Women’s Sacred Music Project
Inspired by the 12th century abbess and
composer, Hildegard of Bingen, the mission of the
Women’s Sacred Music Project is to support, develop and perform sacred music
by, for, and about women at the highest standard of excellence. Our vision
includes education, performance, composition, promotion and spirituality, all
focusing on women. The Project is an affiliate of the International Foundation
Donne in Music based in Rome.
The Project is a public
charity organized under the guidelines of 501c3 of the IRS. Lisa Neufeld Thomas is President and Director
Commissioning of new
music and new arrangements is an important way the Project supports the
creation of new music. In 2011 The Project commissioned a new movement, ”Hagar,”
for Andrea Clearfield’s chamber version of her oratorio Women of Valor. WSMP
has also commissioned arrangements for women’s voices of two movements
from Women of Valor. Oxford
University Press has published them. Similarly the WSMP commissioned an
arrangement of a Christmas carol, "Nunc Gaudet Maria," by Lesley Hopwood Meyer that has been
published by Oxford. There is an ongoing commissioning program with Temple
University’s Boyer School of Music to encourage women students to write for the
Church.
Working with the Standing
Committee on Liturgy and Music of the Episcopal Church, the Project produced a
hymnal supplement to celebrate the gifts of women. Voices Found: Women in the
Church’s Song, was published in 2003 by Church Publishing, Inc. The Leader’s Guide to Voices Found,
which gives much background information followed in 2004.
While the Episcopal
Church published this hymnal, it is designed for ecumenical use. An important program of the Project is
promotion of the broadest possible use of the hymnal. Toward this end workshops have been presented
in Philadelphia, PA; Washington, DC; Kansas City, MO, Medford, OR; Newark, NJ;
Wilmington, DE; Boston, MA; London, UK, and Frankfurt, Germany. Promotion of Voices Found is an ongoing
project and we welcome requests for workshops or demonstrations by churches or
related organizations of all denominations.
To further promote the
awareness and use of Voices Found, the Project is sponsored a choral anthem
contest to generate choral anthem settings of the music and texts in the
hymnal. Another important goal of the contest is to enrich the repertoire of
high quality anthems available to church choirs. The contest represents a partnership of WSMP
with the Royal School of Church Music, the
Westminster Choir College, and the Princeton University Chapel.
Performance of music by
women, historical and contemporary is another important program of WSMP. The Project sponsors a small performing
ensemble of singers with occasional instrumentalists originally known as The
Lady Chapel Singers, because they first began to sing in the Lady Chapel of St.
Mark’s Church, Locust Street in Philadelphia.
Performances have emphasized the music of Hildegard of Bingen and other early women composers, such as Sulpicia Cesis, Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, and Isabella Leonarda. Increasingly the repertoire has evolved to
include a great diversity of styles and cultures including works by Jewish
American, Native American, Latin American, and African American women. To express this diversity, the group is now
known as the Voices Found Singers.
The Project continues in
the spirit of Hildegard of Bingen, to expand its
ethnic and cultural boundaries as it seeks to lift up the sacred voices of all
women.