In 2020, the Archiv Frau und Musik launched its third digitisation project. Following the projects #PARFUMO – Projekt ARchiv Frau und Musik Online (2018) and #MASCHA – Musik Akteurinnen SCHaffen Aufmerksamkeit (2019), the project #WoraufWartenWir? (What are we waiting for?) took the estate of the composers Felicitas Kukuck (1914–2001), Leni Alexander (1924–2005), Silvia Alvarez de la Fuente (1953–2004) and Weronika Aleksandra Markiewicz (1962–2003) into focus. “The project is designed to make lesser-known facets of music history visible,” says Mary Ellen Kitchens, board member of the International Working Group Women and Music e. V./Internationaler Arbeitskreis Frau und Musik e. V., describing the aims of the project. “Since the works of women composers are rarely included in the traditional canon, historiography marginalises them to this day.”
As part of the public relations work for this project, a specialist convention was held. There, works by Kukuck and other choral works by women composers were presented, and the connections between choral music, political attitudes, and the women’s movement were reflected upon. In addition to the processing and indexing of these (partial) bequests, parts of these contents were digitised and made accessible to a broad public in the specialised portal of the Digital German Women’s Archive (Digitales Deutsches Frauenarchiv, DDF) after rights clearance. As in previous projects, the digitised material was contextualised through thematic essays. The digitised material created in this project expands the growing amount of content published in the DDF since 2018.
All DDF projects are intended to facilitate the research of materials from the Archiv Frau und Musik, as well as to encourage engagement with materials in the archive. You can also find more information to download here.
Project Team
Mary Ellen Kitchens M. A. (project manager) | Julian Fischer M. A. (project coordinator) | Jelena Rothermel M. A. (project assistant)
The following essays were published in the Digital German Women’s Archive as part of the project:
- Essay on the composer Weronika Alexandra Markiewicz (in German)
- Essay on the composer Silvia Leonor Alvarez de la Fuentes (in German)
- Essay on the composer Leni Alexander (in German)
- Essay on the topic “Music and Resistance” (in German)