Generalized Art Song Anthologies and Reference Materials Raw Data

Objective: This study examines the demographic makeup of composers in Western classical art song musical anthologies and reference materials.

Design: Generalized (non-composer specific) musical anthologies (n = 379) and reference books (n = 29) were collected through commercial search engines, publisher websites, academic libraries, and private collections. Every composer’s gender, race, sexuality, birth nationality, approximate musical period, and number of competitions were collated and categorized from each resource.

Methods: Definitions for demographic information were adapted from the United States Census Bureau and Human Rights Campaign to center the lens of a contemporary user’s experience engaging with these texts. Basic statistics calculated using the composer’s demographic information were multiplied by their total number of compositions to capture an aggregate understanding of what identities are likely to be encountered in such a resource.

Results: Data collection yielded 12321 composers (unique n = 3971) and 56847 songs with repetition. Generalized resources tend to contain the music of a specific demographic of composers. Songs were primarily written by straight (n = 43795, 77.0%), white (n = 55661, 97.9%), male (n = 53864, 94.8%) composers.

Conclusions: The conjunct and widespread use of anthologies representing a select portion of the available repertoire with unknown editorial impartiality could reinforce canonic ideology by limiting student and faculty exposure to diverse repertoires. A “French Song” anthology is unlikely to have any women, BIPOC, or queer representation unless designed as a “Women in French Song,” “BIPOC French Composers,” or “Art Song by Queer French Composers” resource instead.