Conference Presentation: “Music as Political Manifesto: Elfrida Andrée’s Cantata for the Sixth Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (1911).” Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Held Online November 2021.

Abstract: The Sixth Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), hosted in Stockholm in 1911, welcomed delegates from 24 nations. Over one thousand additional guests purchased tickets to witness meetings, as well as addresses by such eminent figures as the organization’s founder Carrie Chapman Catt and Sweden’s own Nobel Prize-winning author Selma Lagerlöf. The conference included contributions from male allies. Hugo Alfvén composed a “Suffrage Song” for the opening ceremony. But the honor of composing and conducting the conference’s musical highlight went to Sweden’s preeminent female composer, Elfrida Andrée (1841-1929). Her 30-minute Suffrage Cantata for women’s voices and orchestra is a rare example of a large-scale political composition written and performed by women, and targeted to an audience of women.

Swedish-speaking scholars like Wikander (2006) and Peterson (2006) have related this conference to the era’s philosophical discourses on women’s rights in Sweden and abroad. Öhrstrom has identified some of the broad musical characteristics of Andrée’s cantata while explaining its historical context (1999). Nevertheless, no scholarship has demonstrated how the musical activities of the conference inflected its political message.

I analyze surviving manuscripts and primary sources like conference reports to argue that Andrée’s Suffrage Cantata, like many of the conference’s speeches, functioned both as a call to action toward the conference’s shared goals and reflected the distinct ideological priorities of its author. Its critique of the past oppression of Swedish women and evocation of local pioneers like Fredrika Bremer (1801-1865) illustrate a national struggle whose challenges resonated with an international audience. Andrée’s compositions from as early as 1874 likewise associated women’s civic engagement with Swedish nationalism. In addition to reinforcing the conference’s emphasis on political rights for women, the Suffrage Cantata strongly advocates for professional equality, one of Andrée’s guiding principles. For instance, after campaigning to change Swedish laws forbidding women from becoming church organists, she became Europe’s first female cathedral organist in 1867. Analyzing the political implications of Andrée’s Suffrage Cantata not only improves our understanding of the roles music played in the women’s suffrage movement, but also demonstrates how a composition may perform similar functions to a political manifesto.