I am honored to provide a brief essay in this issue celebrating forty years of American Music, but I confess the opportunity to write an op-ed for the discipline is daunting. To be able to express my own wishes for where I would like to see musicological discourse move in the coming years seems almost luxurious—as if it were a substitute for a late-night conversation among friends at a Society for American Music, American Musicological Society, or Society for Ethnomusicology conference, something we have not been able to enjoy since COVID took away the possibility of such reflections among colleagues. Naturally, my essay stems from the point of view of my own research and a desire to see more people take up the question of women's musical practices in centuries past. And why shouldn't they? That, in a nutshell, is my aim.
Almost forty years ago (practically coinciding with...