It should come as no surprise that a women's liberal arts college might offer a course in "women in music" or that the applied music students and faculty might learn and perform works by female composers. What is surprising is that until ten years ago, at Agnes Scott College it was the rare exception for a female composer to be assigned or programmed. Not only were works by women never mentioned in music history or theory courses, but the only library book on the topic of women in music was George Upton's Woman and Music, with its nineteenth-century attitude that women were incapable of composing and should restrict their musical endeavors to salon music and supporting their male friends and relatives who composed.

Much has changed in the last ten years at academic institutions nationwide. Although developments at this suburban Atlanta four-year college closely resemble those at similar institutions, others are no doubt unique or at least unusual, and might be of interest to colleagues in higher education. Women's Studies was slow in coming to Agnes Scott, with the first course being offered in 1978, the first director of Women's Studies being appointed in 1989, and a minor being offered for the first time the same year.

The first concert on campus devoted solely to female composers was given by organist-harpsichordist Calvert Johnson in February 1988. Assisting was flutist Carol Lyn Butcher, who presented her own program devoted to works by women the following October, accompanied by Johnson. Since then, most of the applied music faculty have routinely assigned works by women to their students, and both student and faculty recitals have included compositions by women as a normal procedure to the point that it is simply not novel anymore to hear a composition by a woman.

At the same time, the music faculty at Agnes Scott began to main-stream women into music history and theory courses. The music history three-semester sequence uses K. Marie Stolba's The Development of Western Music, 2nd edition (Madison: WCB, 1994) which includes extensive coverage of women as composers, performers, etc. Music theory courses include examples of works by women for analysis, sight-singing, and ear-training. History of Sacred Music prominently features women as hymnists, composers, and sacred musicians. Women are also included in such courses as Introduction to Music, American Popular Music, History of Jazz, and Musicals and Film Music.

The college's centennial was celebrated in 1988-89. Among many other special activities featuring the accomplishments of women in all fields, the college commissioned Thea Musgrave to compose a work to include Singing, instrumental music, dance, and acting. Although she typically writes her own librettos, Musgrave asked that her friend C. E. (Christa) Cooper be commissioned to provide the text for Echoes through Time. She also located a young woman, Linda Brovsky, to serve as stage director and choreographer. Alumnae Liz Lee and Margaret Clark Waterbury were set designer/lighting designer and costumer respectively. In addition, four women were commissioned to create temporary site sculptures based on Cooper's libretto, thus involving all of the creative arts in a common effort.

The first course in Women in Music was offered by Johnson in the spring of 1990, with the objective of including the accomplishments and activities of women in music-making of all kinds in cultures throughout the world and from antiquity to the present. This survey course used the following texts: Ellen Koskoff, Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989); Carol Neuls-Bates, Women in Music: An Anthology of Source Readings, revised edition (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996); and Jane Bowers and Judith Tick, Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).

Every year many guests are invited to give presentations to the class. Among them have been guest artists violinist Stephanie Chase (who, at the request of the College Events Committee, included Clara Schumann's Romances on her recital), composer and pianist Judith Zaimont, pianist Teresa Dybvig, and pianist Patricia Ross (who, later in the day gave her one-woman show on Teresa Carreño). Local musicians have included members of the Atlanta Symphony (principal clarinetist Laura Ardan, assistant principal horn and the sole female brass player Susan Welty, violinist Alice Oglesby, and president Allison Vulgamore), popular musicians Emily Saliers of the Grammy-winning Indigo Girls, duo Joyce and Jacque, and Michelle Malone, and directors of music from prominent churches (Adele Dieckmann McKee, Atlanta BACH choir director Porter Remington, Sue Mitchell-Wallace, and current Dean of the Atlanta chapter of the American Guild of Organists Marilyn González). Other faculty in the music department and from neighboring colleges who have given presentations have included Ronald Byrnside (women in American popular music), Theodore K. Mathews and Emory University's Dwight Andrews (both on women in jazz), and Juan Ramírez (women in Latin American music).

The spin-off effect has been most interesting. Mathews and Andrews had always included some coverage of women in their courses on jazz, but never to the extent that they have since giving their presentations to the Women in Music class. Last winter, Andrews gave a four-evening lecture series on Women in Jazz, sponsored by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as part of its public educational outreach program. Ramírez is also Director of the Atlanta Virtuosi which annually performs a series of programs featuring Latin American music. As a direct result of his presentation to the class, he featured Latina composers on the next series. Similarly, Byrnside expanded coverage of women in the second edition of his introduction to music textbook, Music: Sound and Sense (Dubuque: WCB, 1990). Johnson was chair of the program committee for the 1992 national convention of the American Guild of Organists in Atlanta, which prominently featured women as composers (including commissions), performers, and conductors. As President of the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society, Johnson served as co-chair with Marcelline Mayhall of the Midwest Historical Keyboard Society of the joint meeting of their societies in Louisville, 1993, where women were again featured, as composers instrument builders, and performers.

By 1995 it was painfully evident that too much material was included in the Women in Music course. The music department received the blessing of the curriculum committee and of the college faculty to split the course into two courses, both of which are cross-listed for credit in Women's Studies. The course that retained the original course number became Women in Music: the Western Tradition (from Hildegard to the present). Because of the large number of non-music students enrolling in the course, the Bowers and Tick textbook was replaced by Karin Pendle's Women and Music: A History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).

The new course satisfied the desire of the music department to offer an introduction to world music course by doing so from the woman's point of view--Women in Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective. The course was offered for the first time in the fall, 1996, using as textbooks Koskoff's book and Jeff Titon, Worlds of Music, 3rd edition (New York: Schirmer Books, 1996). Additional readings were drawn from the Pendle text (chapters on antiquity and on world music), and several articles: Jacqueline Cogdell Djedje, "Women and Music in Sudanic Africa," More Than Drumming: Essays on African and Afro-Latin American Music and Musicians, ed. by Irene V. Jackson (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), 67-89; Judy A. Jones, "Nez Perce Women, Music and Cultural Change" Women of Note Quarterly 3/3 (August 1995), 6-19; and Kay Hardy Campbell, "Folk Music and Dance in the Arabian Gulf and Saudi Arabia," [unpublished paper].

Although an introductory survey course, coverage included women's participation in music making among the Sioux, Navajo, Nez Perce, Iroquois, Kaiapó of Brazil, Mapuche of Argentina and Chile, Hazara of Afghanistan, Temiar of Malaysia, and Algerian Berbers. European folk traditions featured Greece, the Balkans, Sephardic and Lubavitcher Jewish communities. African societies covered included the Kassena-Nankani, Ewe, Tuareg, Shona, Xhosa (featuring Miriam Makeba), Wolof, Dongamba, Mande, BaAka Forest people. Non-Wester classical traditions included Javanese gamelan and shadow puppet theatre, Japanese gidayu-bunraku puppet theatre, geisha, shamisen and koto music; India; and the Arabian music of Tunisia, Egypt (featuring Om Kalthoum), and Saudi Arabia. Also studied were musical women of antiquity (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and medieval Arabia).

In conjunction with the course, the students were required to attend world music concerts in Atlanta, notably a performance of Arabian music at the college by Simon Shaheen and his Near Eastern Ensemble, given in conjunction with an exhibit of calligraphic art works "The Right to Write" from The Jordan National Gallery. Rehearsals of non-Western performing ensembles were attended by the class, including the gamelan at Emory University, and a community African drum and dance ensemble in downtown Decatur.

Regarding the original course, perhaps the most unusual development was the introduction of a foreign language component to Women in Music: the Western Tradition. Thus, the music department joined the college's initiative to spread the study of foreign language across the curriculum. The purpose of the Language Across the Curriculum program was to improve foreign language instruction and learning through a content-based course so that students might study original materials (frequently not otherwise available in English) in courses within their major or minor, or to use their language abilities in courses outside the foreign language departments. [1] In the spring of 1996, it was possible for students to enroll for an extra hour of credit in German, Music, or Women's Studies. The additional hour was team-taught by Ingrid Wieshofer and Johnson, with directed readings, study-guides, and discussion entirely in German. The overall objective of the program was summarized by Wieshofer as follows: "By linking language to other disciplines at Agnes Scott College, we are demonstrating to students that the achievement of foreign language competence is an integral part of liberal arts education that will deepen their understanding of the humanities as their mastery of the language increases." [2]

Through a grand from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Johnson was able to study German at the Goethe Institutes in Atlanta and Berlin from the summer of 1994 through the fall of 1995 in order to improve his German competency. During summer of 1995, the instructors selected texts and developed study guides that simultaneously checked German reading comprehension, enhanced the depth and breadth of coverage in the linked music course, developed German writing skills, and encouraged class discussion in German. "the main emphasis was on enriching the discipline, not on adding courses in foreign language departments." [3] The result was incredibly successful, enriching not only the course, but also both students and instructors. The German component will be offered every three years. In addition, a French component will be offered in the 1997-98 academic year and every three years thereafter, with French professor Julia De Pree joining Johnson in this team teaching arrangement. The Women in Music course was unusual in that every student was simultaneously enrolled in the German component as well. Hence, class discussion in the English language disciplinary course inevitably drew as well on the German language readings and discussion. However, even if some students had not enrolled in the German component, they undoubtedly would have benefited because experience in other Language Across the Curriculum courses have clearly demonstrated "that the benefits of these courses extend to the students who did not take the component courses. Students in the language component classes volunteered information and asked questions more often in the discipline classes." [4]

The syllabus of the German language component has already been put on the world wide web at a site most likely to be accessed by German teachers (wig-l@cmsa.berkeley.edu). Because not everyone has access to the web, the list of directed readings and related activities is given below. Of particular note is the project of writing a letter to a German, Austrian, or Swiss composer to learn more about her development as a composer, her career, and her compositional style, beyond what the student has been able to learn by reading various texts in German.