Women and Liturgical Music

[robert wiener <wiener...>]

I just saw a video called Legendary Voices: Cantors of Yesteryear, a
collection of film recordings.  It includes an excerpt of Samuel
Malavsky performing a setting of the High Holiday liturgy with Singers
of Israel, the Malavsky family choir.  The choir, standing before an
ark with the men wearing tallasim, includes 4 females wearing
yarmulkes and robes, and one of them sings a solo.

Which leads me to ask the following questions:

What was the involvement of women with liturgical music before
American cantorial institutes accepted female students?

As solo singers  (e.g., the lady cantor of Odessa)?

As members of family choirs (e.g., Malavsky, Haas)?  Were these
popular in the Orthodox community?  Did they often sing liturgy?
(Are there similar phenomena now?)

As composers (before Debbie Friedman)?

I know that women's voices are not traditionally heard in the
synagogue in performance (choirs that had soprano voices used boy
sopranos), so I wonder how traditional women expressed themselves
musically in prayer (i.e., aside from singing along as members of the
congregation, lighting candles, or birkat hamazon).

Bob

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