Program
Recognized
A CELEBRATION OF WOMEN’S VOICES
First in the series of recitals honoring women’s words and music
September 26, 2020
There are Fairies at the Bottom of our Garden………LIZA LEHMANN (1862-1918)
Poem: ROSE FYLEMAN (1877-1957)
JENNIFER PARKS
Se non piange un’ infelice………………………….LUISE REICHARDT (1779-1826)
BENJAMIN TROSPER
Caritas Abundat……………………..……..HILDEGARD VON BINGEN (1098-1179)
LAURIE HARTMANN
The Year’s at the Spring………………………….AMY MARCY BEACH (1867-1944)
from Three Browning Songs Op. 44
Poem: Robert Browning (1812-1889)
ALICIA WEBB
Morgenständchen………………………FANNY MENDELSSOHN HENSEL (1805-1847)
VICTORIA KO
Gia la notte s’avvicina………………………ISABELLA ANGELA COLBRAN (1785-1845)
SUSAN BERNARD
Die Stille Stadt……………………………………………………ALMA MAHLER (1805-1847)
ISABEL YANG
There are Fairies at the Bottom of our Garden…………..…LIZA LEHMANN (1862-1918)
Poem: ROSE FYLEMAN (1877-1957)
KELLEY POLITE
Ihr Bildnis…………………………….CLARA SCHUMANN (1819-1896)
Poem: Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
BENJAMIN TROSPER
La belle au bois dormant…………………………………JANE VIEU (1871-1955)
ANDREW CEDNO
Soft Skin………………………………………….…Words & Music TORI PAQUET (b.2002)
TORI PAQUET/Butterfly King
Portrait………………………………..……Words & Music AMANDA MCBROOM (b.1947)
from the musical A……..My Name is Alice
ALICIA WEBB
Emma Webb, Piano
Symptom Recital………………………………………………Richard Riccardi (b.1943)
Comment…………………………………………………….. ..Richard Riccardi
Poems by DOROTHY PARKER (1893-1967)
SANDY RICCARDI
Richard Riccardi, Piano
June…………………………………Words & Music TORI PAQUET
TORI PAQUET/Butterfly King
Two Songs…………………………………………..…………HILLARY TANN (b.1947)
1. A Girl’s Song to her Mother
2. Wings of the Grasses
SARA FRONDONI
Jesse Barrett, Oboe
The Glory of the Day was in her Face…………..…..FLORENCE PRICE (1887-1953)
Lyrics: James Weldon. Johnson (1871-1938)
CHRISTA DURAND
Matthew Arnerich, Piano
How Could I Ever Know?…………………………………….… LUCY SIMON (b.1943)
Text: MARSHA NORMAN
from The Secret Garden
CHRISTA DURAND, mezzo-soprano
Richard Evans, piano
A CELEBRATION OF WOMEN’S VOICES
First in the series of recitals honoring women’s words and music
September 26, 2020
There are Fairies at the Bottom of our Garden………LIZA LEHMANN (1862-1918)
Poem: ROSE FYLEMAN (1877-1957)
JENNIFER PARKS
Se non piange un’ infelice………………………….LUISE REICHARDT (1779-1826)
BENJAMIN TROSPER
Caritas Abundat……………………..……..HILDEGARD VON BINGEN (1098-1179)
LAURIE HARTMANN
The Year’s at the Spring………………………….AMY MARCY BEACH (1867-1944)
from Three Browning Songs Op. 44
Poem: Robert Browning (1812-1889)
ALICIA WEBB
Morgenständchen………………………FANNY MENDELSSOHN HENSEL (1805-1847)
VICTORIA KO
Gia la notte s’avvicina………………………ISABELLA ANGELA COLBRAN (1785-1845)
SUSAN BERNARD
Die Stille Stadt……………………………………………………ALMA MAHLER (1805-1847)
ISABEL YANG
There are Fairies at the Bottom of our Garden…………..…LIZA LEHMANN (1862-1918)
Poem: ROSE FYLEMAN (1877-1957)
KELLEY POLITE
Ihr Bildnis…………………………….CLARA SCHUMANN (1819-1896)
Poem: Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
BENJAMIN TROSPER
La belle au bois dormant…………………………………JANE VIEU (1871-1955)
ANDREW CEDNO
Soft Skin………………………………………….…Words & Music TORI PAQUET (b.2002)
TORI PAQUET/Butterfly King
Portrait………………………………..……Words & Music AMANDA MCBROOM (b.1947)
from the musical A……..My Name is Alice
ALICIA WEBB
Emma Webb, Piano
Symptom Recital………………………………………………Richard Riccardi (b.1943)
Comment…………………………………………………….. ..Richard Riccardi
Poems by DOROTHY PARKER (1893-1967)
SANDY RICCARDI
Richard Riccardi, Piano
June…………………………………Words & Music TORI PAQUET
TORI PAQUET/Butterfly King
Two Songs…………………………………………..…………HILLARY TANN (b.1947)
1. A Girl’s Song to her Mother
2. Wings of the Grasses
SARA FRONDONI
Jesse Barrett, Oboe
The Glory of the Day was in her Face…………..…..FLORENCE PRICE (1887-1953)
Lyrics: James Weldon. Johnson (1871-1938)
CHRISTA DURAND
Matthew Arnerich, Piano
How Could I Ever Know?…………………………………….… LUCY SIMON (b.1943)
Text: MARSHA NORMAN
from The Secret Garden
CHRISTA DURAND, mezzo-soprano
Richard Evans, piano
Program Notes
A CELEBRATION OF WOMEN’S VOICES
September 26, 2020 – 7 p.m.
Sponsored by Redwood Empire Chapter of NATS
National Association of Teachers of Singing
(Information on Women composers, poets and lyricists below)
AMY MARCY BEACH (1867-1944)
Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.
Amy Marcy Cheney was born in New Hampshire (nephew of Oren B. Cheney, who co-founded Bates College) and Clara Imogene Marcy Cheney. Artistic ability appears to have run in the family: Clara was reputedly an "excellent pianist and singer," she showed every sign of being a child prodigy. She was able to sing forty songs accurately by age one, she was capable of improvising counter-melody by age two, and she taught herself to read at age three. At four, she composed three waltzes for piano during one summer at her grandfather's farm despite the absence of a piano; instead, she composed the pieces mentally and played them when she returned home. She could also play music by ear, including four-part hymns. The family struggled to keep up with her musical interests and demands.
Beach began formal piano lessons with her mother at age six, and soon gave public recitals of works by Handel, Beethoven, and Chopin, as well as her own pieces. One such recital was reviewed in arts journal The Folio, and multiple agents proposed concert tours for the young pianist, which her parents declined – a decision for which Beach was later grateful.
Amy made her concert debut at age sixteen on October 18, 1883 in a "Promenade Concert" conducted by Adolph Neuendorff at Boston's Music Hall, where she played Chopin's Rondo in E-flat and was piano soloist in Moscheles's piano concerto No. 3 in G minor, to general acclaim: as biographer Fried Block comments, "[i]t is hard to imagine a more positive critical reaction to a debut," and her audience was "enthusiastic in the extreme."[12] The next two years of her career included performances in Chickering Hall, and she starred in the final performance of the Boston Symphony's 1884–85 season.[13]
In 1885, Amy was married to Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach (1843-1910]), a Boston surgeon twenty-four years her senior (she was eighteen at the time). Her name would subsequently be listed on concert programs and published compositions as "Mrs. H. H. A. Beach." The marriage was conditioned upon her willingness "to live according to his status, that is, function as a society matron and patron of the arts. She agreed never to teach piano, an activity widely associated with women" and regarded as providing "pin money." She further agreed to limit performances to two public recitals per year, with profits donated to charity, and to devote herself more to composition than to performance (although, as she wrote, "I thought I was a pianist first and foremost.") Her self-guided education in composition was also necessitated by Dr. Beach, who disapproved of his wife studying with a tutor. Restrictions like these were typical for middle- and upper-class women of the time: as it was explained to a European counterpart, Fanny Mendelssohn, "Music will perhaps become his [Fanny's brother Felix Mendelssohn's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament."
A major compositional success came with her Mass in E-flat major, which was performed in 1892 by the Handel and Haydn Society orchestra, which since its foundation in 1815 had never performed a piece composed by a woman. Newspaper music critics[ responded to the Mass by declaring Beach one of America's foremost composers, comparing the piece to Masses by Cherubini and Bach.
Beach followed this up with an important milestone in music history: her Gaelic Symphony, the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. It premiered October 30, 1896, performed by the Boston Symphony "with exceptional success," although "whatever the merits or defects of the symphony were thought to be, critics went to extraordinary lengths in their attempts to relate them to the composer's sex. Composer George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931) wrote to Beach that he and his colleague Horatio Parker (1863–1919) had attended the Gaelic Symphony's premiere and much enjoyed it: "I always feel a thrill of pride myself whenever I hear a fine work by any of us, and as such you will have to be counted in, whether you [like it] or not – one of the boys. With the addition of Beach, they collectively became known as the “Boston Six,” of whom Beach was the youngest. A member of the "Second New England School" or "Boston Group," she is the lone female considered alongside composers John Knowles Paine, Arthur Foote, George Chadwick, Edward MacDowell, George Whiting, and Horatio Parker
In 1900, the Boston Symphony premiered Beach's Piano Concerto, with the composer as soloist. It has been suggested that the piece suggests Beach's struggles against her mother and husband for control of her musical life. Her writing is mainly in a Romantic idiom, often compared to that of Brahms or Rachmaninoff. In her later works she experimented, moving away from tonality, employing whole tone scales and more exotic harmonies and techniques. Beach's compositions include a one-act opera, Cabildo, and a variety of other works.
ISABELLA ANGELA COLBRAN (1785-1845)
was a Spanish opera singer known in her native country as Isabel Colbrandt. Many sources note her as a dramatic coloratura soprano but some believe that she was a mezzo-soprano with a high extension, a soprano sfogato. She collaborated with opera composer Gioachino Rossini in the creation of a number of roles that remain in the repertory to this day; they were married on 22 March 1822. She was the composer of four collections of songs.
Colbran, was born in Madrid, studied under Girolamo Crescenti in Paris. By the age of twenty she had achieved fame throughout Europe for her voice. She moved to Naples, a hub of European music during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Teatro di San Carlo, built during the Bourbon dynasty, had been home to famous singers like the castrato Farinelli and represented a destination venue for talented singers. Colbran became the prima donna of the Teatro di San Carlo company.
The artistic collaboration between Colbran and Rossini that began in 1815 was accompanied by a romantic involvement. Colbran moved with Rossini, seven years her junior, to Bologna in 1822, where they married. The couple visited Vienna and later Venice, where Rossini composed Semiramide and Colbran created the title role.
Colbran composed four song collections; they were dedicated to the Empress of Russia; to her teacher, Crescenti; to the Queen of Spain; and to Prince Eugène de Beauharnais.
ROSE FYLEMAN (1877-1957)
was a prolific English writer whose publications include more than sixty volumes of fiction, poetry, and plays. Fyleman was born in Nottingham, England. She attended the University College in Nottingham, then undertook training for a career as an opera singer. Fyleman failed to find work in opera, but she nonetheless managed to obtain employment as a singer. In addition, she conducted singing lessons and supplied poems to a periodical intended for women. Fyleman began working as a schoolteacher, and in this capacity, she found herself unable to readily supply her students with appropriate poems. She began to generate her own poetry for use in her classroom. At the encouragement of a fellow teacher, Fyleman sent her poetry to Punch, which accepted her work for publication. In 1918 she published her first book, The Sunny Book, and in the last years of the decade she produced two more volumes, Fairies and Chimneys and The Fairy Green.
During the 1920s Fyleman published further volumes of verse and fiction set in a fairyland free of gloom and danger. In her writings, as Donald R. Hettinga observed in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Fyleman "avoided the darkness and the evil that many of the Celtic and Germanic fairy stories contain….."Her fairy world is a world in which fairies are visible to children but not to most adults, and in which the fairies seemingly exist for the delight of children.
Fyleman also produced conventional stories for children. In The Adventure Club, for example, she tells of the Hastings, a band of children vacationing in rural England while their father, who had suffered a problematic breakdown, undertakes recovery in Spain. "The adventures are quite lively and still hold the attention of young readers," wrote Hettinga. "but behind all of the adventures is a safety net of 'local people' who . . . can help to save the children from any real mishaps."
In the 1940s and 1950s, while she enjoyed further success with her collections of poetry and fiction about fairies, Fyleman continued to issue a range of works for children. The volume, Adventures of Benghazi, concerns a talking a cat that possesses magical powers—including the ability to change shape, travel through time, and remain impervious to pain—during the full moon. Fyleman died in 1957, and in 1986, Fyleman posthumously received praise with A Fairy Went A-Marketing, which reprints one of her fairy poems from 1918. The new edition, with illustrations by Jamichael Henterly, was appreciated by reviewers.
LIZA LEHMANN (1862-1918)
was an English operatic soprano and composer, known for her vocal compositions. After vocal studies with Alberto Randegger and Jenny Lind, and composition studies with teachers including Hamish MacCunn, Lehmann made her singing debut in 1885 in London and pursued a concert career for nearly a decade. In 1894, she married and left the stage. She then concentrated on composing music, becoming known for song cycles, art songs, parlour songs and children's songs. She also composed several pieces for the stage and wrote a textbook on singing. In 1910, she toured the United States, where she accompanied her own songs in recitals. She was the first president of the Society of Women Musicians and became a professor of singing at the Guildhall School of Music in 1913.
She was born Elisabetha Nina Mary Frederica Lehmann in London. Her father was the German painter Rudolf Lehmann, and her mother was Amelia (A.L.) Chambers, a music teacher, composer and arranger. Lehmann "grew up in an intellectual and artistic atmosphere" and lived in Germany, France and Italy in her early years.
After her singing debut In 1885, she spent the next nine years performing many important concert engagements in England. She received encouragement from important European musicians such as Joseph Joachim and Clara Schumann. She retired from the stage after a final concert at St James's Hall on 14 July 1894, married the composer and painter Herbert Bedford and turned to composing music.
After her performing career ended in 1894, Lehmann concentrated on composing music for the rest of her life.[1] She completed one of her best known works two years later, in 1896, the song cycle for four voices and piano titled In a Persian Garden, settings of selected quatrains from Edward FitzGerald's version of the Rubāiyāt of Omar Khayyām. She composed many more song cycles including The Daisy Chain and an In Memoriam based on Alfred Lord Tennyson's love poem. She also became known for her art songs, parlour songs and other works in the following years. She wrote many children's songs, ranging from the sweet and trivial "There are fairies at the bottom of our garden" to the melodically and harmonically passionate "Stars" in The Daisy-Chain. Her tenor song "Ah, moon of my delight" from In a Persian Garden has been recorded through the years by many famous tenors: John McCormack, Jan Peerce, Mario Lanza, Robert White, and Webster Booth.
Lehmann, Ethel Smyth and Maude Valérie White were England's foremost female composers of songs at the beginning of the 20th century. Although they all composed solo settings of serious texts, Lehmann and White excelled in setting lighter material. Some of Lehmann's compositional practices, such as her frequent writing of four-voice cycles and writing piano links between songs, were consistent with her time. Although her pieces were inventive, they are now often overlooked.
ALMA MAHLER (1805-1847)
was a Viennese-born composer, author, editor and socialite. Musically active from her early years, she was the composer of nearly 50 songs for voice and piano, and works in other genres as well. Only seventeen songs are known to have survived. In her early years, she fell in love with composer and conductor Alexander von Zemlinsky, but their relationship did not last long. She became the wife of composer Gustav Mahler, who insisted (as a condition of their marriage) that she give up composing. Eventually she fell into depression from being artistically stifled. While her marriage was struggling, she had an affair with Walter Gropius. Gustav started to encourage Alma's composing and helped prepare some of her compositions for publication, but died soon after this attempted reconciliation in 1911. Alma married Gropius in 1915 and the couple had a daughter together, Manon Gropius. During her marriage to Gropius, Alma had an affair with Franz Werfel. Alma and Werfel were eventually married after Alma separated from Gropius. In 1938 Werfel and Alma were forced to flee Austria as it was unsafe for Jews. Eventually the couple settled in Los Angeles. In later years, her salon became part of the artistic scene, first in Vienna, then in Los Angeles and in New York.
Alma studied composition with Josef Labor beginning in 1894/1895 and until 1901. She met Alexander von Zemlinsky in early 1900, began composition lessons with him that fall, and continued as his student until her engagement with Gustav Mahler in December 1901, after which she ceased composing. Up until that time, she had composed or sketched mostly Lieder, but also around 20 piano pieces and a small number of chamber music works, and a scene from an opera. She briefly resumed composing in 1910, but stopped in 1915. The chronology of her compositions is difficult to establish, because she did not date her manuscripts[4] and destroyed many of them herself. Attempts to establish a chronological list of her works have been made by Professor Susanne Rode-Breymann in 1999 and 2014, and by Danish scholar Knud Martner in 2018.
Only a total of 17 songs by her survive. Fourteen were published during her lifetime, in three publications dated 1910, 1915, and 1924. The first two volumes appeared under the name Alma Maria Schindler-Mahler, and the last volume was published as "Fünf Gesänge" by Alma Maria Mahler. Three additional songs were discovered in manuscript posthumously; two of them were published in the year 2000, edited by Dr. Susan M. Filler, and one published in 2018, edited by Barry Millington. Her personal papers, including music manuscripts, are held at the University of Pennsylvania, the Austrian National Library in Vienna, and the Bavarian State Library in Munich. These songs have been regularly performed and recorded since the 1980s. Orchestral versions of the accompaniments have been produced. Seven songs were orchestrated by David and Colin Matthews (published by Universal Edition),] and all 17 songs were orchestrated by Julian Reynolds and by Jorma Panula.
AMANDA MCBROOM (b.1947)
McBroom has been called “…the greatest cabaret performer of her generation, an urban poet who writes like an angel and has a voice to match” by the NY Times. Broadway World describes her as “… one of the greatest night club performers of all time. Her lyrics are profound and expresses human emotions in glorious poetry. Her humor is so smart and she sings and acts it all brilliantly.” She first came to the attention music lovers when Bette Midler’s version of Amanda’s song “The Rose” hit number one all over the world in 1979. In addition to Midler, her songs have been recorded by a wide variety of artists including Amy Poehler and Jack Black, Barry Manilow, Judy Collins, Barbara Cook, LeAnn Rimes, Anne Murray, Harry Belafonte, Betty Buckley, Stephanie Mills, The Manhattan Transfer, Donny Osmond, Kurt Cobain, Nana Mouskouri, Conway Twitty, the Chipmunks and the Baby Dinosaurs in Land Before Time (she wrote all the songs for 16 Universal Cartoon videos with longtime collaborator Michele Brourman). Amanda’s performance of “The Rose” on the Golden Globes (she won!) convinced audiences worldwide that the best interpretations of McBroom songs are by McBroom herself and applaud her in concert halls around the world from, Carnegie Hall to Angel Place Recital Hall in Sydney, Australia.
McBroom’s love of musical theater compelled her to create a musical based on her songs. Heartbeats made its debut in 1989 in Los Angeles, and the play has enjoyed more than 15 regional theater productions around the U.S. The original cast recording was released in 1994 on Varese Sarabande Records, and is represented by the Rogers and Hammerstein Music Library.
Amanda’s latest musical, A Woman of Will, made its off-Broadway debut in 2005. She recently celebrated the release of VOICES, her sixth recording on Gecko, the label she established in 1985. Other Gecko recordings include Dreaming, Midnight Matinee, A Waiting Heart, Portraits, and Chanson. Her first two groundbreaking vinyl recordings, Growing Up In Hollywood Town and West of OZ, were recorded direct to disc for Sheffield Labs and made McBroom an audiophile darling.
MARSHA NORMAN (b.1947)
is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play 'night, Mother. She wrote the book and lyrics for such Broadway musicals as The Secret Garden, for which she won a Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and The Red Shoes, as well as the libretto for the musical The Color Purple and the book for the musical The Bridges of Madison County. She is co-chair of the playwriting department at The Juilliard School.
Norman was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the oldest of four children of Billie and Bertha Williams. As a child, she read and played the piano. She later began attending productions by the newly founded Actors Theatre of Louisville. She received a bachelor's degree from Agnes Scott College and a master's degree from the University of Louisville. She worked as a journalist for The Louisville Times newspaper, and also wrote for Kentucky Educational Television. She taught young children and adolescents in mental institutions and hospitals. These were perhaps her biggest influence on her writing, especially a 13-year-old girl who influenced her play Getting Out.
Norman's first play Getting Out was produced at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and then Off-Broadway in 1979. The play concerns a young woman just paroled after an eight-year prison sentence for robbery, kidnapping and manslaughter. It reflects Norman's experience working with disturbed adolescents at Kentucky's Central State Hospital.
Norman's success with Getting Out led her to move to New York City where she continued to write for the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Her play, 'night, Mother, became her best-known work, given its Broadway success and its star-powered film version. The play brought Norman a great deal of recognition, dealing frankly with the subject of suicide, and won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Hull-Warriner, and the Drama Desk Award. She was in high demand in Hollywood, though not always for films that she liked, or that studios would approve.
Norman wrote the book and lyrics for the musical The Secret Garden, an adaptation of the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel The Secret Garden, and won the Tony Award for Best Book in 1991.
TORI PAQUET (b. 2002)
Butterfly King, or Tori Paquet, is a young singer-songwriter who takes a decent amount of inspiration from Billie Eilish. She is in high school, aged 16. She has been on the radio, as well as opened for the band “The Big Easy”.
DOROTHY PARKER (1893-1967)
Raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Dorothy Parker built a career that was defined by her wit and her incisive commentary on contemporary America. She was born two months prematurely at her family’s summerhome in West End, New Jersey. By the time she was five, she had lost her mother; by age 20, she had also lost her father, a garment manufacturer. She studied at Blessed Sacrament Convent School in New York City, and a finishing school, Miss Dana’s, in Morristown, New Jersey, but never received a high school diploma. She supported herself as a pianist at a dance academy until entering the world of magazine publishing.
After selling her first poem to Vanity Fair in 1914, she became a regular contributor to Vogue. In 1917, she took over P.G. Wodehouse’s role as theater critic at Vanity Fair. While building a career in criticism, she was a key member of the Round Table, a group of writers who traded witticisms over lunch at the Algonquin Hotel. She was an inaugural member of the board of editors at the New Yorker upon its founding in 1925, and over the next decade she frequently contributed short poems to its pages.
In 1926, Parker published her first book of poetry, Enough Rope, which became a bestseller. Her other collections include Sunset Gun (1928) and Death and Taxes (1931). Parker’s poetry is marked by cleverness but also by the deep depression that plagued her. Focusing on power dynamics, especially those involving gender, her poetry—sometimes dismissed as “light” or “flapper” verse—pulled apart the fabric of American society. Parker moved to Hollywood in 1934. There, she worked as a screenwriter on films such as A Star Is Born and garnered several Oscar nominations, with her second husband Alan Campbell.
FLORENCE PRICE (1887-1953)
Florence Beatrice Price was an African-American classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra.
She was born as Florence Beatrice Smith to Florence (Gulliver) and James H. Smith in Little Rock, Arkansas, one of three children in a mixed-race family. Despite racial issues of the era, her family was well respected and did well within their community. Her father was a dentist and her mother was a music teacher who guided Florence's early musical training. She had her first piano performance at the age of four and had her first composition published at the age of 11.
By the time she was 14, Florence had graduated as valedictorian (scholar) of her class. After high school, she later enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts with a major in piano and organ. Initially, she identified as Mexican to avoid the prejudice people had toward African Americans at the time. At the Conservatory, she studied composition and counterpoint with composers George Chadwick and Frederick Converse. Also while there, Smith wrote her first string trio and symphony. She graduated in 1906 with honors, and with both an artist diploma in organ and a teaching certificate.
Smith returned to Arkansas, where she taught briefly before moving to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1910. There she became the head of the music department of what is now Clark Atlanta University, a historically black college. In 1912, she married Thomas J. Price, a lawyer. She moved back to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he had his practice. After a series of racial incidents in Little Rock, particularly a lynching of a black man in 1927, the Price family decided to leave. Like many black families living in the Deep South, they moved north in the Great Migration to escape Jim Crow conditions, and settled in Chicago, a major industrial city.
There Florence Price began a new and fulfilling period in her composition career. She studied composition, orchestration, and organ with the leading teachers in the city, including Arthur Olaf Andersen, Carl Busch, Wesley La Violette, and Leo Sowerby. She published four pieces for piano in 1928. While in Chicago, Price was at various times enrolled at the Chicago Musical College, Chicago Teacher’s College, University of Chicago, and American Conservatory of Music, studying languages and liberal arts subjects as well as music. Financial struggles and abuse by her husband resulted in Price getting a divorce in 1931. She became a single mother to her two daughters. To make ends meet, she worked as an organist for silent film screenings and composed songs for radio ads under a pen name. During this time, Price lived with friends. She eventually moved in with her student and friend, Margaret Bonds, also a black pianist and composer. This friendship connected Price with writer Langston Hughes and contralto Marian Anderson, both prominent figures in the art world who aided in Price's future success as a composer.
Together, Price and Bonds began to achieve national recognition for their compositions and performances. In 1932, both Price and Bonds submitted compositions for the Wanamaker Foundation Awards. Price won first prize with her Symphony in E minor, and third for her Piano Sonata, earning her a $500 prize. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frederick Stock, premiered the Symphony on June 15, 1933, making Price’s piece the first composition by an African-American woman to be played by a major orchestra.
A number of Price's other orchestral works were played by the WPA Symphony Orchestra of Detroit, the Chicago Women’s Symphony, and the Women's Symphony Orchestra of Chicago. Price wrote other extended works for orchestra, chamber works, art songs, works for violin, organ anthems, piano pieces, spiritual arrangements, four symphonies, three piano concertos, and a violin concerto. Some of her more popular works are: "Three Little Negro Dances," "Songs to a Dark Virgin", "My Soul's Been Anchored in the Lord" for piano or orchestra and voice, and "Moon Bridge". Price made considerable use of characteristic African-American melodies and rhythms in many of her works. Her Concert Overture on Negro Spirituals, Symphony in E minor, and Negro Folksongs in Counterpoint for string quartet, all serve as excellent examples of her idiomatic work. Price was inducted into the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers in 1940 for her work as a composer. In 1949, Price published two of her spiritual arrangements, "I Am Bound for the Kingdom," and "I'm Workin’ on My Buildin'", and dedicated them to Marian Anderson, who performed them on a regular basis.
Following her death, much of her work was overshadowed as new musical styles emerged that fit the changing tastes of modern society. In 2001, the Women's Philharmonic created an album of some of her work. Pianist Karen Walwyn and The New Black Repertory Ensemble performed Price's Concerto in One Movement and Symphony in E minor in December 2011.
In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers were found in an abandoned dilapidated house on the outskirts of St. Anne, Illinois. These consisted of dozens of her scores, including her two violin concertos and her fourth symphony. As Alex Ross stated in The New Yorker in February 2018, "not only did Price fail to enter the canon; a large quantity of her music came perilously close to obliteration. That run-down house in St. Anne is a potent symbol of how a country can forget its cultural history." In November 2018, the New York-based firm of G. Schirmer announced that it had acquired the exclusive worldwide rights to Florence Price's complete catalog.
Compositional Style
Even though her training was steeped in European tradition, Price's music consists of mostly the American idiom and reveals her Southern roots. She wrote with a vernacular style, using sounds and ideas that fit the reality of urban society. Being deeply religious, she frequently used the music of the African-American church as material for her arrangements. At the urging of her mentor George Whitefield Chadwick, Price began to incorporate elements of African-American spirituals, emphasizing the rhythm and syncopation of the spirituals rather than just using the text. Her melodies were blues-inspired and mixed with more traditional, European Romantic techniques. The weaving of tradition and modernism reflected the way life was for African Americans in large cities at the time.
LOUISE REICHARDT (1779-1826)
Louise Reichardt or Luise Reichardt was a German composer and choral conductor. Her German songs or Lieder, written in an accessible style akin to folk music, were popular, and she was influential in the musical life of Hamburg, Germany.
She was born in Berlin. She was the daughter of composers Juliane Reichardt (1752–1783) and Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752–1814). Louise Reichardt took music lessons from her father, and in 1800 four of her songs were published in a collection of his songs.[1][2] The Reichardts entertained literary figures such as Goethe, Ludwig Tieck, Novalis, Clemens Brentano, and Phillip Ludwig Achim von Arnim. Later, she would use von Arnim's poetry in a collection of twelve songs.
In 1809 she moved to Hamburg where she studied with Johann Frederich Clasing.[2] She taught music, instructed choruses, and composed. She did not rely on royalty or wealthy patrons to hear her music. During her time in Hamburg (1809 – 1826), she composed the majority of her Lieder. She reached the public by writing in an easily accessible, folksy style, combining memorable melodies with simple piano accompaniments.
Reichardt was also active as a choral conductor and established a choral society in Hamburg. However, due to the prevailing sexism of the times, she was never allowed to conduct them in public.[2] "Despite these gender restrictions, Reichardt strongly influenced musical life in Hamburg through her composing, teaching, and behind-the-scenes conducting. She also translated the Latin works of Hasse and Graun into German.
CLARA SCHUMANN (1819-1896)
Clara Josephine Schumann was a German pianist, composer and piano teacher. Regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, she exerted her influence over a 61-year concert career, changing the format and repertoire of the piano recital from displays of virtuosity to programs of serious works. She also composed solo piano pieces, a piano concerto (her Op. 7), chamber music, choral pieces, and songs.
She grew up in Leipzig, where she was a child prodigy. She began touring at age eleven, and was successful in Paris and Vienna, among other cities. She married composer Robert Schumann, and the couple had eight children. Together, they encouraged Johannes Brahms and maintained a close relationship with him. She premiered many works by her husband and by Brahms in public.
Several films have focused on Schumann's life, the earliest being Träumerei (Dreaming) of 1944. A 2008 film, Geliebte Clara (Beloved Clara), was directed by Helma Sanders-Brahms. Interest in her compositions began to revive in the late 20th century, and her 2019 bicentenary prompted new books and exhibitions.
LUCY SIMON (b.1943)
Simon was born in New York City, the daughter of the co-founder of the book publisher Simon & Schuster, Inc., Richard L. Simon and Andrea (Heinemann) Simon, a former switchboard operator, civil rights activist, and singer. Her father was from a German Jewish family, while her maternal grandfather Friedrich was of German descent. Lucy's maternal grandmother, known as "Chibie", was a Catholic from Cuba, and was of pardo heritage, a freed-slave descendant (the show Finding Your Roots tested Carly Simon's DNA as 10% African and 2% Indigenous). Her grandmother was sent to England and raised by nuns until the age of sixteen.
She is the older sister of musician Carly Simon. In addition to her younger sister Carly, she has an older sister, opera singer Joanna, and a younger brother, photographer Peter. Simon grew up in Fieldston, a section of Riverdale in the Bronx. She attended the Fieldston School, graduating in 1958 and Bennington College.
Lucy began her professional career at the age of sixteen singing folk tunes with sister Carly as The Simon Sisters and later folk-rock. Simon's setting of “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod” has been recorded by many diverse artists, including The Doobie Brothers, Mitzie Collins, and The Big Three (Cass Elliot, Tim Rose, and James Hendricks). In the mid-70's, after a number of years away from recording, Lucy released two albums on the RCA label of mostly original compositions, along with a few collaborations and covers. Her self-titled debut album was more folk-rock in orientation while her second album, "Stolen Time," had a contemporary pop sound. Carly Simon and James Taylor provided backing vocals on half of the songs from "Stolen Time."
Simon made her Broadway debut as the composer of The Secret Garden, for which she was nominated for a 1991 Tony Award for Best Original Score and a 1991 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music. She also wrote songs for the Off-Broadway show A... My Name Is Alice.
She composed the music for a musical version of the Russian novel Doctor Zhivago, with lyricists Michael Korie and Amy Powers and book writer Michael Weller. The musical had its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse, San Diego, California, in May 2006. Simon also contributed to the Off-Broadway musical Mama and Her Boys. She has won a Grammy award in 1981 together with her husband, David Levine, in the Best Recording for Children category for In Harmony/A Sesame Street Record, and again in 1983 in the same category for In Harmony 2.
HILLARY TANN (b.1947)
Welsh-born composer, Hilary Tann, lives in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York where she chairs the Music Department and is the John Howard Payne Professor at Union College, Schenectady. Recent composer-residencies include the 2011 Eastman School of Music Women in Music Festival, 2013 Women Composers Festival of Hartford, and 2015 Welsh Music Center (Ty Cerdd). Her work has been supported by numerous organizations, including the Welsh Arts Council, New York State Council on the Arts, Hanson Institute for American Music, Vaughan Williams Trust, Holst Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Meet the Composer / Arts Endowment Commissioning Music USA.
Praised for its lyricism (“beautiful, lyrical work” – Classical Music Web) and formal balance (“In the formal balance of this music, there is great beauty …” – Welsh Music), her music is influenced by a strong identification with the natural world. These two interests combine in her enjoyment of haiku (she is a published haiku poet) and in text selections from Welsh poets. A deep interest in the traditional music of Japan has led to private study of the shakuhachi and guest visits to Japan, Korea, and China. Her compositions have been widely performed and recorded by ensembles such as the European Women’s Orchestra, Tenebrae, Lontano, Marsyas Trio, Thai Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and KBS Philharmonic in Seoul, Korea. Website: hilarytann.com.
HILDEGARD VON BINGEN (1098-1179)
Hildegard was born around the year 1098, although the exact date is uncertain. Her parents were Mechtild of Merxheim-Nahet and Hildebert of Bermersheim, a family of the free lower nobility in the service of the Count Meginhard of Sponheim.[9] Sickly from birth, Hildegard is traditionally considered their youngest and tenth child,[10] although there are records of only seven older siblings. In her Vita, Hildegard states that from a very young age she had experienced visions.
Hildegard of Bingen was also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most-recorded in modern history.[3] She has been considered by many in Europe to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.
Hildegard's fellow nuns elected her as magistra in 1136; she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. She wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs for women choirs to sing and poems, while supervising miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias. There are more surviving chants by Hildegard than by any other composer from the entire Middle Ages, and she is one of the few known composers to have written both the music and the words.[6] One of her works, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play. She is also noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota.
Although the history of her formal canonization is complicated, branches of the Roman Catholic Church have recognized her as a saint for centuries. On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of St. Hildegard to the entire Catholic Church in a process known as "equivalent canonization". On 7 October 2012, he named her a Doctor of the Church, in recognition of "her holiness of life and the originality of her teaching.”
JANE VIEU (1871-1955)
was a French composer who also published works under the pseudonym Pierre Valette. She was born as Jeanne Fabre at Béziers and was the daughter of pianist Marie-Élodie Fabre, who taught music. She started composing at the age of 11. Vieu studied composition with Jules Massenet, singing with Marie Caroline Miolan-Carvalho, and counterpoint and fugue with André Gedalge. She gained recognition thanks to her operetta Madame Tallien (1902), and because of her fairy tale La belle au bois dormant (1902), the first performance of which took place at the Théâtre des Mathurins. Other successful titles are Au bal de Flore, Les Petites entravées (1911), and Aladin, ombres chinoises (1904).
Vieu published about 100 works, some under her pseudonym Pierre Valette, including orchestral, chamber, piano, and operas. Her music has been classified as 19th-century due to its formal and harmonic character. She operated a publishing company with her presumed husband Maurice Vieu between 1907 and 1925. They opened a publishing house in Paris called Maurice Vieu and Jane Vieu. She died in Paris in 1955.
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AMY MARCY BEACH (1867-1944)
Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.
Amy Marcy Cheney was born in New Hampshire (nephew of Oren B. Cheney, who co-founded Bates College) and Clara Imogene Marcy Cheney. Artistic ability appears to have run in the family: Clara was reputedly an "excellent pianist and singer," she showed every sign of being a child prodigy. She was able to sing forty songs accurately by age one, she was capable of improvising counter-melody by age two, and she taught herself to read at age three. At four, she composed three waltzes for piano during one summer at her grandfather's farm despite the absence of a piano; instead, she composed the pieces mentally and played them when she returned home. She could also play music by ear, including four-part hymns. The family struggled to keep up with her musical interests and demands.
Beach began formal piano lessons with her mother at age six, and soon gave public recitals of works by Handel, Beethoven, and Chopin, as well as her own pieces. One such recital was reviewed in arts journal The Folio, and multiple agents proposed concert tours for the young pianist, which her parents declined – a decision for which Beach was later grateful.
Amy made her concert debut at age sixteen on October 18, 1883 in a "Promenade Concert" conducted by Adolph Neuendorff at Boston's Music Hall, where she played Chopin's Rondo in E-flat and was piano soloist in Moscheles's piano concerto No. 3 in G minor, to general acclaim: as biographer Fried Block comments, "[i]t is hard to imagine a more positive critical reaction to a debut," and her audience was "enthusiastic in the extreme."[12] The next two years of her career included performances in Chickering Hall, and she starred in the final performance of the Boston Symphony's 1884–85 season.[13]
In 1885, Amy was married to Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach (1843-1910]), a Boston surgeon twenty-four years her senior (she was eighteen at the time). Her name would subsequently be listed on concert programs and published compositions as "Mrs. H. H. A. Beach." The marriage was conditioned upon her willingness "to live according to his status, that is, function as a society matron and patron of the arts. She agreed never to teach piano, an activity widely associated with women" and regarded as providing "pin money." She further agreed to limit performances to two public recitals per year, with profits donated to charity, and to devote herself more to composition than to performance (although, as she wrote, "I thought I was a pianist first and foremost.") Her self-guided education in composition was also necessitated by Dr. Beach, who disapproved of his wife studying with a tutor. Restrictions like these were typical for middle- and upper-class women of the time: as it was explained to a European counterpart, Fanny Mendelssohn, "Music will perhaps become his [Fanny's brother Felix Mendelssohn's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament."
A major compositional success came with her Mass in E-flat major, which was performed in 1892 by the Handel and Haydn Society orchestra, which since its foundation in 1815 had never performed a piece composed by a woman. Newspaper music critics[ responded to the Mass by declaring Beach one of America's foremost composers, comparing the piece to Masses by Cherubini and Bach.
Beach followed this up with an important milestone in music history: her Gaelic Symphony, the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. It premiered October 30, 1896, performed by the Boston Symphony "with exceptional success," although "whatever the merits or defects of the symphony were thought to be, critics went to extraordinary lengths in their attempts to relate them to the composer's sex. Composer George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931) wrote to Beach that he and his colleague Horatio Parker (1863–1919) had attended the Gaelic Symphony's premiere and much enjoyed it: "I always feel a thrill of pride myself whenever I hear a fine work by any of us, and as such you will have to be counted in, whether you [like it] or not – one of the boys. With the addition of Beach, they collectively became known as the “Boston Six,” of whom Beach was the youngest. A member of the "Second New England School" or "Boston Group," she is the lone female considered alongside composers John Knowles Paine, Arthur Foote, George Chadwick, Edward MacDowell, George Whiting, and Horatio Parker
In 1900, the Boston Symphony premiered Beach's Piano Concerto, with the composer as soloist. It has been suggested that the piece suggests Beach's struggles against her mother and husband for control of her musical life. Her writing is mainly in a Romantic idiom, often compared to that of Brahms or Rachmaninoff. In her later works she experimented, moving away from tonality, employing whole tone scales and more exotic harmonies and techniques. Beach's compositions include a one-act opera, Cabildo, and a variety of other works.
ISABELLA ANGELA COLBRAN (1785-1845)
was a Spanish opera singer known in her native country as Isabel Colbrandt. Many sources note her as a dramatic coloratura soprano but some believe that she was a mezzo-soprano with a high extension, a soprano sfogato. She collaborated with opera composer Gioachino Rossini in the creation of a number of roles that remain in the repertory to this day; they were married on 22 March 1822. She was the composer of four collections of songs.
Colbran, was born in Madrid, studied under Girolamo Crescenti in Paris. By the age of twenty she had achieved fame throughout Europe for her voice. She moved to Naples, a hub of European music during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Teatro di San Carlo, built during the Bourbon dynasty, had been home to famous singers like the castrato Farinelli and represented a destination venue for talented singers. Colbran became the prima donna of the Teatro di San Carlo company.
The artistic collaboration between Colbran and Rossini that began in 1815 was accompanied by a romantic involvement. Colbran moved with Rossini, seven years her junior, to Bologna in 1822, where they married. The couple visited Vienna and later Venice, where Rossini composed Semiramide and Colbran created the title role.
Colbran composed four song collections; they were dedicated to the Empress of Russia; to her teacher, Crescenti; to the Queen of Spain; and to Prince Eugène de Beauharnais.
ROSE FYLEMAN (1877-1957)
was a prolific English writer whose publications include more than sixty volumes of fiction, poetry, and plays. Fyleman was born in Nottingham, England. She attended the University College in Nottingham, then undertook training for a career as an opera singer. Fyleman failed to find work in opera, but she nonetheless managed to obtain employment as a singer. In addition, she conducted singing lessons and supplied poems to a periodical intended for women. Fyleman began working as a schoolteacher, and in this capacity, she found herself unable to readily supply her students with appropriate poems. She began to generate her own poetry for use in her classroom. At the encouragement of a fellow teacher, Fyleman sent her poetry to Punch, which accepted her work for publication. In 1918 she published her first book, The Sunny Book, and in the last years of the decade she produced two more volumes, Fairies and Chimneys and The Fairy Green.
During the 1920s Fyleman published further volumes of verse and fiction set in a fairyland free of gloom and danger. In her writings, as Donald R. Hettinga observed in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Fyleman "avoided the darkness and the evil that many of the Celtic and Germanic fairy stories contain….."Her fairy world is a world in which fairies are visible to children but not to most adults, and in which the fairies seemingly exist for the delight of children.
Fyleman also produced conventional stories for children. In The Adventure Club, for example, she tells of the Hastings, a band of children vacationing in rural England while their father, who had suffered a problematic breakdown, undertakes recovery in Spain. "The adventures are quite lively and still hold the attention of young readers," wrote Hettinga. "but behind all of the adventures is a safety net of 'local people' who . . . can help to save the children from any real mishaps."
In the 1940s and 1950s, while she enjoyed further success with her collections of poetry and fiction about fairies, Fyleman continued to issue a range of works for children. The volume, Adventures of Benghazi, concerns a talking a cat that possesses magical powers—including the ability to change shape, travel through time, and remain impervious to pain—during the full moon. Fyleman died in 1957, and in 1986, Fyleman posthumously received praise with A Fairy Went A-Marketing, which reprints one of her fairy poems from 1918. The new edition, with illustrations by Jamichael Henterly, was appreciated by reviewers.
LIZA LEHMANN (1862-1918)
was an English operatic soprano and composer, known for her vocal compositions. After vocal studies with Alberto Randegger and Jenny Lind, and composition studies with teachers including Hamish MacCunn, Lehmann made her singing debut in 1885 in London and pursued a concert career for nearly a decade. In 1894, she married and left the stage. She then concentrated on composing music, becoming known for song cycles, art songs, parlour songs and children's songs. She also composed several pieces for the stage and wrote a textbook on singing. In 1910, she toured the United States, where she accompanied her own songs in recitals. She was the first president of the Society of Women Musicians and became a professor of singing at the Guildhall School of Music in 1913.
She was born Elisabetha Nina Mary Frederica Lehmann in London. Her father was the German painter Rudolf Lehmann, and her mother was Amelia (A.L.) Chambers, a music teacher, composer and arranger. Lehmann "grew up in an intellectual and artistic atmosphere" and lived in Germany, France and Italy in her early years.
After her singing debut In 1885, she spent the next nine years performing many important concert engagements in England. She received encouragement from important European musicians such as Joseph Joachim and Clara Schumann. She retired from the stage after a final concert at St James's Hall on 14 July 1894, married the composer and painter Herbert Bedford and turned to composing music.
After her performing career ended in 1894, Lehmann concentrated on composing music for the rest of her life.[1] She completed one of her best known works two years later, in 1896, the song cycle for four voices and piano titled In a Persian Garden, settings of selected quatrains from Edward FitzGerald's version of the Rubāiyāt of Omar Khayyām. She composed many more song cycles including The Daisy Chain and an In Memoriam based on Alfred Lord Tennyson's love poem. She also became known for her art songs, parlour songs and other works in the following years. She wrote many children's songs, ranging from the sweet and trivial "There are fairies at the bottom of our garden" to the melodically and harmonically passionate "Stars" in The Daisy-Chain. Her tenor song "Ah, moon of my delight" from In a Persian Garden has been recorded through the years by many famous tenors: John McCormack, Jan Peerce, Mario Lanza, Robert White, and Webster Booth.
Lehmann, Ethel Smyth and Maude Valérie White were England's foremost female composers of songs at the beginning of the 20th century. Although they all composed solo settings of serious texts, Lehmann and White excelled in setting lighter material. Some of Lehmann's compositional practices, such as her frequent writing of four-voice cycles and writing piano links between songs, were consistent with her time. Although her pieces were inventive, they are now often overlooked.
ALMA MAHLER (1805-1847)
was a Viennese-born composer, author, editor and socialite. Musically active from her early years, she was the composer of nearly 50 songs for voice and piano, and works in other genres as well. Only seventeen songs are known to have survived. In her early years, she fell in love with composer and conductor Alexander von Zemlinsky, but their relationship did not last long. She became the wife of composer Gustav Mahler, who insisted (as a condition of their marriage) that she give up composing. Eventually she fell into depression from being artistically stifled. While her marriage was struggling, she had an affair with Walter Gropius. Gustav started to encourage Alma's composing and helped prepare some of her compositions for publication, but died soon after this attempted reconciliation in 1911. Alma married Gropius in 1915 and the couple had a daughter together, Manon Gropius. During her marriage to Gropius, Alma had an affair with Franz Werfel. Alma and Werfel were eventually married after Alma separated from Gropius. In 1938 Werfel and Alma were forced to flee Austria as it was unsafe for Jews. Eventually the couple settled in Los Angeles. In later years, her salon became part of the artistic scene, first in Vienna, then in Los Angeles and in New York.
Alma studied composition with Josef Labor beginning in 1894/1895 and until 1901. She met Alexander von Zemlinsky in early 1900, began composition lessons with him that fall, and continued as his student until her engagement with Gustav Mahler in December 1901, after which she ceased composing. Up until that time, she had composed or sketched mostly Lieder, but also around 20 piano pieces and a small number of chamber music works, and a scene from an opera. She briefly resumed composing in 1910, but stopped in 1915. The chronology of her compositions is difficult to establish, because she did not date her manuscripts[4] and destroyed many of them herself. Attempts to establish a chronological list of her works have been made by Professor Susanne Rode-Breymann in 1999 and 2014, and by Danish scholar Knud Martner in 2018.
Only a total of 17 songs by her survive. Fourteen were published during her lifetime, in three publications dated 1910, 1915, and 1924. The first two volumes appeared under the name Alma Maria Schindler-Mahler, and the last volume was published as "Fünf Gesänge" by Alma Maria Mahler. Three additional songs were discovered in manuscript posthumously; two of them were published in the year 2000, edited by Dr. Susan M. Filler, and one published in 2018, edited by Barry Millington. Her personal papers, including music manuscripts, are held at the University of Pennsylvania, the Austrian National Library in Vienna, and the Bavarian State Library in Munich. These songs have been regularly performed and recorded since the 1980s. Orchestral versions of the accompaniments have been produced. Seven songs were orchestrated by David and Colin Matthews (published by Universal Edition),] and all 17 songs were orchestrated by Julian Reynolds and by Jorma Panula.
AMANDA MCBROOM (b.1947)
McBroom has been called “…the greatest cabaret performer of her generation, an urban poet who writes like an angel and has a voice to match” by the NY Times. Broadway World describes her as “… one of the greatest night club performers of all time. Her lyrics are profound and expresses human emotions in glorious poetry. Her humor is so smart and she sings and acts it all brilliantly.” She first came to the attention music lovers when Bette Midler’s version of Amanda’s song “The Rose” hit number one all over the world in 1979. In addition to Midler, her songs have been recorded by a wide variety of artists including Amy Poehler and Jack Black, Barry Manilow, Judy Collins, Barbara Cook, LeAnn Rimes, Anne Murray, Harry Belafonte, Betty Buckley, Stephanie Mills, The Manhattan Transfer, Donny Osmond, Kurt Cobain, Nana Mouskouri, Conway Twitty, the Chipmunks and the Baby Dinosaurs in Land Before Time (she wrote all the songs for 16 Universal Cartoon videos with longtime collaborator Michele Brourman). Amanda’s performance of “The Rose” on the Golden Globes (she won!) convinced audiences worldwide that the best interpretations of McBroom songs are by McBroom herself and applaud her in concert halls around the world from, Carnegie Hall to Angel Place Recital Hall in Sydney, Australia.
McBroom’s love of musical theater compelled her to create a musical based on her songs. Heartbeats made its debut in 1989 in Los Angeles, and the play has enjoyed more than 15 regional theater productions around the U.S. The original cast recording was released in 1994 on Varese Sarabande Records, and is represented by the Rogers and Hammerstein Music Library.
Amanda’s latest musical, A Woman of Will, made its off-Broadway debut in 2005. She recently celebrated the release of VOICES, her sixth recording on Gecko, the label she established in 1985. Other Gecko recordings include Dreaming, Midnight Matinee, A Waiting Heart, Portraits, and Chanson. Her first two groundbreaking vinyl recordings, Growing Up In Hollywood Town and West of OZ, were recorded direct to disc for Sheffield Labs and made McBroom an audiophile darling.
MARSHA NORMAN (b.1947)
is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play 'night, Mother. She wrote the book and lyrics for such Broadway musicals as The Secret Garden, for which she won a Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and The Red Shoes, as well as the libretto for the musical The Color Purple and the book for the musical The Bridges of Madison County. She is co-chair of the playwriting department at The Juilliard School.
Norman was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the oldest of four children of Billie and Bertha Williams. As a child, she read and played the piano. She later began attending productions by the newly founded Actors Theatre of Louisville. She received a bachelor's degree from Agnes Scott College and a master's degree from the University of Louisville. She worked as a journalist for The Louisville Times newspaper, and also wrote for Kentucky Educational Television. She taught young children and adolescents in mental institutions and hospitals. These were perhaps her biggest influence on her writing, especially a 13-year-old girl who influenced her play Getting Out.
Norman's first play Getting Out was produced at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and then Off-Broadway in 1979. The play concerns a young woman just paroled after an eight-year prison sentence for robbery, kidnapping and manslaughter. It reflects Norman's experience working with disturbed adolescents at Kentucky's Central State Hospital.
Norman's success with Getting Out led her to move to New York City where she continued to write for the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Her play, 'night, Mother, became her best-known work, given its Broadway success and its star-powered film version. The play brought Norman a great deal of recognition, dealing frankly with the subject of suicide, and won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Hull-Warriner, and the Drama Desk Award. She was in high demand in Hollywood, though not always for films that she liked, or that studios would approve.
Norman wrote the book and lyrics for the musical The Secret Garden, an adaptation of the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel The Secret Garden, and won the Tony Award for Best Book in 1991.
TORI PAQUET (b. 2002)
Butterfly King, or Tori Paquet, is a young singer-songwriter who takes a decent amount of inspiration from Billie Eilish. She is in high school, aged 16. She has been on the radio, as well as opened for the band “The Big Easy”.
DOROTHY PARKER (1893-1967)
Raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Dorothy Parker built a career that was defined by her wit and her incisive commentary on contemporary America. She was born two months prematurely at her family’s summerhome in West End, New Jersey. By the time she was five, she had lost her mother; by age 20, she had also lost her father, a garment manufacturer. She studied at Blessed Sacrament Convent School in New York City, and a finishing school, Miss Dana’s, in Morristown, New Jersey, but never received a high school diploma. She supported herself as a pianist at a dance academy until entering the world of magazine publishing.
After selling her first poem to Vanity Fair in 1914, she became a regular contributor to Vogue. In 1917, she took over P.G. Wodehouse’s role as theater critic at Vanity Fair. While building a career in criticism, she was a key member of the Round Table, a group of writers who traded witticisms over lunch at the Algonquin Hotel. She was an inaugural member of the board of editors at the New Yorker upon its founding in 1925, and over the next decade she frequently contributed short poems to its pages.
In 1926, Parker published her first book of poetry, Enough Rope, which became a bestseller. Her other collections include Sunset Gun (1928) and Death and Taxes (1931). Parker’s poetry is marked by cleverness but also by the deep depression that plagued her. Focusing on power dynamics, especially those involving gender, her poetry—sometimes dismissed as “light” or “flapper” verse—pulled apart the fabric of American society. Parker moved to Hollywood in 1934. There, she worked as a screenwriter on films such as A Star Is Born and garnered several Oscar nominations, with her second husband Alan Campbell.
FLORENCE PRICE (1887-1953)
Florence Beatrice Price was an African-American classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra.
She was born as Florence Beatrice Smith to Florence (Gulliver) and James H. Smith in Little Rock, Arkansas, one of three children in a mixed-race family. Despite racial issues of the era, her family was well respected and did well within their community. Her father was a dentist and her mother was a music teacher who guided Florence's early musical training. She had her first piano performance at the age of four and had her first composition published at the age of 11.
By the time she was 14, Florence had graduated as valedictorian (scholar) of her class. After high school, she later enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts with a major in piano and organ. Initially, she identified as Mexican to avoid the prejudice people had toward African Americans at the time. At the Conservatory, she studied composition and counterpoint with composers George Chadwick and Frederick Converse. Also while there, Smith wrote her first string trio and symphony. She graduated in 1906 with honors, and with both an artist diploma in organ and a teaching certificate.
Smith returned to Arkansas, where she taught briefly before moving to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1910. There she became the head of the music department of what is now Clark Atlanta University, a historically black college. In 1912, she married Thomas J. Price, a lawyer. She moved back to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he had his practice. After a series of racial incidents in Little Rock, particularly a lynching of a black man in 1927, the Price family decided to leave. Like many black families living in the Deep South, they moved north in the Great Migration to escape Jim Crow conditions, and settled in Chicago, a major industrial city.
There Florence Price began a new and fulfilling period in her composition career. She studied composition, orchestration, and organ with the leading teachers in the city, including Arthur Olaf Andersen, Carl Busch, Wesley La Violette, and Leo Sowerby. She published four pieces for piano in 1928. While in Chicago, Price was at various times enrolled at the Chicago Musical College, Chicago Teacher’s College, University of Chicago, and American Conservatory of Music, studying languages and liberal arts subjects as well as music. Financial struggles and abuse by her husband resulted in Price getting a divorce in 1931. She became a single mother to her two daughters. To make ends meet, she worked as an organist for silent film screenings and composed songs for radio ads under a pen name. During this time, Price lived with friends. She eventually moved in with her student and friend, Margaret Bonds, also a black pianist and composer. This friendship connected Price with writer Langston Hughes and contralto Marian Anderson, both prominent figures in the art world who aided in Price's future success as a composer.
Together, Price and Bonds began to achieve national recognition for their compositions and performances. In 1932, both Price and Bonds submitted compositions for the Wanamaker Foundation Awards. Price won first prize with her Symphony in E minor, and third for her Piano Sonata, earning her a $500 prize. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frederick Stock, premiered the Symphony on June 15, 1933, making Price’s piece the first composition by an African-American woman to be played by a major orchestra.
A number of Price's other orchestral works were played by the WPA Symphony Orchestra of Detroit, the Chicago Women’s Symphony, and the Women's Symphony Orchestra of Chicago. Price wrote other extended works for orchestra, chamber works, art songs, works for violin, organ anthems, piano pieces, spiritual arrangements, four symphonies, three piano concertos, and a violin concerto. Some of her more popular works are: "Three Little Negro Dances," "Songs to a Dark Virgin", "My Soul's Been Anchored in the Lord" for piano or orchestra and voice, and "Moon Bridge". Price made considerable use of characteristic African-American melodies and rhythms in many of her works. Her Concert Overture on Negro Spirituals, Symphony in E minor, and Negro Folksongs in Counterpoint for string quartet, all serve as excellent examples of her idiomatic work. Price was inducted into the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers in 1940 for her work as a composer. In 1949, Price published two of her spiritual arrangements, "I Am Bound for the Kingdom," and "I'm Workin’ on My Buildin'", and dedicated them to Marian Anderson, who performed them on a regular basis.
Following her death, much of her work was overshadowed as new musical styles emerged that fit the changing tastes of modern society. In 2001, the Women's Philharmonic created an album of some of her work. Pianist Karen Walwyn and The New Black Repertory Ensemble performed Price's Concerto in One Movement and Symphony in E minor in December 2011.
In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers were found in an abandoned dilapidated house on the outskirts of St. Anne, Illinois. These consisted of dozens of her scores, including her two violin concertos and her fourth symphony. As Alex Ross stated in The New Yorker in February 2018, "not only did Price fail to enter the canon; a large quantity of her music came perilously close to obliteration. That run-down house in St. Anne is a potent symbol of how a country can forget its cultural history." In November 2018, the New York-based firm of G. Schirmer announced that it had acquired the exclusive worldwide rights to Florence Price's complete catalog.
Compositional Style
Even though her training was steeped in European tradition, Price's music consists of mostly the American idiom and reveals her Southern roots. She wrote with a vernacular style, using sounds and ideas that fit the reality of urban society. Being deeply religious, she frequently used the music of the African-American church as material for her arrangements. At the urging of her mentor George Whitefield Chadwick, Price began to incorporate elements of African-American spirituals, emphasizing the rhythm and syncopation of the spirituals rather than just using the text. Her melodies were blues-inspired and mixed with more traditional, European Romantic techniques. The weaving of tradition and modernism reflected the way life was for African Americans in large cities at the time.
LOUISE REICHARDT (1779-1826)
Louise Reichardt or Luise Reichardt was a German composer and choral conductor. Her German songs or Lieder, written in an accessible style akin to folk music, were popular, and she was influential in the musical life of Hamburg, Germany.
She was born in Berlin. She was the daughter of composers Juliane Reichardt (1752–1783) and Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752–1814). Louise Reichardt took music lessons from her father, and in 1800 four of her songs were published in a collection of his songs.[1][2] The Reichardts entertained literary figures such as Goethe, Ludwig Tieck, Novalis, Clemens Brentano, and Phillip Ludwig Achim von Arnim. Later, she would use von Arnim's poetry in a collection of twelve songs.
In 1809 she moved to Hamburg where she studied with Johann Frederich Clasing.[2] She taught music, instructed choruses, and composed. She did not rely on royalty or wealthy patrons to hear her music. During her time in Hamburg (1809 – 1826), she composed the majority of her Lieder. She reached the public by writing in an easily accessible, folksy style, combining memorable melodies with simple piano accompaniments.
Reichardt was also active as a choral conductor and established a choral society in Hamburg. However, due to the prevailing sexism of the times, she was never allowed to conduct them in public.[2] "Despite these gender restrictions, Reichardt strongly influenced musical life in Hamburg through her composing, teaching, and behind-the-scenes conducting. She also translated the Latin works of Hasse and Graun into German.
CLARA SCHUMANN (1819-1896)
Clara Josephine Schumann was a German pianist, composer and piano teacher. Regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, she exerted her influence over a 61-year concert career, changing the format and repertoire of the piano recital from displays of virtuosity to programs of serious works. She also composed solo piano pieces, a piano concerto (her Op. 7), chamber music, choral pieces, and songs.
She grew up in Leipzig, where she was a child prodigy. She began touring at age eleven, and was successful in Paris and Vienna, among other cities. She married composer Robert Schumann, and the couple had eight children. Together, they encouraged Johannes Brahms and maintained a close relationship with him. She premiered many works by her husband and by Brahms in public.
Several films have focused on Schumann's life, the earliest being Träumerei (Dreaming) of 1944. A 2008 film, Geliebte Clara (Beloved Clara), was directed by Helma Sanders-Brahms. Interest in her compositions began to revive in the late 20th century, and her 2019 bicentenary prompted new books and exhibitions.
LUCY SIMON (b.1943)
Simon was born in New York City, the daughter of the co-founder of the book publisher Simon & Schuster, Inc., Richard L. Simon and Andrea (Heinemann) Simon, a former switchboard operator, civil rights activist, and singer. Her father was from a German Jewish family, while her maternal grandfather Friedrich was of German descent. Lucy's maternal grandmother, known as "Chibie", was a Catholic from Cuba, and was of pardo heritage, a freed-slave descendant (the show Finding Your Roots tested Carly Simon's DNA as 10% African and 2% Indigenous). Her grandmother was sent to England and raised by nuns until the age of sixteen.
She is the older sister of musician Carly Simon. In addition to her younger sister Carly, she has an older sister, opera singer Joanna, and a younger brother, photographer Peter. Simon grew up in Fieldston, a section of Riverdale in the Bronx. She attended the Fieldston School, graduating in 1958 and Bennington College.
Lucy began her professional career at the age of sixteen singing folk tunes with sister Carly as The Simon Sisters and later folk-rock. Simon's setting of “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod” has been recorded by many diverse artists, including The Doobie Brothers, Mitzie Collins, and The Big Three (Cass Elliot, Tim Rose, and James Hendricks). In the mid-70's, after a number of years away from recording, Lucy released two albums on the RCA label of mostly original compositions, along with a few collaborations and covers. Her self-titled debut album was more folk-rock in orientation while her second album, "Stolen Time," had a contemporary pop sound. Carly Simon and James Taylor provided backing vocals on half of the songs from "Stolen Time."
Simon made her Broadway debut as the composer of The Secret Garden, for which she was nominated for a 1991 Tony Award for Best Original Score and a 1991 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music. She also wrote songs for the Off-Broadway show A... My Name Is Alice.
She composed the music for a musical version of the Russian novel Doctor Zhivago, with lyricists Michael Korie and Amy Powers and book writer Michael Weller. The musical had its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse, San Diego, California, in May 2006. Simon also contributed to the Off-Broadway musical Mama and Her Boys. She has won a Grammy award in 1981 together with her husband, David Levine, in the Best Recording for Children category for In Harmony/A Sesame Street Record, and again in 1983 in the same category for In Harmony 2.
HILLARY TANN (b.1947)
Welsh-born composer, Hilary Tann, lives in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York where she chairs the Music Department and is the John Howard Payne Professor at Union College, Schenectady. Recent composer-residencies include the 2011 Eastman School of Music Women in Music Festival, 2013 Women Composers Festival of Hartford, and 2015 Welsh Music Center (Ty Cerdd). Her work has been supported by numerous organizations, including the Welsh Arts Council, New York State Council on the Arts, Hanson Institute for American Music, Vaughan Williams Trust, Holst Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Meet the Composer / Arts Endowment Commissioning Music USA.
Praised for its lyricism (“beautiful, lyrical work” – Classical Music Web) and formal balance (“In the formal balance of this music, there is great beauty …” – Welsh Music), her music is influenced by a strong identification with the natural world. These two interests combine in her enjoyment of haiku (she is a published haiku poet) and in text selections from Welsh poets. A deep interest in the traditional music of Japan has led to private study of the shakuhachi and guest visits to Japan, Korea, and China. Her compositions have been widely performed and recorded by ensembles such as the European Women’s Orchestra, Tenebrae, Lontano, Marsyas Trio, Thai Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and KBS Philharmonic in Seoul, Korea. Website: hilarytann.com.
HILDEGARD VON BINGEN (1098-1179)
Hildegard was born around the year 1098, although the exact date is uncertain. Her parents were Mechtild of Merxheim-Nahet and Hildebert of Bermersheim, a family of the free lower nobility in the service of the Count Meginhard of Sponheim.[9] Sickly from birth, Hildegard is traditionally considered their youngest and tenth child,[10] although there are records of only seven older siblings. In her Vita, Hildegard states that from a very young age she had experienced visions.
Hildegard of Bingen was also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most-recorded in modern history.[3] She has been considered by many in Europe to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.
Hildegard's fellow nuns elected her as magistra in 1136; she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. She wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs for women choirs to sing and poems, while supervising miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias. There are more surviving chants by Hildegard than by any other composer from the entire Middle Ages, and she is one of the few known composers to have written both the music and the words.[6] One of her works, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play. She is also noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota.
Although the history of her formal canonization is complicated, branches of the Roman Catholic Church have recognized her as a saint for centuries. On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of St. Hildegard to the entire Catholic Church in a process known as "equivalent canonization". On 7 October 2012, he named her a Doctor of the Church, in recognition of "her holiness of life and the originality of her teaching.”
JANE VIEU (1871-1955)
was a French composer who also published works under the pseudonym Pierre Valette. She was born as Jeanne Fabre at Béziers and was the daughter of pianist Marie-Élodie Fabre, who taught music. She started composing at the age of 11. Vieu studied composition with Jules Massenet, singing with Marie Caroline Miolan-Carvalho, and counterpoint and fugue with André Gedalge. She gained recognition thanks to her operetta Madame Tallien (1902), and because of her fairy tale La belle au bois dormant (1902), the first performance of which took place at the Théâtre des Mathurins. Other successful titles are Au bal de Flore, Les Petites entravées (1911), and Aladin, ombres chinoises (1904).
Vieu published about 100 works, some under her pseudonym Pierre Valette, including orchestral, chamber, piano, and operas. Her music has been classified as 19th-century due to its formal and harmonic character. She operated a publishing company with her presumed husband Maurice Vieu between 1907 and 1925. They opened a publishing house in Paris called Maurice Vieu and Jane Vieu. She died in Paris in 1955.
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