A labor of love begun several years ago by two SIUC music professors has enlarged the repertoire for classical singers. A New Anthology of Art Songs by African American Composers, compiled by pianist Margaret Simmons and soprano Jeanine Wagner, was published this year by Southern Illinois University Press.

Art songs, performed by one singer with piano accompaniment, unite music and poetry. They were first written in the 19th century, by German composers such as Schubert and Brahms. The genre has been continued by 20th-century composers, including contemporary African-American composers--but the works of the latter have been hard to find and neglected by anthologists.

Simmons and Wagner dug through archives, contacted composers for material, sifted through the songs they came up with, and presented some of them in concert--research described in the Spring 1998 issue of Perspectives.

The finished anthology presents 39 pieces for voice and piano by 18 composers. Two companion CDs feature accompaniment tracks for all of the selections, performed by Simmons.

All of the works were written since 1968. Biographies are included of the composers, nearly half of whom are women and some of whom are lesser-known or emerging artists. Jazz and spirituals are dominant influences in many of their works, expanding the horizons of the art-song repertoire.

--by Marilyn Davis, ed.