The Heart of a Woman: Curating the Present Inventory and Promoting Future Musical Settings of Texts by Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance gave rise to many great Black writers at the beginning of the 20th century. Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen are among familiar names. However, alongside these were women such as Georgia Douglas Johnson, Anne Spencer, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and many more writing poems and stories from a distinctly alternative intersection: Blackness and Womanhood. Unfortunately, some collections have been lost to time, but surviving works have begun to see use as source material for musical settings. As educational initiatives promoting canon expansion to include historically marginalized communities are becoming more of an institutional standard, we must consider the landscape of poetic sources represented in our voice teaching, regularly assign repertoire with text that aligns with our students’ lived experience, and encourage the commission of new works. This study introduces the Harlem Renaissance and the key thought leaders who established literary magazines, which served as the primary publishing platform for women writers of the time. It then presents a representative sample of writings from women active during the movement, followed by a broader comparison of all known Black women poets writing between 1919 and 1940, gathered from various sources. From this list, I compiled an inventory of existing musical settings of texts by women poets of the Harlem Renaissance, cross-referencing resources such as the Kassia Database, the Institute for Composer Diversity, SongHelix, and the African Diaspora Music Project. Because U.S. copyright laws have changed since the Harlem Renaissance, an investigation was launched to understand more about the protections that may still exist in this literature and inform prospective commissioners and composers about what texts can be freely set without necessitating permission from a copyright claimant, and which texts are still protected and therefore, require permissive use. This research aims to promote new commissions and increase the inclusion of these powerful female figures in America’s vocal canon. To interested composers and prospective commissioners, a brief overview of copyright law, an accompanying flowchart, and a preliminary procedure outline are made available to aid in discerning what texts are still copyright-protected for more comprehensive commission and budget planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Alabama Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Plenzler, Alissa Leigh

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Davis-Hazell, Alexis

Contributors dc:contributor

• Adams, Christy
• Ewing, K.T.
• Luttig, Morgan
• Robinson, Thomas
• Tayloe, David

• canon
• Harlem Renaissance
• poets
• repertoire
• women

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved by the author unless otherwise indicated.

Language dc:language.iso

en_US, English

Dc Identifier Other

1141908

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ir.ua.edu:123456789/16675