Victoria Josephine Muse

Born in 1887 in New York City, Victoria Josephine Muse attended the Yale School of Music from 1909 to 1916 and from 1917 to 1918, earning a Certificate of Proficiency in the Theory of Music in 1912. She later graduated from Oberlin Conservatory in 1936 and studied voice in Paris, France. She performed nationally as a lyric soprano into the 1940s.

Her father, Richard H. Muse, was a native of North Carolina; from at least 1890 until his death in 1911, he was employed as a janitor in New Haven. At least part of that time he worked for the Delta Psi Society at Yale. Her mother, Julia Pennington Gibbs, worked as a dressmaker and corsetiere (corset-maker); she was the daughter of Jonathan C. Gibbs, an abolitionist and the secretary of state in Florida during Reconstruction. The family lived at 169 Bassett Street in New Haven.

Josephine Muse gave private lessons in New Haven until 1919, when she relocated to Washington. Her cousin, Harriet Gibbs Marshall, was the founder and director of the Washington Conservatory of Music, an independent Black music institution. Muse took over as director when her cousin died in 1941, and remained dean of the conservatory until her own death in 1960. She was a member of the Treble Clef Club, National Singing Teachers Association, and Zeta Phi Beta Sorority. The Gibbs-Muse Scholarship Fund at Howard University was named in her honor.

A sister, Jessie Muse, who also attended the Yale School of Music, died in 1918. Another sister, Florence A. Muse Laws, graduated from the New York Barber College. Her brother, Richard I. Muse, a World War I veteran, received the Croix de Guerre for bravery.