Musical Daughters of Eli: Women Pioneers at Yale

Composers and instrumentalists

Misc. Ms. 112 
 

Luella Totten
(alias Louis von Heinrich) 
Double Fugue
for Full Orchestra 
Arranged for 2 Pianos

Luella Totten, a composer and pianist, received the Bachelor of Music degree from Yale in 1902. She was the third woman to do so, following Virginia Brisac Moore (1894) and Lola Phinney (1900).
When Totten arrived at Yale, she already had an impressive background. A native of Pittsburgh, she had studied in Chicago, Berlin, and Vienna, where the renowned Theodor Leschetizky was among her teachers. She had taught at Shimer College in Illinois, but she had lost her job because of a romantic relationship with Harry Haldeman, the stepbrother of Jane Addams, the influential social reformer.
While at Yale, Totten focused chiefly on composition, but nonetheless won a prize for piano. Strict counterpoint was always a major part of the composition curriculum, but a double fugue for full orchestra (seen here in an arrangement for two pianos) would be an especially ambitious project. After graduating from Yale, she went on to further study at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and also in Leipzig, where Max Reger was one of her teachers. Her music was performed in Paris by the Colonne Orchestra. She died in 1950.
In an era that doubted women’s creative powers, it was not unusual for female authors to write under male names. George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) is just one of many examples. We may speculate that Luella Totten began calling herself Louis von Heinrich for this reason. But if she originally hoped that the public would believe her to be a man, eventually she was open about her gender. A highly complimentary but sometimes condescending article in the Detroit Free Press (1908) explains that the “pen name of the gifted woman was chosen, first because it belongs rightfully to members of her family, and second, for the very feminine reason, because ‘she liked it.’”
Totten is the subject of a chapter in Elisabeth Anton’s forthcoming book, The Women of Yale: Our Pioneers.

Yale School of Music Papers

Helen Eugenia Hagan
Piano Concerto in C Minor
Arranged for 2 pianos

Helen Eugenia Hagan (1891–1964) is believed to be the first African-American student to earn a degree at the Yale School of Music; she received the Bachelor of Music degree in 1912. (She was preceded at the School by soprano Effie Grant, a member of the Class of 1909, who did not receive a degree.)
Hagan was a pianist and composer. The manuscript displayed here is the only composition of hers known to survive: a piano concerto in C Minor, with the orchestra arranged for second piano. Presumably a full orchestral score existed at one time, but it has not come down to us.
While at Yale, Hagan performed not only her own concerto (for which she received the Samuel Simons Sanford Fellowship), but also concertos by Chopin and St. Saëns. After graduating from Yale, she also studied at the Schola Cantorum in Paris and at Columbia University.
Hagan had a long and successful musical career. She taught at Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College and the Mendelssohn Conservatory in Chicago, and was Dean of Music at Bishop College in Texas. She performed for black solders in France in the aftermath of World War I, she was the first African-American to give a solo piano recital in New York, and she served as organist and choir director at several churches.
After her death in 1964, she was buried in an unmarked grave in Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven. In 2016, some 52 years later, a ceremony memorialized the site with a new monument. Toni Harp (Mayor of New Haven) and Robert Blocker (Dean of the School of Music) were among those who spoke at the ceremony.

Syoko Aki, Violin; Joan Panetti, Piano
George Gershwin, “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” arranged by Jascha Heifetz
From Music from Norfolk
(Japan: Epson, 2001)

The earliest women on the faculty of the Yale School of Music (such as music librarian Eva Judd O’Meara) taught academic subjects rather than musical performance. Pianist Phyllis Rappeport was apparently the first woman appointed to the performance faculty, in 1958. Violinist Syoko Aki and pianist/composer Joan Panetti both began teaching at Yale in the late 1960s, and have had exceptionally long and distinguished careers here. Aki was a member of the Yale String Quartet. Panetti taught musicianship and chamber music, and directed the Norfolk Festival.