Women in Music: Internet Resources

Last updated 2004.

Designed for everyone – musicians, performers, conductors, students, researchers, educators, artistic administrators, and anyone with a curious mind – this database provides access to thousands of works by women and gender-marginalized composers. By sharing knowledge and resources, BID increases access to works by underrepresented composers, empowering all who wish to diversify classical music programming.
Explore over 8,000 works by more than 1,200 composers with ease, available to you for free.

A database of composers' websites, focused on women and composers of color. Maintained by the Institute for Composer Diversity.

The very first webpages dedicated solely to Jewish women’s contributions in music.

The Hathi Trust Women Composers Collection consists of digitized sheet music for approximately 3,000 musical works by more than 700 women composers. Most date from the 19th- and early 20th-centuries, with a few pieces from the 18th century. Some of the published scores include annotations by the composer, while there are also several hundred in manuscript form. The originals are from the University of Michigan Music Library, which purchased most of the collection in 1980 from a British antiquarian. Visitors can sort the materials by author name, date, or title using the drop-down "Sort by" feature above the listings. Most of the musical compositions featured in the collection are songs and solo piano pieces, although choral, orchestral, dramatic, and chamber music are also present in the collection. About 80 percent of the collection is available full-text through HathiTrust, which means that the music can be downloaded and printed. In addition to being of interest to musicians and music scholars, the covers of many of the pieces are illustrated and some include ornate text, providing examples of 19th- and 20th-century graphic design.

Interactive map of more than 500 women composers from around the world, created by Sakira Ventura.

The International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) is an international membership organization of women and men dedicated to fostering and encouraging the activities of women in music, particularly in the areas of musical activity such as composing, performing, and research in which gender discrimination is an historic and ongoing concern. IAWM members engage in efforts to increase the programming of music by female composers, to combat discrimination against female musicians, including as symphony orchestra members, and to include accounts of the contributions of women musicians in university music curricula and textbooks.

This is a database of excerpts and complete musical compositions by women composers. The music is categorized by theoretical concept for use in music education

Blog post at J.W. Pepper

The Philomel Project is a resource for classically-trained musicians to find repertoire written by women composers. Our priority is accessibility over exhaustiveness, so you won’t find trios or quartets on here, even for common ensembles. You’ll find concertos, sonatas, and solo works with and without piano accompaniment, some including electronic or tape tracks.

The Holdings of The University of Oregon Knight Library's Music Services Department