The Score | Putting Women Composers on the Map

Spanish musicologist Sakira Ventura has created an interactive map featuring more than 500 women composers—and counting. The map, at https://svmusicology.com/mapa/?lang=es, has photo icons representing each composer, overlaid on a world map; users can click on a picture to learn more about that composer. Included are composers from the past, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s often overlooked sister Maria Anna (Nannerl), Hawaiʻi’s Queen Liliuokalani, and the ninth-century Byzantine-Greek composer and hymnographer Kassia. Given classical music’s historical timeline, many composers are in Western Europe, but the map includes composers from a wide geographic range. Living composers include Alma Deutscher (U.K.), Tawnie Olson (Canada), Elena Kats-Chernin (born in Uzbekistan, now based in Australia), Juhi Bansal (India), Eleanor Alberga (Jamaica), and Gabriela Lena Frank (U.S.). Ventura’s goal: to give these composers their due. As she told the Guardian newspaper in August, “If I’m putting together a map of female composers, it is because these women don’t appear anywhere else.” She plans to continue adding to the map/database.