Women Composers at the White House: The National League of American Pen Women and Phyllis Fergus's Advocacy for Women in American Music

Abstract

AbstractWomen composers' concerts, arranged by Phyllis Fergus, were held for Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House in 1934 and 1936. They featured music by members of the National League of American Pen Women—an organization for writers, artists, and composers—and were part of a substantial agenda proposed by Fergus, its music director and later president, to achieve national recognition for its composer members. Drawing on Fergus's scrapbooks and documentation in the FDR Library and Pen Women's archives, this article explores the events that Fergus helped to organize, including concerts in Miami, Chautauqua, and Chicago, the latter played by members of the Women's Symphony Orchestra. White House appearances by Amy Beach helped emphasize the League's professional status, and the nationalistic tone of its publicity, urging audiences to “Buy American” during the Depression, worked to distract from age-old assertions of women's lack of creativity. However, the musicales for Roosevelt, who received the composers socially rather than as paid professionals, reinforced women's domestic position, and financial restraints limited most League programming to the genres typically associated with female composers. Despite its separation from a male mainstream, the NLAPW was nonetheless a significant force in promoting women's music in the 1930s.