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Listen Wider Challenge 2020

Playlists and Reading Lists for the Listen Wider Challenge

Challenge #1

  1. A composition of 60 minutes or more in length by a woman or non-binary composer 

The Spotify playlist for this challenge includes all sacred works-- Mass settings and oratorios-- by female composers of the last two hundred years. Amy Beach and Ethel Smyth were among the few female composers of the 19th century who had success in large-scale compositional forms; both wrote their Mass settings in the early 1890s, Beach in American and Smyth in England. Mary Lou Williams's jazz mass setting here-- one of several she composed-- was commissioned by the Vatican in 1969. Two oratorios on the list treat Jewish sacred themes: Andrea Clearfield's Women of Valor celebrates women of the Old Testament, and Sylvie Bodorovà's Czech oratorio explores the story of Judas Macabee. Kaija Saariaho applies the sacred form of the oratorio to a secular figure, the philosopher Simone Weil. 

How I Found These

To identify some works that fit the challenge, I used the free Works Diversity Database (part of the Composer Diversity Database) to identify works by women or non-binary composers. Then I sorted the results by "Minutes (High to Low)" to find the longest works.

I also consulted lists of female composers in two subscription sources the library gives us access to: Grove Music Online (a reference source) and Naxos Music Online (a streaming music database).

Bibliography & Resources