Women Composers and Music Technology in the United States: Crossing the Line

Women Composers and Music Technology in the United States: Crossing the Line. By Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. [301 p. ISBN 0754604616. $79.95.] Index, bibliography, discography, webliography.

As Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner notes in her introductory overview of the history of publishing about women and music, this history contains lacunae regarding avantgarde women composers, particularly of the post-World War II period. Her recent Women Composers and Music Technology in the United Stales makes great headway in filling these gaps and is the most substantial publication to date to investigate the achievements of women composers of electroacoustic music, defined as "[music] which uses technology as a tool and gives the composer access to virtually any sound" (p. 5). Hinkle-Turner brings her experience as a composer of such music to this project. She received her D.M.A. in music composition from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, served as acting director of the electronic and computer music studios at Florida International University and the Experimental Music Studios at the University of Iowa, and currently teaches twentiethcentury music and multimedia applications in music theory in the University of North Texas, College of Music.

Hinkle-Turner builds on earlier, more narrowly focused publications in her survey of approximately 150 electroacoustic works by more than 100 women composers in the United States, including music educators, independent artists, and technological inventors, and covers the period from the 1930s to the present. While most of the composers were born in the United States, a few are included who were born elsewhere, but have worked extensively here and are essential to its history of electroacoustic music, e.g., Annea Lockwood (New Zealand), Thea Musgrave (Scotland) and Jin Hi Kirn, and Insook Choi (South Korea). Discussions include biographical information, particularly as it sheds light on the conception and creation of the composers' music; analyses of works; technical reviews of equipment and construction methods when deemed helpful in understanding a work; and composers' reflections on working as a woman in the world of music technology. Most of HinkleTurner's research draws on the primary sources of interviews, personal correspondence, the composers' writings, and unpublished vitas, biographies, and program notes sent to her by the composers.

While Hinkle-Turner focuses on the period from the 1930s onward, she opens her second chapter...