Women’s Sacred Music Project

Inspired by the 12^th 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

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 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.    

Performance of music by women, historical and contemporary is another important program of WSMP.  The Project has sponsored 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. 

Now the Project works with existing performing groups: the Schola Cantorum of Old St. Joseph’s Church, the Massed Choir of the Diocese of Pennsylvania and others to present historical and contemporary music. 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.

Commissioning of new music and new arrangements for the group is another way the Project supports the creation of new music.  The Project has commissioned arrangements for women’s voices of two movements of Andrea Clearfield’s oratorio Women of Valor.  These have been published by Oxford University Press.  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.

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.