ABSTRACT
Chapter 1, “Introduction,” presents the book’s major question: Why are Mabel Daniels’s works, once published, performed, and well received during the first half of the twentieth century, no longer performed? It follows with highlights of the evidence that answers this question. First, Daniels’s transitional role made her produce works that were transitional in style and context. Her transitional role as a patron-composer helped her to secure a career as a professional composer. Second, radio and recording technologies led to the decline in amateur performance, the context and style of much of Daniels’s earlier work. Finally, professionalism and modernism in music came to be gendered as male, which made the acceptance of women composers into the canon difficult. This chapter, as subsequent ones, draws from the Daniels Papers in Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library.
