Women in Early Silent Film

The "Piano Lady"

During and prior to the 19th and early 20th centuries, women in music were often archtyped as the "Piano Lady", in the sense that it was socially acceptable for them to perform music, but not to write it, and many of them learned the piano to entertain house-guests [1]. By the later half of the 19th century, the role of women had began to change, and they began to dominate performance-based education for music. Additionally, roughly around the 1890's, a new generation of women composers began to emerge, directly alongside the new art form of film.

Composing and Publishing Music

Few women had their works published and distributed for retail during the era of the "Piano Lady", and many of those who did during this time would have used ambigious pseudonyms, or even just initials, to hide their sex [2]. Additionally they would often publish music with text written by a man, essentially shadowing them in their work. Roughly during the period of World War 1, women's suffrage came into effect throughout most western-nations, and the popularity of women composers began to grow, especially in the 'popular' songwriting genres. They remained ever popular in the performance of music, but now they had finally began to emerge as writers of it [2].

Gallery

This gallery contains several works by lesser-known female composers and performers, including a set of waltzes, and a patriotic war song from World War I. More popular female composers have their own featured pages.