I am SO loving this thread

Cover drop for my new book, A History of Women in Music From Antiquity to Present Day, coming out in the UK on January 30 and in the US in March! Available for pre-order now from @penandswordbooks.bsky.social or on Amazon! Check it out! #BookSky #MusicSky #WomensHistory

1/ Like @kghist.bsky.social & her daughter, my elder son & I have both had #LongCOVID for nearly 6 years (since March/April 2020). Long COVID sometimes runs in families. How & why?

Due to severity of long covid I can’t spend more than a few (high quality!) mins with my adult children. Today’s time with my daughter (also severe lc) was spent on pomander art 🎉 I offer you ‘Medieval Weapon’ (her) and ‘Woman post C-section. A study’ (me). You’re welcome #wintersoltice #longcovid

Delighted to have come across this album of ‘Neglected works for piano’ by Bengt Forsberg. Late C19 & C20 European pieces by Vitezlava Kapralova, Amy Beach, Doreen Carwithen, Valborg Aulin, Ruth Sofia Almen, Grazyna Bacewicz, Germaine Tailleferre & Ruth Crawford Seeger What a rich collection

Digitisation can’t capture the material affect of the archive. I had a PhD student studying early C20 lesbian cultures. She found a pubic hair sent as a love token. (My story of finding a tiny packet of pet mouse fur sent from a late C18 girl to her cousin has seemed so lame since then.)

We observed the solstice, so now done until Easter. Hard recommend #wintersolstice

#OnThisDay, 20 Dec 1893, around 4,000 women vote in the Māori seats in Aotearoa New Zealand. Photo is from 1908. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #NZHistory #VotesForWomen 1/2

If you want to explore British female composers further and/or some very neglected C19 and C20 classical music here’s another 2025 album. Hiroaki Takenouchi playing Carwithen, Dring, Howell & Reinagle.

#maskup Especially if you're a health care professional treating medically vulnerable and immunosuppressed patients…..

Wow - district nurse has just been - not only was she not wearing a mask, she didn’t even have one in the car…. 😷😮 In the middle of a flu surge, visiting the homes of very ill and immunocompromised patients. This is weird, right? #Flu #longcovid

Whenever I chance upon this photo of Joseph Haydn, I now find myself thinking ‘Oh look - there’s that guy Symphonist from bluesky’. @deeplyclassical.bsky.social has totally superseded Haydn in my brain.

I love this! Photo of an elderly Frances Wyatt, an important Chartist in her earlier years, as unearthed by @markcrail.bsky.social in his new book, Chartist Lives. It’s brilliant that detailed research like this is still ongoing into this remarkable movement.

This is great: ‘Most ‘discipline problems’ are actually design problems.’

Do you have any music book recommendations from this year? Fiction and non-fiction both welcome.

The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Prize supports young composers from underrepresented backgrounds. Prize: £1,000 bursary Deadline: 5 Jan www.londonmozartplayers.com/sctprize-2025/

I didn’t think they could get any worse, but here we are. Unbelievable

#Ethelsmyth was far from the first British woman to stage an opera. Ida Walter, who had studied at the RAM, staged her four act work Florian in London, 1886. The plot was panned, but many praised the music: 1/2

Look @deeplyclassical.bsky.social ! This was your doing!

Massive thanks to @louisekennedy.bsky.social for her superb novel, Trespasses. Due to illness this is the first novel I’ve managed to read in print copy in years. Written during /because of Kennedy’s serious illness. V. inspiring for the housebound amongst us #Longcovid #women’sfiction #melanoma

Teresa Milanollo (1827-1904) a composer, and hugely successful professional violinist with an international solo career. The idea that women were ‘banned’ from violin playing in the C19 is so widespread, yet so wrong.

Great suggestions here

It seeems a lot of the scholarship on Victorians and ‘race’ was/is pretty top down? medical justifications, intellectual & literary tracts etc. The diaries made me think there could be other ways of understanding how ‘race’ was constructed/ignored/understood through everyday interactions

Wonderful to hear Avril Coleridge-Taylor’s music. Prompted me to look into her mother Jessie Walmisley. Also super musical she studied at the RAM (where she met Avril’s father, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor). Very interested to see that Jessie was at school with pupils of Afro-Caribbean heritage. 1/2

Such a painfully powerful poem on the pandemic #covid #longcovid

Every little helps! 😂 #Longcovid

BBC censoring the Reith lecture. Terrible development

If you’re in the Harlow area at lunchtime today, this will be wonderful

Swedish musician Elfrida Andree (1841-1929) is #Radio3 Composer of the Week 🎉 Andree has a lot of fans on here. A brilliant composer (I especially love her piano trios) her output included opera, symphonies and much more. Also a pioneering female musician and feminist activist. #Womencomposers

Sarah Kirkland Snider’s new opera re the medieval composer & abbess, Hildegard, focuses on her subject’s experience of chronic illness. I’m intrigued by Snider’s evocation of ‘Hildegard’s revolutionary reframe of illness as a generative spiritual force’ #Chronicillness #CFS/ME #womencomposers

The first complete recording of the compelling songs of British composer, Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) [1979!!] Given a great write up here: www.theguardian.com/music/2025/n...

Happy Birthday to the wonderful French composer Germaine Tailleferre. I especially love her piano and chamber works

Brilliant, as usual, from @rhaplord.bsky.social

Fascinated to learn that St Augustine, born in Algiers, was a Berber, an Indigenous North African ethnic group.

I’d forgotten that Sarah Remond became a British citizen. In her application to the British government, she argued this was necessary due to racial prejudice in the USA and the ‘social disabilities’ people of African descent suffered there. www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-...

Beautiful photograph of anti-slavery activist Sarah Remond. Remond also spent 3 years in Britain, arriving in 1859. She studied at Bedford College, but continued to give public lectures across the country.

Great thread from @britsymphcup.bsky.social on the evocative music of British composer Freda Swain

V severe long covid is so hard to convey. Beloved teenage nephew from Oz is staying with us for a week. I haven’t seen him for 6 yrs. As my brain can’t cope with the stimulation of seeing visitors my aim is to literally wave to him once. Not posting this for sympathy… 1/2

V severe long covid is so hard to convey. Beloved teenage nephew from Oz is staying with us for a week. I haven’t seen him for 6 yrs. As my brain can’t cope with the stimulation of seeing visitors my aim is to literally wave to him once. Not posting this for sympathy… 1/2

My lovely friend @aoyarzabal.bsky.social was the subject of a frightening verbal assault by a xenophobe in London today. He writes, ‘If you ever witness something like this — please don’t look away. Check in with the person being targeted. A small act of kindness can make a huge difference.’

In MASSIVE news, we’ve got a new scrabble dictionary. The day I’ve long been waiting for:

Fancy listening to something different? Four gorgeous musical choices of works by women composers here

Female leaders on the East African coast, pre colonialism

Martin Spychal explores how Ronald Gower’s privileged position ‘allowed him to play an influential role in shaping, and to an extent asserting, queer identities during the late nineteenth century.’

This looks brilliant! Love the idea of using the format of a scrapbook to present queer history: ‘Collecting has been a way for the marginalised to explore and assert identity and community’

Oxford people - this looks great - public lecture on ‘The Maritime Closet’ by Santanu Das. 21 October, 7pm. It’s free but you need to register: oclw.web.ox.ac.uk/event/public...

Political institutions in pre-colonial Africa - brilliant blog as always from @rhaplord.bsky.social

Been v. poorly lately, but today managed to see my beautiful, gentle giant of a son. Only 4 mins but we mostly laughed and it was SO BRILLIANT. I even managed quite a lot of eye contact which is hard when I’m not good (any other long haulers find this?) ✊ #longcovid #CFS #MEcfs #ME

This is such a lovely meditation on the importance of human teachers v. AI Not up to reading v. much atm, but so pleased I managed these paragraphs — totally worth it

Great news! A grant to assist the performance of women composers