Sunday,

When the subject of my speaking in today's worship service came up in a staff meeting, I was apprehensive about producing 15-20 minutes of material to fill the sermon time. Jim Todhunter has assured me that in his many years of public speaking, no one has ever complained about a sermon which was "too short".

Today we are celebrating UCC WOMEN'S WEEK. All music, texts, arrangements or translations you hear today are by women. While planning for this service, I was surprised by the large number of new works included in the New Century Hymnal which are inspired by women. Many of the newer hymns appear in the section of the hymnbook entitled "Justice and Peace". Their inclusion within this particular section is no mere accident.

The United Church of Christ is a denomination which welcomes, accepts and encourages equality, freedom and creative thought. Early on in my work at Webster United Church of Christ, I was attending my first UCC annual meeting. The congregation was discussing the budget and an 8-10 year old girl named Tina raised her hand. Her suggestion as to how to solve the budget problem was simply not a viable one, and I found myself becoming more and more impatient as she spoke. What struck me as I continued to watch, however, was how the entire room sat silent while she spoke, giving her their full and undivided attention. I soon realized that accepting her voice and allowing it to be heard was as important to that congregation as were her ideas about the budget.

Finding a place of worship which committed itself to issues of peace and justice were extremely important to me. Finding these attributes in a church was also exciting and liberating. Finally, I had found a place where I could make peace with many of my own personal concerns regarding music, worship and community outreach.

The women being discussed today were people who persevered when giving up or giving in might have been easier. University of Michigan Conducting Professor Gustav Meier once told me of his belief that great talent and artistry will eventually surface regardless of extenuating circumstances. A study of women's music does attest to this belief.

While teaching privately in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a 17-year-old student of mine named Denise came to me having just performed a movement from Gustav Mahler's First Symphony at the Interlochen Summer Arts Academy. Upon returning to school, she wrote a report about conducting an orchestra as a career.

She received an "A" on the project, but came to me disappointed by the fact that she could never be a conductor, even though it was something at which she thought she might be successful. She told me she had neither seen nor heard of women conductors, and therefore figured they simply didn't exist.

Interestingly enough, it was Alma Mahler (1879-1964) who finally acquiesced to her composer/conductor husband's wish that she abandon her own composing career. This negation of self is epitomized in the following letter. She writes:

"I buried my dream and perhaps it was for the best. It has been my privilege to give my creative gifts another life in minds greater than my own. And yet the iron had entered my soul and the wound has never healed."

"I lived his life. I had none of my own. He never noticed this surrender of my existence. He was so self-engrossed that any disturbance, however slight, was unendurable. Work, exaltation, self-denial, and the never-ending quest were his whole life on and on and forever."

The prelude you heard earlier was composed by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805- 1847). Her father, who encouraged his son Felix's professional aspirations, forbade her to perform for fees or to have her music published. Her first songs appeared in a collection of her brother's, and as a minor sidenote... under his name. Their father believed that a women's responsibilites were to home and child rather than to art. At the age of forty, she summoned the courage to defy her family and accepted an offer from a publishing house in Berlin. Only a few of her works were published; unfortunately, she died a year later at age 41, only one week before a review of a number of her compositions appeared in a leading Leipzig music journal.

1. The 12th century composer and visionary Hildegard von Bingen lived in an era that prohibited women from teaching or holding authority over men. Her need to deny human instruction

"is no mere study of humility, but a claim to high authority . . . Only through visions could a religious or intellectual woman gain a hearing while men might perhaps heed a divinely inspired woman, they would have little patience with a mere presumptuous female."

2. Psychologist Rosenkranz observed but did not resolve the paradox of why women, who are by nature preeminently dependent upon feeling, have not amounted to much as composers. He felt that it is not feeling which composes music, but the artistically trained talent. Therefore, women would not be well- suited for musical composition because of their inherent, weaker natures.

3. In 1880, music critic George Upton wrote, "Women should be content to function as men's Muses or inspirations."

4. One other prevailing theory was Social Darwinism which placed women lower on the evolutionary scale than men, incapable of creating high art because they lacked intellectual ability. Hence there was serious doubt that women could create art music of real value under even the most favorable conditions. Yet support from the women's movement and the long, slow rise of women as composers in the 19th century prepared the way for the emergence of women as creators of art music, especially Helen Hopekirk, Margaret Lang, and Amy Beach.

Amy Beach's (1867-1944) talent was recognized early on by her mother. She said that Amy as a two-year-old would improvise alto lines to her own soprano voice. She was also considered a child prodigy at the piano. Beach married a Boston surgeon at the age of 18, and that same year, 1885, she made her Boston Symphony debut playing a concerto by Moschelles. She later premiered her own piano concerto as well as her first symphony with the same orchestra. Shortly after her debut, she sought information about a composition teacher from the conductor of the orchestra, Wilhelm Gericke, who recommended that she teach herself. Such a suggestion may have been influenced by public perceptions that men wrote out of their intellects, women out of their feelings, and therefore they would not respond well to rigorous training.

One of the first American composers to be trained completely in the USA, Beach did not believe in an "Americanist" school, but in a "universal" style freely drawing on the musical traditions of all countries. She is considered by many today to be a pioneer woman composer in America.

I find it interesting that she chose to be referred to professionally as Mrs. H.H.A. Beach in honor of her physician husband. I've often wondered whether her husband would have ever considered choosing his wife's name in honor of her work.

Two contemporary composers you are about to hear are Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1927) and Jane Marshall.

Dr. Emma Lou Diemer studied at Yale, Tanglewood and Eastman. Her composition teachers include Paul Hindemith, Roger Sessions and Howard Hanson. She served on the faculty of the University of Maryland and is currently teaching at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Jane Marshall holds degrees from Southern Methodist University and is currently teaching at the Perkins School of Theology there. She is a strong advocate of the congregational song and has served on editorial committees for American Hymnbooks. Although several of her compositions do appear in our New Century Hymnal, she was not on the committee which organized this particular worship resource.

Women throughout history have also played significant supporting roles for their male counterparts. Certainly, Alma Mahler, Clara Schumann, George Sand, and Fanny Mendelssohn are only a small representation of this fact.

Societal views about women have changed, and much progress regarding equality and justice has already transpired. I do wonder, though, what things we are doing today which will seem as unfair and morally unjust to future generations as these ideas regarding women's issues seem to us now?

I'm mindful of Reverend Todhunter's sermon last Sunday concerning the duality of life's experiences; we often live within the tension of celebration and grief simultaneously. We must not forget while celebrating what we have that there were literally countless women's voices that were never heard. We mourn that loss, because we know that those lost voices were, in fact, very present in history. It has only been in the last few years that research has attempted to piece together some of this information. We are fortunate to have written correspondence from the Mendelssohns, the Mahlers, the Schumanns, and the Beachs.

In closing, I wonder why we are still struggling for issues of justice and peace in our society? In part, we celebrate the strength and dignity of the human spirit, and we rejoice in the gifts which result from this struggle. This is certainly not to justify the events or surroundings which cause the struggle; it is, however, an acknowledgement of the creativity brought about because of it. Our lives are ultimately enriched by their resulting contributions.

I am aware that our work for equality and our struggle for justice and peace is not over. My student Denise's experience with conducting was not a century ago - it was only last year.

Why are we still struggling for all this? The greatness of humanity often rides on overcoming obstacles; we celebrate the courage of these women who overcame adversity and societal "norms". It is their courage we celebrate today; they are role models of strength, perseverance and faith. Today we celebrate the unusual person who triumphed. We celebrate the qualities of the human spirit willing to fly in the face of what had come before and be true to themselves in spite of current dogma. Simply stated, they helped prepare the way for future generations.

I strive in my own work to expand and broaden my understanding of equality and resist complacency and ignorance. Admittedly, this isn't easy. I am mindful, however, that much of what we celebrate today in worship came at great individual cost to others before us. We do not face this struggle alone either, Christ has promised us courage on this journey.

I draw strength and energy from these women; strength to be uniquely myself and to encourage others to do the same. It is my hope that Christ Congregational Church will continue to impact the community in which it is involved, and be a place which offers courage in our ongoing struggle for justice and peace.