concert would include “a huge variety [of repertoire] from simple rounds and singalongs to complex and challenging pieces.” An IAWM respondent candidly admitted: “I don’t expect heavy serious music to be performed at women’s choral performances! As a woman, I am quite surprised by my stereotypical answer to this question, because I don’t know of much music in this style for women.”
4) The choral world has an undeniable bias in favor of men’s and boy’s choirs and SATB:
This summer, a posting to the IAWM listserv, commenting on the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra flap over the hiring of Marin Alsop as music director, said it all: “For most of its history, classical music has been a man’s world.” Indeed, I believe that society fosters an attitude of WCs being “less than” without men. WCs enjoy a lesser rank in many of our schools, universities and communities. Heads of college choral or music departments frequently collude by failing to provide opportunities for WCs to flourish,8 and composition departments fail to foster interest in writing for WCs. I do not remember even considering or, for that matter, being aware of a women’s chorus at Indiana University or in Berlin.
Mary Lycan, publisher of Treble Clef Press, knows the bias against WCs firsthand: “Prejudice against women’s music starts early,” she writes. “It’s double-edged: Girls’ choirs are often viewed as second-best in schools, and neither mixed nor girls’ choirs sing music composed by women….The select choir in a high school was the mixed choir; the girls’ choir was the loser choir.” That prejudice continues in college. Girls often outnumber boys three to one at auditions. “Typically, the girls are better,” Lycan says. “If you actually had a merit system, the top choir would be the women’s choir, and the second choir would be the mixed choir.”9
5) WCM is “just” in the treble clef:
“All the daughters of music shall be brought low.” —Ecclesiastics, 12:4
The idea of incompleteness unconsciously pervades thinking about WCM. Such terms as “treble voices” or SA(A) when referring to WCM serve to reinforce this notion of “just” the one clef. In order for women to be “whole,” they should join the more favored bass clef sound in SATB.10
Musically, female singers are often denied the experience of four-part harmonies, rich sonorities, wider ranges and complex structures until they “graduate” to mixed chorus or “real” music with the bass clef. I believe composers have been complicit in this neglect. My Hodie (see Example 1) depicts the musical battle between woman and the serpent by exploring the lower ranges of the Alto II part and the higher range of the Sopranos with the words “unde lucet in aurora flos” (shining forth at dawn is the flower [from the Virgin Mary]).
Example 1, Naomi Stephan, Hodie, mm. 43, 47-49.
Subconsciously, WCM is heard as “limited” music without the fullness of the bass and tenor. Nevertheless, there is still a reluctance to explore fully the deep, rich sound of the Alto II and widen the range. Patricia O’Toole pinpoints the problem: “Western vocal tradition has not permitted women to develop and use their full range of vocal possibilities because of fear of vocal damage and because of conventional notions of what sort of voice or sound is appropriately feminine. Cultural notions of vocal production prevent women from singing SSAA music with the full scope of timbres that are produced by a mixed voice or a men’s choir.”11
Because I like the low female voice, I posted a query a few years back to the ACDA electronic list about using the bass clef for Alto II. It raised a firestorm of indignant and impassioned responses. Consensus was that the bass clef (like the blue tees on golf courses) remained the purview of men. In my ensemble, one experienced Alto II much preferred singing below middle C. It was difficult to find repertoire she could sing. One respondent offered: “I get thrilled when I hear women sing low. Not so when I hear a countertenor.”
One singer’s comment from a performance of Hodie was music to my ears: “My husband was sitting next to a male teacher who, after hearing that piece, said out loud ‘I want a women’s chorus!’ At the same time a male friend of mine, thinking he was complimenting the group, said that they sounded like an SATB chorus. I curtly replied, ‘Not really. They just sounded like women.’”
Ideo is taken from “On the Blessed Mary: Antiphon” and is set in three movements for SSAA, vibraphone and marimba. This text appealed to me because of its unabashed praise and elevation of the female (in the form of Mary):
Ideo est summa benediction Thus the highest blessing
in feminea forma is found in female form,
prae omni creatura rather than in any other creature
Ideo uses the beauty of high and low female voices to dramatize the beauty of the female form (second line), and weaves it throughout all the voices. (See Example 2.)
Example 2, Naomi Stephan, Ideo, mm. 112-115.
6) Unfamiliarity with WCs was not uncommon among respondents:
Many said they had no WC in their town or had not heard one in performance. I live in a large county in California, and we have just one WC, besides Sweet Adeline’s (a worldwide organization of women singers committed to advancing the musical art form of barbershop harmony through education and performance). Others admitted they are simply unaware of any WCs. In fact, the only time they experienced WCs was at music conventions.
7) The word is a big divide between choral and instrumental music:
When the word joins music, we enter an articulate world, joining forces with religion, politics, nature, love, grief, death, sorrow, joy, militarism and peace. Granted such concepts and feelings occur in instrumental music, too, but in choral music they are clearer, inescapable—are foreground, as a gestaltist would say. The word has great power in shaping the emotional response of the performers and the audience. With word I want to move people to action: talk to choristers after the concert, reflect about the message, take to the streets or motivate someone to form a women’s chorus. Choral music for me is aesthetic activism.
One member of a MIMI chorus wrote me after the premiere: “As I sat and wept listening to [the recording of] “Second Chance” wondering how long I’d have my mother, I decided that some quality time with her was long overdue. We’re in the process of scheduling a mother/daughter vacation—it’s sure to include a concert or two. My second chance is now.”
8) WCs often have different reasons for singing together:
They include political engagement, musical proficiency, non-auditioned (egalitarian) music, sisterhood, professional quality repertoire, lesbian issues, focus on women composers, sacred music, singing circles, oral and folk music, or nontraditional sources other than “white” (classical) music, as one singer put it. One singer/conductor gave the reason for a student’s return to her women’s choir from the more “prestigious” SATB: “I miss the connection and the music.”
Here are some suggestions for supporting a stronger WCM presence:
a) Seek out a WC in your area. If you do not write much music for WC, attend a rehearsal or two or the next concert. Let the voices of women sound in your body and imagine your sisters of earlier times who were muffled behind the clausa porta. Open the door for them. Next, write a piece!
b) Found, conduct or support a WC in your area. I founded a chorus in my little town of 12,000. The women were thrilled at the opportunity to sing—only one had sung in a women’s chorus before. One respondent’s eyes and heart were opened to the glory of WCM once she became exposed to it through her chorus: “Since starting the [women’s choral] group last year, I have discovered a wealth of gorgeous music for women, and happily have written a few pieces for them myself.”
c) Be more sensitive to the needs of women in text selection, particularly those that deal with women’s lives, issues—and bodies. (We do have them, for heaven’s sake.) My Ave Pudendum (Hail Genitalia) uses a humorous parody of the Ave Maria and O Magnum Mysterium texts to reflect on the beauty of female genitalia, while at the same time, as my program notes state, remind of the horrors of female genital mutilation, which has as its goal exactly the opposite—destroying the part of the female that experiences sensation and exhilaration.12
d) Set more texts by women poets, which provide further strengthening of role models for our young people, in particular. I would have fallen off my chair with delight had I sung ONE song by a woman or even a text by a woman when I was growing up.
e) Go outside the box and take risks. Write more pieces with bold, gritty/witty texts and punchy, flesh-on-the-bone vigorous rhythms, dramatic dynamics, daring sonorities and harmonies. MIMI explores the mother/daughter theme, which the arts have almost universally undervalued. The requiem chronicles my birth to Irene’s death through joy, despair, pain, longing to see her again, and taking a whimsical journey together to the land of Glyn, “where cats wear gleaming fine faces and purple fur.” (See Example 3.)
Example 3, Naomi Stephan, “Glimmering Girl,” from Mater in Memoriam: For Irene, mm. 44-48.
f) Expand the singer’s voice and emotional expression.13 The moment of birth, anxiously building in the second movement of MIMI, is depicted as the excited cry of the fetus’ apprehension (see Example 4).
Example 4, Naomi Stephan, Mater in Memoriam: For Irene, “Mama,” mm. 72-76.
g) More music is needed with the balance and attention to the lower registers. This quote is from an Alto I after performing in the MIMI premiere: “As for singing [Mater in Memoriam], well, it’s challenging, but well worth the effort. As an Alto, I am used to singing harmony, but in MIMI, the altos (especially the Alto Is), have several lines of melody in solo form. Actually, every part has its solo lines, and that makes the piece even more interesting.”
h) Write longer works. It is good to explore a topic over time.
i) Use more inclusive texts. The word also creates a gender, language, publisher and programming divide. As a lesbian and spiritual composer, I am aware of how the prevailing culture provides little room for those of us who choose to set alternative texts and perspectives for professional choirs. Composers, when selecting a text, should strive to be more general or inclusive when referring to love and relationships. “I want a Husband” was the only piece sung by a girl’s chorus performing in a competition.
Topics such as a woman’s love for a man would not be comfortable for lesbian choruses, and some feminists take issue with sexist, politically incorrect, or exclusive language such as “Man is the measure of all mankind” (an example from a posted text set for WC). My chorus, for example, preferred to replace “man” with “we” and “God” with “spirit” or “creator.”
j) Encourage more pieces by women for WC on your campus or community chorus concerts. The number of respondents who listed programs that had no women on them was unacceptable. If you attend a choral concert in which women composers are underrepresented or nonexistent, talk to the conductor about it.
Here is the vicious circle that still exists for WCM: There is a bias in favor of SATB > WCM is seen as “less than,” > there are too few WC choruses > composers under-compose for WC > directors under-program WCM > composers lack exposure and sensitivity to WCs > the bias in favor of SATB is reinforced.
WCM needs more compositions, especially by women. Moreover, the WCM repertoire needs differing techniques, sonorities and ranges that help our singers, conductors and audiences open their hearts and minds to a diversified range of the musical palette. We need, in addition, a broader offering of varying and inclusive texts, relevant to women’s lives, bodies and experiences. Without these varying perspectives, we confine WCM to a limited, narrow scope of expression.
The implicit subtle discounting of WCs such as: “I don’t know any women’s choruses,” or “WCs don’t or can’t sing what I write,” or it’s ”just for girls,” or “I can’t find any music to perform” negates the long and stellar history of women singing in spite of it all, in spite of the clausa porta. Think of those women’s voices raised in nunneries, orphanages, homes where the door shut at marriage, in women’s clubs that no one really wanted to join, and yes, even in concentration camps for survival. Think of women on picket lines, fighting for rights, protesting injustice—always with a song. Women singing have always been the glue to keep us going.
We need be just to all girls and women. We need to empower WCs to enrich our lives with their special sound and message, and assume their rightful place in the music world. Women choristers “still seem to make more time, have more open minds to new repertoire,” as one survey respondent put it. There is an eager group waiting for our compositions.
Only we can break the circle.
1. Unquestionably, the musical niveau of WCs has risen dramatically, especially in choruses such as Ana Crusis, Sound Circle, Muse, The Denver Women’s Chorus, The Santa Fe Women’s Ensemble, Elektra, The Peninsula Women’s Chorus, The Dallas Women’s Chorus, Mary Lycan’s Women’s Voices Chorus and many others. I speak here in relative terms. The number of professional WCs relative to SATB choruses, especially, is disproportionately low, and the same is true of the other categories mentioned in the article.
2. ACDA from 1993 on published almost no articles on women’s choruses with the exceptions of those cited in this article.
3. Sophie Drinker, Music and Women (New York: Coward-McCann, 1948), 160, quoted in Victoria Meredith, “The Pivotal Role of Brahms and Schubert in the Developments of the Women’s Choir,” Choral Journal (February 1997): 7.
4. Chris D. White, “Nicola Porpora’s Magnificat in A Minor: A Baroque Masterpiece for Women’s Voices,” Choral Journal (February 1997): 13-19.
5. For more on WCM, see Catherine Roma’s very fine article, “Women, Choral Literature: Finding Depth,” Choral Journal (May 2004): 29-37. The article also contains a suggested list of WCM.
6. I thank the many respondents who took time to express their thoughtful views about WCM in e-mails or face to face. Special thanks to Dr. Patricia O’Toole, whose research and insights have greatly helped me better understand the neglect of girls in choirs, and other issues surrounding WCM.
7. I am fully aware that the reading ability in many non-auditioned WCs is not on a par with instrumentalists nor more advanced WCs. My experience has been that when one takes time to open the world of notation, theory and sight reading to women singers, and time to demystify the process, the chorus will benefit and musicianship will improve greatly. Again I refer to Patricia O’Toole’s “Threatening Behaviors” article (see Note 11), which has fascinating exercises and projects that a chorus director can undertake to foster musicianship. Obviously, more dedicated training for WCs is needed in both community and college arenas.
8. At a recent conference featuring women composers, a number of choral pieces were performed, yet only one was for WC. Since no such WC existed on that campus, one was assembled just for this piece. As a consequence, the chorus lacked the cohesion and size (seven singers) as compared to the 60-voice SATB chorus. One can only wonder about the message this imparted to the audience.
9. Mary Lycan, “Real Repertoire for Women’s Choirs,” 1999 ACDA National Convention, Women’s Chorus Interest Section, February 25, 1999. (From the internet.) The article also appeared in Choral Journal (April 2000): 32-39. The article has valuable repertoire resources for WCs, especially from earlier periods.
10. A well-known composer told me in a conversation that she thinks music has moved through music history from an earlier treble preference to a contemporary preference for the bass clef—an interesting and, I believe, valid insight. In the end, many of Brahms’s works for women were rewritten for SATB because they were felt to be too low for the Alto II. Mendelssohn wrote three motets for Frauenchor and the rest are “found in his larger works for SATB chorus and orchestra and his two sets of vocal duets.” See “Works for Treble Voices by Brahms, Mendelssohn and Schubert,” Choral Journal (October 1997): 30.
11. Patricia O’Toole, “A Missing Chapter from Choral Methods Books, How Choirs Neglect Girls,” Choral Journal (December 1998): 21. I highly recommend this excellent article as well as “Threatening Behaviors: Transgressive Acts in Music Education,” Philosophy of Music Education Review 10, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 3-17.
12. “Female genitalia, specifically the vagina, are still the great mystery. The clitoris, the area of greatest sensuality in women, is regularly, brutally, and systematically cut from young girls in Africa and other countries. (About 100 million women have experienced a clitoridectomy.) After this horrible act, females are unable to experience any sexual feeling at all. Too much violence has occurred under the guise of shame about our genitalia. This piece is as joyful in expression of our sensuous selves, as we are in praising our spiritual sources. Ave Pudendum celebrates our need for a healthy, active sexual life if we so choose, without interference from others. It also celebrates the power of female sexuality to transform our lives.” (Program notes)
13. One respondent said that a full program of WCM might be “tiring” because of the sameness of sonorities.
All Shall Be Well** - SSA, Flute, Horn, Bell (Julian of Norwich)
Ave Maria */**** - SATB, Hand-held Percussion
Charge of the Star Goddess - SSA, Flute, Vibe, Harp, Drum (Doreen Valiente)
Death Be Not Proud - TTBB (John Donne)
Herbsttag - SATB (R.M. Rilke)
KZ Liebeslied - SSAA, Piano and Violin by Julie Sibson (Arr. of a song by Ludmilla
Perkarova and Zofia Karpinska)
Learn to Think Lizard** - SSAA
Lullaby - Marina (Russian Folk Song) - SSA (In phonetic Russian and English)
Marriage of True Minds** - SATB (W. Shakespeare)
Mary Had a Baby, Alleluia! - SATB (Naomi Stephan)
Na Maria** - Sop, Viola, Bell, Percussion (Bieiris de Romans)
Sing Out, Sing Out!** - SATB, Percussion/SATB and Piano/SSAA and Piano; Piano version - Julie Sibson (Naomi Stephan)
Thousands or More - SSA (arr. of an English folk song)
When I Get to Heaven**** - SATB (spiritual with honky-tonk piano) (Piano, Julie Sibson; Text and Music, Naomi Stephan)
Hodie* - SSSAA, Marimba, Vibes (H. v. Bingen)
O Virtus Sapientie*/** - SSA and Piano (H. v. Bingen)
Alleluia* - SATB/SSAA/SSA/SAB and optional Percussion
Angels We Have Heard on High - SSAA
Ave Pudendum - SAA with Trio and Coloratura Soprano
From Heaven Above (Susanni) - SAA, Flute, Drum, Wood block
Gloria**** - SSAA/SATB, Percussion, Chimes
Hodie* - SSATB (H. v. Bingen)
Ideo*/** - SSSAA, Vibe, Marimba (H. v. Bingen)
In Dulci Jubilo - SSAA, 2 Flutes, Drum
I Saw Three Ships - SAA, Flute, Piano
Liebst Du um Schönheit*/** - SSAA and obl. Solo (arr. of a song by Clara Schumann in German and English)
Mater in Memoriam: For Irene - SSAA, Chamber Ensemble or SSAA and Piano; original texts in English (Naomi Stephan and Sue Moore)
Our Promised Land (formerly, Well of Loneliness) - SSAA/TTBB (Sue Moore)
Spring Song* - SSA/TTB (Sue Moore)
Dona Nobis Pacem - SSAA and Piano; Piano by Julie Sibson (Naomi Stephan)
*recorded
**commissioned
***grant
**** competition award
Naomi Stephan can be reached at femcomposer@naomimusic.com or via her web site: www.naomimusic.com. She welcomes feed back and responses to this article.