Composing Women

Composing Women

Classical music has a history of Composing… Women! So this Women’s History Month Tri States Public Radio and the WIU School of Music shines the spotlight… one every weekday… on over twenty great female composers. From baroque to romantic… to impressionist… to post-serialist. From the mystic Abbess who advised the Pope… to the Chicagoan whose works were rediscovered in an abandoned house. Listen in for Composing Women… Every weekday during March at 7:19 during Morning Edition, or at 5:48 during All Things Considered, as TSPR Music Director Ken Zahnle introduces you to our composer of the day… and at 11:00 a.m. during Ovation for a featured work by our featured classical master.

Are you a teacher? Then we have ways for you to include Composing Women in your classroom. Check out our Teacher Resource Page.

Barbara Strozzi

Ken Zahnle

A daughter of a nobleman, a lover of a nobleman, but never quite a member of the nobility itself, composer Barbara Strozzi lived, what seems to us, an unconventional life in Venice’s golden age.
Hildegard von Bingen

Ken Zahnle

We know her now as a composer of atmospheric chant… but in her lifetime, Saint Hildegard von Bingen was better known as a theologian, herbalist, writer, leader of a religious order, and advisor and confidant of Popes.