
What is "Musicianship Monthly?" Each month, I share links to free resources you can use to focus on a specific musicianship skill with your students all month long! Want to see past skills we have covered? Click HERE!
Did you know that March is women's history month? For our Musicianship Monthly focus this month, we will be celebrating the role of women in music with a focus on historical women composers!
Keep reading to find links to FREE biographies, listening activities, sheet music, and more celebrating women composers of the past!
Classics for Kids from Cincinnati Public Radio has 2 excellent podcasts devoted to women composers. Each podcast introduces a variety of women composers and includes a free coloring page and word search worksheet about the women discussed in the podcast. Check them out at the links below:
Biographies
The "Composer Explorer" feature on the Classics for Kids website includes both pictures and biographies of many women composers. Click HERE to browse all of the biographies on the site, listed alphabetically.
The website Making Music Fun also has resources for several historical women composers. Each page includes a kid-friendly biography, video of one of the composer's pieces, free coloring page and word search activities, and sheet music arrangements that are available for purchase. Click on the composers' names below to see the resources!
Free Sheet Music by Historical Women Composers (listed in order of difficulty)
- "Aloha Oe" by Queen Lili'uokalani (composed in 1878), Arr. Julie Lind (elementary piano) available from Piano Song Download HERE
- "Le Petit Mendiant" by Melanie Bonis (composed in 1913), original form (late elementary piano), available from IMSLP HERE
- "Arpeggio Waltz" by Caroline Crawford (composed in 1910), original form (early intermediate piano), available from G Major Music Theory HERE
- "Canoeing" by Amy Beach (composed in 1927), original form (intermediate piano), available from Michael Kravchuk HERE
If you are interested in exploring more advanced music by historical women composers, the collection "At the Piano with Women Composers" published by Alfred Music is a great place to start! You can purchase that HERE.
Recordings
Finally, here are a few short videos (around 5 minutes or less) of some of my personal favorite pieces by historical women composers. I hope your students find these compositions as beautiful and inspiring as I do!
1. Clara Schumann: Piano Trio in G minor, Movement 3: Andante
2. Margaret Bonds: Troubled Water
3. Amy Beach: Dreaming
4. Florence Price: Fantasie No. 1 for Violin and Piano
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