American Composers (page 2)
Women's Voices
Five Centuries of Song
Margaret Bonds (1913-1972) was born in Chicago.
She studied composition with Florence Price and William Dawson and became
the first black pianist to perform with the Chicago Symphony (1933).
She attended Northwestern University, completing her bachelor's and
master's degrees in music (1933, 1934). Bonds moved to New York City
in 1939, continuing studies at Juilliard with Roy Harris, Robert Starer,
and Walter Gossett. She moved to Los Angeles in 1967, where she worked
at the Inner City Institute and Repertory Theater. Bonds' compositions
include orchestral and choral works, musical theater, art songs, popular
songs, chamber music, and solo piano pieces. She collaborated frequently
with poet Langston Hughes in some of her best-known works, including
the musical Shakespeare in Harlem and the cantata Ballad of
the Brown King.
Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979), who was born
in England, began composing at the age of sixteen and was the first
woman composer to win the prestigious Mendelssohn Scholarship at the
Royal Academy. She switched from violin to viola and supported herself
as a supply player around London. A superb musician, she played chamber
music with Myra Hess, Casals, Heifetz, Thibaud, Szell, Rubinstein, Schnabel,
Pierre Monteux and Percy Grainger, among others. As a soloist, Clarke
played throughout Great Britain, made several tours in Europe and America,
and in 1923, toured around the world.
In 1919, her Sonata for Viola and Piano tied with Bloch's Suite
for Viola and Piano for the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge prize, but
since there couldn't be a tie, Mrs. Coolidge cast a vote - for
Bloch. Clarke was in the U.S. when Britain entered World War II, and
was not allowed to return for the duration of the war, since she had
an American parent and Britain had too many mouths to feed. She remained
in America for the remainder of her life, where she continued to teach.
She lectured for many years at the Chautauqua Institute and had a weekly
radio program about chamber music. Most of Clarke's works were written
in the first half of her life. Her oeuvre consists of 58 vocal
works and 24 instrumental chamber works.
Miriam Gideon (1906-1996) was born in Greeley,
Colorado and grew up in Boston. She began composing in her early teens
and studied piano and theory in New York. Gideon earned a BA at Boston
University, a Masters in Musicology from Columbia University, and a
DSM in Composition from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
Her teachers included Lazare Saminsky and Roger Sessions. Gideon taught
at Brooklyn College, City College of CUNY in New York, the Manhattan
School of Music and the Jewish Theological Seminary. She was named to
the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters. Vocal music constitutes
over half of her total output. Like all of her vocal music, the piece
heard here is concerned first with text declamation.
Jean Eichelberger Ivey (1923-2010) studied
piano at Trinity College and Peabody prior to earning a Masters degree
in composition from Eastman and a Doctorate from the University of Toronto.
Several major orchestras have performed her music, which has been recorded
on CRI, Folkways, and Grenadilla. She has written orchestral, piano,
vocal, theater, and electronic music, and was the subject of the NBC
documentary "A Woman Is".
Marion Bauer (1882-1955) was born Walla Walla,
Washington where her first music teacher was her oldest sister. (Incorrect
birth date is often listed as 1887; she started lying about the date
in her twenties.) She reportedly became Nadia Boulanger's first American
pupil in exchange for English lessons. In addition to teaching at New
York University from 1930-1951, Bauer had a long career as a music critic,
author and composer.
Judith Lang Zaimont (b.1945) has been
on the Composition faculty at the University of Minnesota since 1992.
She has served on the faculties of the Peabody Conservatory and Queens
College and was Chair of Music at Adelphi University prior to her move
to Minnesota. Raised in a musical family, she began her professional
career as a member of a touring duo-piano team which appeared frequently
in concert and on television. Although she continued to use her formidable
talents as a pianist, gradually she turned her energies toward music
composition, and in a few years, her accomplishments as a composer superseded
her reputation as a performer.
Zaimont, who holds degrees from Queens College and Columbia University,
is a recipient of Guggenheim and Woodrow Wilson fellowships and awards
from the National Endowment for the Arts, Maryland State Arts Council,
Presser Foundation, and Alliance Française. She was the First
Prize winner in the international McCollin Competition, which resulted
in performances by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Zaimont is editor-in-chief
of The Musical Woman book series, for which she received a grant
from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Recent commissions include
works for the Connecticut Opera, Greenville (S.C.) Symphony, (Johns)
Hopkins Symphony, and Baltimore Dance Theatre. Zaimont's music uses
a chromatic, fully-evolved tonality, and is characterized by its lyricism,
expressive strength, and rhythmic vitality.
Ann Silsbee (1930-2003), composer and poet,
received musical degrees from Radcliffe and Syracuse and a DMA at Cornell
University where she studied with Karel Husa. Her music has been performed
throughout the USA, in Canada, Europe, China, Japan and South America,
and recorded on Leonarda, Northeastern, Vienna Modern Masters, Finnadar,
and Spectrum. Silsbee was an accomplished pianist whose music, although
carefully notated, gives the impression of improvisation, exemplified
in the virtuosity and spontaneity of the song recorded here.
Gwyneth Walker (b.1947) has been composing
music all of her life. A native of Connecticut and graduate of Brown
University and the Hartt School of Music, she studied primarily with
Arnold Franchetti. Walker's earliest musical interests were in folk
music and rock 'n' roll. Her aim has always been to write music that
people can sing and play and understand. Calling herself a grass-roots
person, she says, "I'm not aiming for a Pulitzer Prize or that
kind of recognition in order to feel I've succeeded. The other day I
figured out that every single day of the year, somebody, somewhere,
is doing a piece of mine. That's reward enough, I think." Walker
taught at Hartt, Oberlin, and the Hartford Conservatory for 14 years,
then moved to a rented home on a 400-acre Vermont dairy farm to become
a full-time composer. Her catalog contains over ninety works for ensembles
and audiences of all ages. Walker is a founder of the Vermont Composers
Guild.
Libby Larsen (b.1950) earned her doctorate
in Composition from the University of Minnesota where she studied with
Dominick Argento, Paul Fetler, and Eric Stokes. She has received commissions
from many prestigious organizations for orchestral works; operas; musical
theater works for children's chorus, Orff ensemble and symphony; and
many other genres. Her music has been performed by most of the leading
orchestras in the USA. Her song cycles, published by Oxford, have already
become staples of both student and professional vocal recitals. A co-founder
and active board member of the Minnesota Composers Forum, Larsen has
also served on the National Endowment for the Arts Music Panel, Meet
the Composer National Advisory Committee, American Music Center Board
of Directors, and the ASCAP Board of Review. She was Composer-in-Residence
with the Minnesota Orchestra from 1983-1987.
Elizabeth Vercoe (b.1941), a native of Washington,
D.C., has spent most of her adult life in Concord, Massachusetts. She
graduated from Wellesley College, earned a MM degree at the University
of Michigan and a DMA at Boston University, where she studied with Gardner
Read. She has won composition awards from both Wellesley and Boston
University, and was commissioned to write a fanfare for the inauguration
of the 11th president of Wellesley College. Many other commissions and
awards have followed. Vercoe has written a series of "Herstory"
works for voice and various instruments which have been widely performed
and recorded.
ack to European women composers