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Welcome to She Is Song! My name is Noelle McMurtry, and I’m a classical-music vocalist, concert curator, and musicologist. I employ my interdisciplinary background to write about how classical music intersects with culture from a feminist perspective.
I’m passionate about creating a more accurate, inclusive, and just historical narrative that centers the contributions of women creators in classical music, as well as an online community to share research, thoughts, music and more.
In She Is Song, you will engage with diverse and underrepresented storytellers in classical music. I specifically created She Is Song as a space to explore and share my research on the song repertoire of women composers. As a vocalist, I interpret music from the medieval era until today, and through my post-doctoral research, I am currently delving into the 19th-century song repertoire of European and North American women composers.
Since I am most interested in pairing scholarship with performance, I tend to think and write about the music/texts that inspire me and the projects I am currently working on. This involves a whole bunch of intersecting topics, including history, politics, literature, and autobiography, as well as the contributions of women composers, writers, visual artists, activists, and historical figures that intersect with musical composition.
I’m glad that you’re here, and I hope that She Is Song serves as a resource, canon-challenger, and most importantly, a fun read!
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Featured
Composer
To Be Loved Less Than a Flower: “Hyacinth” by Margaret Bonds & Edna St. Vincent Millay
In composer Margaret Bonds’ setting of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Hyacinth,” we encounter an unflinching intersectional feminist portrait of the ever-shifting dynamics between gender, power, and love.
Poet
A Song for Turbulent Times: Melissa Dunphy’s “Farewell, Angelina”
Melissa Dunphy’s “Farewell, Angelina” (2019), arranged for voice and viola, draws surreal parallels between American society in 1965 and 2020, as the nation fights to achieve racial justice and uphold our democracy.
Research
In Search of Luise Adolpha Le Beau (Part II): An Estate in Ashes
In Part II of my Le Beau series, I trace the fate of the composer’s estate materials from her death in 1927 through the totalitarian regimes of twentieth-century Germany.
Research
Composers
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