About
Born in Colorado, Gideon’s family moved to Chicago and then New York City, where she was based as a composer during the rest of her life. She taught at several institutions there, including Manhattan School of Music and the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Gideon’s Jewish faith was very important to her art, and she often set Hebrew texts or wrote music for for the Jewish community. She was the first woman to receive a commission for a complete synagogue service: Sacred Service (For Sabbath Morning) in 1970.
Gideon sought to resist the labels of “woman” and “Jewish” composer. In an interview on Sept. 27, 1981 with the Baltimore Sun, Gideon said “For me to talk about the fact that women have been discriminated against is unnecessary. They are and have been. But really, I didn’t even know I was a woman composer until the [feminist] movement in the 1960s.”
–Christie Finn
Related Information
Songs
Around My Neck an Amulet
Miriam Gideon
Samuel Menashe
Song Collection: The Shooting Starres Attend Thee
Autumn
Miriam Gideon
Walter De la Mare
Song Collection: Wing'd Hour
Black Boy
Miriam Gideon
Norman Rosten
Song Collection: Spirit Above the Dust
Know the World
Miriam Gideon
Archibald MacLeish
Song Collection: Spirit Above the Dust
My Caliban Creature
Miriam Gideon
Norman Rosten
Song Collection: Spirit Above the Dust
My Heart is like a Singing Bird
Miriam Gideon
Christina Rossetti
Song Collection: Wing'd Hour
Prologue
Miriam Gideon
Anne Bradstreet
Song Collection: Spirit Above the Dust
She Weeps Over Rahoon
Miriam Gideon
James Joyce
Spirit Above the Dust
Song CollectionMiriam Gideon
Anne Bradstreet
Archibald MacLeish
Norman Rosten
The Linden Branch
Miriam Gideon
Archibald MacLeish
Song Collection: Spirit Above the Dust
The Shooting Starres Attend Thee
Song CollectionMiriam Gideon
Samuel Menashe
Robert Herrick
The Snow Fall
Miriam Gideon
Archibald MacLeish
Song Collection: Spirit Above the Dust
The Two Trees
Miriam Gideon
Archibald MacLeish
Song Collection: Spirit Above the Dust
Recordings
Elation: Works by Gideon, Jaffe, and Lindroth
(Miriam Gideon)
2014
Psalms of Joy and Sorrow
(Miriam Gideon and Ralph Shapey)
2001
Voices From Elysium: Copland, Crawford
(Aaron Copland, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Miriam Gideon and Louise Talma)
1998
American - Jewish Art Songs
(Leonard Bernstein and Miriam Gideon)
1992
Lucille Field sings Songs by American Women
(Ruth Crawford Seeger, Miriam Gideon and Florence Price)
1987
Gideon: Sonnets, Wing'd Hour, etc.
(Miriam Gideon)
1985
Gideon / Weisgall: Song Cycles
(Miriam Gideon and Hugo Weisgall)
1975
