Sophie Drinker

Sophie Lewis Drinker ( Hutchinson; August 24, 1888 – September 6, 1967) was an American musicologist and feminist. She published several books on the role of women in the history of music and colonial America. The Sophie Drinker Institute, established in Bremen, Germany, in 2001 as an independent research facility specializing in women's musicological studies and gender research, was named in her honor.

Early life and education She was born Sophie Lewis Hutchinson on 24 August 1888, in Haverford, Pennsylvania, to Sydney Pemberton Hutchinson and Amy Lewis. As a child, Drinker had piano lessons and developed an interest in music. She attended St. Timothy's School in Maryland. After her graduation in 1906, Drinker was accepted to Bryn Mawr College, but did not attend.

Drinker was awarded an honorary doctorate from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts in 1949. She served for a time as a guest lecturer at Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, and received an honorary degree in 1967. The book, argues Ruth A. Solie, has had a major impact on the study of women and music, and has been particularly influential to women in music. In 1995, The Feminist Press re-issued Women and Music, with a preface by Elizabeth Wood and an afterword by Solie. Musicologist and librarian Kathi Meyer-Baer was one of the people Drinker worked with beginning in 1934 until 1942, when the relationship ended acrimoniously. In his biography of Meyer-Baer, David Josephson argued that, lacking any musicological training Drinker depended on the research of numerous others, most of whom received only nominal credit for the work they did.

She published other writings, including the book Brahms and His Women's Choruses (1952) and articles such as "What Price Women's Chorus?" for Music Journal in 1954. Here she developed criteria for compositions for women's choirs which in her view would utilize the full range of the female voice.

Personal life In 1911, Drinker married Henry Sandwith Drinker, a lawyer and musicologist, and moved with him to Merion, Pennsylvania. Henry Drinker was a successful lawyer, and like his wife had an avid interest in music. Apart from active music-making, he devoted himself to the translation of the German text of vocal compositions of great composers into English. Among them are Schubert's songs and Haydn's Creation, and a variety of works by Johann Sebastian Bach, among others, the Christmas Oratorio, the St. John Passion and the St. Matthew Passion. It is an independent research institute that specializes in women's musicological studies and gender research.

Publications Music and Women: The Story of Women in Their Relation to Music. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1948; reprint, New York: Feminist Press, 1995. Brahms and His Women's Choruses. Merion, 1952. "What Price Women's Choruses." Musical Journal 12/1, (1954), p. 19 & 42f. The Woman in the Music: A Sociological Study. Zurich: Atlantis, 1955 (German translation: Karl and Irene Geiringer). Hannah Penn and the Proprietorship of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia: Priv. print. under the auspices of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1958 Eugenie with Andrus Leonard, Miriam Young Holden: The American Woman in Colonial and Revolutionary Times, 1565-1800: A Syllabus with Bibliography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962