Influential Women in the History of American Music Education

Abstract

Early American music education is rooted not only in the work of Lowell Mason and other male music education pioneers, but also in the lives of a number of women whose work in the field was largely unnoticed until the twentieth century and the evolution of women’s rights in America. This project researched the lives and contributions of five of these women: Frances Elliott Clark, one of the first educators to take advantage of the technology available at the time, who incorporated the use of phonographs in the music classroom; Julia Ettie Crane, whose legacy lives on through the Crane School of Music in Potsdam, New York; Mabelle Glenn, who was sought after as a music supervisor by a number of States and led the way in demonstrating the character and tenacity required to generate monumental change; Marguerite Hood, who continued Clark’s use of technology and carried it even further with the use of the radio in music classrooms; and Mary E. Hoffman, who demonstrated how to transition from teaching junior high and high school to teaching college while maintaining a foothold with potential future students. Other topics include a brief history of women in music, women in education, the evolution of American society’s attitudes towards working women, and some of the sacrifices these women made so that modern female educators have the abundance of opportunities available to them.