Sophie Hutchinson Drinker: Smashing the Patriarchy with Music

Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories #054 for mid-March, 2026

Sophie Hutchinson Drinker (1888-1967) came from one Philadelphia blueblood family and married into another. She and her husband Harry led musical singing parties in their Merion home for 30 years. When Sophie started a woman's choir, she was frustrated in her search for music by, for, and about women. She made it her life's work to discover how woman had been shut out from their early roles in religion, medicine, and music. Her 1948 book Music & Women is a feminist classic. The Sophie Drinker Institute of Bremen Germany carries on women's music studies in her name and tradition.