A detailed response to many recent postings on this topic just 'vanished'
from my computer (!).  I hasten to send the following before it too
dematerializes magically.  In brief --

Education: Women composers exist in the thousands across the centuries and
countries.  Until the latter-middle of the 20th century, however, they were
not (in the US) admitted to conservatories/university music departments as
declared majors in composition (or in conducting).  Edith Borroff has been
eloquent about being denied declaration as a Composition major at Oberlin
in the '50s; Ellen Zwilich was the first woman to be awarded Juilliard's
doctorate in Composition, in 1975.

Recordings: Few living composers get to see second, or subsequent,
recordings of their works.  (0nly recently has this begun to happen in my
case.) There is luster for a performer to offer the premiere recording: it
is perforce the definitive reading.  Much less luster goes to subsequent
issues.

Also, in the case of any music that serves as the subject of study for
academic research/degree papers, a recording may be part of the documentary
outcome of the study.  Rarely does this recently-come-to-light subject
matter get a subsequent recorded version -- but it does happen.

Considering that so many women composers are 20th century figures, people
who are researching discographical information on them should do a 30- to
-40-year retrospective search.  Several discographies of music by women
were published in the 1990s; they attempted to be comprehensive.  (One is
by Aaron Cohen.)

Awareness: An exhilarating experience awaits any listmember who sincerely
wants to come to know music written by women.  But you'll have to look in
special places, since most of it doesn't make it into the more general
music history books, anthologies, recorded series of music.  (Does anyone
remember Time's "Great Men of Music"? Composer Faye Ellen Silverman wrote
to the series editor to ask why no women in the recorded anthology -- was
told there weren 't any (!!!).)

An interesting place to start might be with the composers' own words, from
Carol Neuls-Bates' WOMEN IN MUSIC - An Anthology of Source Readings from
the Middle AGes to the Preset (Northeastern University Press: Boston).

We teach as we were taught;  we perpetuate as 'canon' what we are told IS
the 'canon'.

That's why I include Grazyna Bacewicz "Pensieri Notturni" and the
Divertimento, Joan Tower's "Silver Ladders" and my own Symphony #1 are
among the pieces analyzed in my orchestration classes.  And that's why I
always recommend to pianists Louis Talma's Sonata #2, and the Etudes (among
many pother pieces written by women).

 [Read about Bacewicz (1909-1969, Polish) and Talma (1906-1998, French born
American) in the "Critical Appraisals" essays section of volume one of my
book series THE MUSICAL WOMAN: An International Perspective (Greenwood
Press).]

A fine Internet source for info on women composers (historical and
living) is the site for the International Alliance for Women in Music
(mentioned by Dick Hihn):

   http://www.acu.edu/iawm

Composer/Novelist issues:

Novels (and poetry) -- and the visual arts -- have no requirements.  The
sense of sight belongs readily to most humans; and we take the skill of
reading as granted.

Music requires decoding at the hand(s) of an intercessor between maker and
listener: the Performer.  If *performers* don't know about music written
by a certain group of composers, the listeners will never have their chance
to hear, to enjoy, to assess.

Judith Lang Zaimont
Composer: NO adjective
School of Music - University of Minnesota