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Post by jk on Oct 7, 2021 6:03:39 GMT -5
Looking through a list of minimalist composers for candidates for this thread, the name Sarah Kirkland Snider caught my attention. Is Kirkland Snider a double-barrelled surname? Even her own website uses just Snider (and withholds her year of birth). She has garnered most attention on the strength of three large-scale works centring on the human voice. The first, Penelope (2010) for female voice and chamber orchestra, "is an orchestral song cycle based on Homer's Odyssey, imagining the Roman epic as told from the perspective of Odysseus's wife, Penelope." The * entire song cycle* is well worth checking out. This is the closing song, "As He Looks Out to Sea", performed by vocalist Shara Worden and Signal (see here for essential information): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Kirkland_Snider
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Post by jk on Oct 27, 2021 6:34:03 GMT -5
These two English ladies share a recent album of music for strings with Ethel Smyth and Ruth Gipps, both of whom are represented in either this or the previous women composers topic. Constance Warren (1905–1984) was a composer and piano teacher. Ms Warren taught at the Birmingham School of Music and Birmingham Conservatoire. Her pupils included composer Brian Ferneyhough and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group's principal pianist Malcolm Wilson. Her Idyll in G-Flat Major is played here by Duncan Honeybourne: Susan Spain-Dunk (1880–1962) wrote many orchestral and chamber works. Her symphonic poem Stonehenge (1929) [could] be heard here in a rare live performance by Anna-Maria Helsing and the BBC Concert Orchestra. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Spain-Dunk
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Post by jk on Oct 29, 2021 3:01:34 GMT -5
I came across Beverly Grigsby (born 1928) while browsing a wiki list for possible candidates for the oldest living women composer. Her remarkable Five Studies for Two Untransposed Hexachords for piano (1971) are clearly the result of her interest in computer music generation. I located the following two reviews of live performances of this work: "This [concert] documented Beverly Grigsby as a composer of wide-ranging interest and a decidedly lyrical bent. Even so unpromisingly titled a post-Webernian relic as her FIVE STUDIES ON TWO UNTRANSPOSED HEXACHORDS from 1971 shifted pitch-spotting to the background in favor of expressive and kinetic interests." (John Henken, Los Angeles Times) "The studied abstraction of Beverly Pinsky Grigsby's [FIVE STUDIES ON TWO UNTRANSPOSED HEXACHORDS] performed by Nancy Fierro, began with a severe and self-imposed limitation that allowed her only six notes to work with in the first and third sections and a different six notes as material for the second and fourth sections. The work is an inventive and almost playful challenge to the restrictions, full of surprisingly full-bodied expressions and spiced with some fascinating rhythms." ( Albany Times Union) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Grigsby
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Post by jk on Oct 31, 2021 16:30:48 GMT -5
There are times when I don't wait for a suitable work by a woman composer to pop up on the radio and take a look round cyberspace instead. Last week, this turned up a YouTube channel devoted to women conductors conducting seldom heard works by women composers (* here*). The two I chose from the list are from Sweden (Helena Munktell, 1852–1919) and Poland (Grażyna Bacewicz, 1909–1969). Ms Munktell's teachers included the French composer Vincent d'Indy. Ms Bacewiz similarly spent time in Paris, studying composition there with Nadia Boulanger. Both wrote works for orchestra. Here Norwegian conductor Cathrine Winnes leads the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in live performances of Helena Munktell's tone poem Bränningar (Breaking Waves, c. early 1890s)... …and Grażyna Bacewicz's Overture (1943): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Munktellen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grażyna_Bacewicz
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Post by jk on Nov 1, 2021 17:29:58 GMT -5
The Australian composer Kate Moore (1979) was born in the UK and now lives in the Netherlands. Sacred Environment (2015–2017, see lower link) is an oratorio for choir, soloists, electronics and orchestra. It was commissioned by The Holland Festival for the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (conductor Brad Lubman) and the Netherlands Radio Choir (conductor Daniel Reuss) with Alex Oomens (soprano) and Lies Beijerinck (didgeridoo). These are the first few minutes of what is a much longer work: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Moore_(composer)katemoore.org/project-page/
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Post by jk on Dec 10, 2021 10:42:43 GMT -5
I arrived at the Soviet-born US composer and pianist Lera Auerbach (b. 1973) by a circuitous route whose first two ports of call were a piece of work I was doing and one of its authors, a pianist herself. As commenter netedco points out, Ms Auerbach's evocative * Dreams and Whispers of Poseidon* (2005) has parts for both a musical saw and a theremin, which is probably unique. Here it is played by the American Youth Orchestra conducted by Alexander Treger: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lera_Auerbach
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Post by jk on Dec 12, 2021 5:53:19 GMT -5
I heard the name Sally Beamish mentioned in connection with a concert of choral music somewhere in the UK. I had heard the name before but that's all it had been -- a name. So I looked around and found this sprightly piece for trumpet in C and piano called Trinculo (2016), played here with flair by Imogen Whitehead and Yshani Perinpanyagam. "From 2014 to 2016 I was working with choreographer David Bintley on a ballet of The Tempest for Birmingham Royal Ballet. Many shorter solo pieces have emerged from this experience, including Ariel (solo viola) and Caliban (saxophone and piano). "Trinculo is the next in this series, depicting the court jester and his drunken revels with Stephano and Caliban. Their song 'The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I' appears in wordless notation, and the opening and closing fanfares are taken from Ariel's music -- Ariel being invisibly present during much of the action." [ Source] I dedicate it to the trumpeter in our midst. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Beamish
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Post by jk on Dec 14, 2021 10:17:40 GMT -5
Usually I have at least some idea of how I encounter the women composers in this thread and its predecessors, but how I got to the Kiev-born Valentina Goncharova (1953) is a complete mystery. I must have seen her name somewhere while trudging through cyberspace. Rather than waffle on as is my wont, I'll let these hypnotic Recordings 1987-1991, Vol. 1 and the page linked below do the talking for a change: unearthingthemusic.eu/posts/the-sonic-explorations-of-valentina-goncharova/
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Post by jk on Dec 15, 2021 13:42:40 GMT -5
There’s a connection between this composer (whose name is long familiar to me, so how did I forget her?) and the one in the previous post. The linked interview with Valentina Goncharova includes the following: "[In the mid 1980s] Robert Fripp and Brian Eno's records: 'Evening Star' and 'No Pussyfooting', ... deeply penetrated into my soul." In I of IV (1967), Pauline Oliveros (1932–2016) seems to have anticipated the path taken by Fripp & Eno (to say nothing of Pink Floyd's "Echoes"), most particularly the hostile landscape that is their "An Index of Metals", which takes up side two of Evening Star (1975). "AIOM" gets left off compilations and is unceremoniously chopped up on YouTube (when it's there at all), yet it's one of Fripp & Eno's seminal collaborations. The difference here is that Ms Oliveros' equally riveting I of IV is all electronic -- not a guitar in sight: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Oliveros
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Post by jk on Dec 23, 2021 5:17:34 GMT -5
Mélanie Bonis (1858–1937) is yet another example of a woman composer who struggled to make a career in a male-dominated world. She consequently shortened her first name to the more gender-neutral Mel—it's not the last time this desperate measure would be resorted to (and I don't mean Mel B). A music-hating husband, forced on her by her parents, didn't help matters. It was only when she re-met the love of her life that she resumed composing. This is the sumptuous Femmes de légende (1897–1913), a seven-movement work (see blurb below) recorded in 2010 by the Russian pianist Maria Stembolskaia: 0:00: Phoebé, opus 30, manuscrit sans date, 1ère éd. Leduc 1897 3:03: Salomé, opus 100, manuscrit sans date, 1ère éd. Leduc 1909 7:22: Mélisande, opus 109, manuscrit 1922 10:18: Desdémona (my favorite !), opus 101, 1ère éd. Leduc 1913 13:19: Omphale, opus 86, manuscrit sans date, 1ère éd. Simrock, 1910 17:52: Ophélie, opus 165, manuscrit sans date, dispo en séparé éd. Armiane 23:20: Viviane, opus 80, manuscrit sans date, 1ère éd. Leduc 1909 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mélanie_Bonis
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sanantone
Grommet
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Favorite Album: SMiLE
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Post by sanantone on Dec 24, 2021 21:06:01 GMT -5
A few living women composers.
Sofia Gubaidulina (1931- )
Meredith Monk (1942- )
Laurie Anderson (1947- )
Kaija Saariaho (1952- )
Anna Thorvaldsdottir (1977- )
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Post by jk on Dec 25, 2021 15:40:15 GMT -5
A few living women composers. Sofia Gubaidulina (1931- )Meredith Monk (1942- )Laurie Anderson (1947- )Kaija Saariaho (1952- )Anna Thorvaldsdottir (1977- )Hi, sa, and welcome! Great to see another face on this often empty stretch of the beach. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
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sanantone
Grommet
Posts: 3
Likes: 4
Favorite Album: SMiLE
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Post by sanantone on Dec 25, 2021 22:16:47 GMT -5
Laurie Anderson's latest, Landfall, is very evocative, with the Kronos String Quartet - she describes the effects of living through Hurricane Sandy in NYC.
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Post by jk on Dec 26, 2021 7:45:18 GMT -5
Laurie Anderson's latest, Landfall, is very evocative, with the Kronos String Quartet - she describes the effects of living through Hurricane Sandy in NYC. Thanks for the tip! I'm listening to it now in stages. The music is uplifting, the subjects of the piece understandably less so. The "extinct animals" tracks are particularly heartbreaking. I love what Kronos do generally -- I was lucky enough to see them live (in 2015 or thereabouts) in the project linked below. Talk about being bludgeoned into submission! vtx.vt.edu/articles/2015/02/021815-cfa-kronosquartet.html
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Post by jk on Dec 28, 2021 6:07:27 GMT -5
The American musician and teacher Margaret Bonds (1913–1972) is one of seven woman composers to get a street, court or quay named after them in Amsterdam's Zuidas (Southern Axis) business district (* here*; Google Translate is your friend). These are her Montgomery Variations (1964), performed by the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Scott Yoo:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Bonds
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Post by jk on Dec 29, 2021 5:12:53 GMT -5
Once again, I can't remember how I encountered the music of British composer Cecilia McDowall (born 1951) -- it was most likely through a piece for choir. I've chosen to highlight another facet of her work. To quote BBC Music Magazine of March 2021: "McDowall may be best known for her choral compositions, but this British composer obviously knows her way round the organ console as well...On his solo recording debut, the young and gifted William Fox offers his own panache, drawing out the many colours of the lively 1963 Walker organ at the Church of St John the Evangelist in Islington, London...In every area (music, performer, instrument, recording) this album offers plenty to enjoy." Indeed, it gets four stars from that reviewer. And according to Naxos, the album's publisher, "Cecilia McDowall is one of Britain's most acclaimed composers. Her choral music, in particular, has earned her a worldwide reputation, yet an equally distinctive voice is revealed in her organ works. The O Antiphon Sequence, commissioned by the American Guild of Organists, is capricious, meditative and luminous. The George Herbert Trilogy encompasses rhapsody and brilliance, while McDowall's mastery of the miniature form is demonstrated in her contribution to a project to finish Bach's incomplete Orgelbüchlein." From that album, here is the trilogy in question, which draws from the poetry of George Herbert: I. Sounding Heaven and Earth: II. Sacred and Hallowed Fire: III. Church Bells Beyond the Stars: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_McDowall
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Post by jk on Jan 3, 2022 4:51:24 GMT -5
Looking for quite another work by Cecilia McDowall than the one I posted, I discovered the programme booklet for a concert of music by seven women composers, all of whom except Ms McDowall were new to me. The Concerto for Orchestra (2002) by the American Jennifer Higdon (born 1962) is a polarizing work. The Times notes that its "most impressive aspect is the panache with which a huge orchestra is deployed ... This colourful, ever-changing instrumental panoply is doubtless one reason why the work makes an instant impression", whereas The Guardian describes it as "American contemporary music at its most vacuous, a noisy mishmash". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Higdon
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Post by jk on Jan 6, 2022 5:38:07 GMT -5
The concert programme that gave me Jennifer Higdon led me along a ciruitous route to the Latvian musician and poet Lūcija Garūta (1902–1977). Ms Garūta is best known for her cantata Dievs, Tava zeme deg! (God, your land is burning!), which was written in 1943 during the German occupation of Latvia. But it was Lūgšana (The Prayer, 1926) for violin and piano (or organ, as here) that attracted my attention. This intense work had its world premier recording in the Riga Dom Cathedral (year unknown to me but no later than 2001), performed by fellow Latvians Janis Bulavs (violin) and Larisa Bulava (organ): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lūcija_Garūta
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Post by jk on Jan 10, 2022 10:13:37 GMT -5
This is stunning. A ninety-strong virtual choir performs "The Greatest Good", the fourth movement of The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, a multimedia symphony by the American composer Jocelyn Hagen (born 1980), followed by a brief orchestral excerpt from the first movement, "Painting and Drawing": wikitia.com/wiki/Jocelyn_Hagen
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Post by jk on Jan 12, 2022 8:13:32 GMT -5
Besides being a composer, Libby (Elizabeth) Larsen (born 1950) is a musical philosopher. "When asked about her influences, Larsen responded, 'To tell the truth, my teachers have come to me from unexpected places in my musical life. They have been poets, architects, painters and philosophers. The other way I really learn is by reading scores voraciously, from Chuck Berry to Witold Lutosławski.'" (From her wiki page.) Her Deep Summer Music (1982) -- and we Northern Hemisphere-dwellers could do with some summer music right now -- is performed here by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libby_Larsen
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Post by jk on Jan 13, 2022 9:14:22 GMT -5
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Post by jk on Jan 17, 2022 7:43:55 GMT -5
The composer, pianist and teacher Dorothy Howell (1898–1982) was known during her lifetime as the "English Strauss" (as in Richard). I came across her name in a list tucked into a corner of my PC just the other day. Then it struck me that I had posted her Lamia (1918) a couple of years ago at Smiley, long before I launched my first women composers thread over here. Anyway, here [was] that symphonic poem, performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Rumon Gamba: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Howell_(composer)
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Post by jk on Jan 19, 2022 4:25:23 GMT -5
As so often, the enlightening YouTube blurb, on this occasion by the pianist himself, is all you need (plus the two links): "Phillip Sear plays a piece from around 1925 by the short-lived English composer K. Dorothy Fox (1894–1934). "There seems to be very little information available on K(alitha) Dorothy Fox. As you can see from her brief Wikipedia page ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalitha_Dorothy_Fox), she wrote a few pieces of piano and chamber music in her short life. She was born in Kensington, London, and must have been a prodigy, as her first piece was published at the age of just 12. She took her unusual first name from her mother, born Kaletha Marianne Childs. Some of her scores were published in Paris, and she was certainly living there around 1927 (her family seem to have moved overseas in the early 1900s), and she spent her last years living with a friend in Amersham, Bucks. She died in a hotel in Windsor, Berkshire (she sadly hung herself with a silk scarf), having gone there to escape the noise from pneumatic drills at her home, and had some incomplete manuscripts with her at the time. The beneficiary of her will (and dedicatee of her viola sonata – see here for some programme notes from a 2017 performance: musicalassumptions.blogspot.com/2017/02/) was her brother Gerald Hugh Borlase Fox (1900–95). I put these details here in the hope that people with more information on her might find this description and be able to add to what is known of her life. "The 5 Pieces were dedicated to another little-known British woman composer, and fellow member of the Society of Women Composers, the harpsichordist Dorothy Erhart (1894–1971)."
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Post by jk on Jan 19, 2022 13:12:03 GMT -5
While dusting a shelf yesterday I revisited a curious little "Pelican" book about Russian music. Published in 1944, I was amused to see in the Index at the back just one page devoted to "Women Composers" .* This includes a paragraph about Julia Weisberg, these days Yuliya Veysberg (1879/80–1942), and three sentences about the more prolific Barbara (now Varvara) Gaigerova (1903–1944), one of which is "Only a few songs have reached us so far". It follows this with "Three other names occur: Nina Biriukova, Zara Levina, and Nona Makarova", adding that "No particulars about them or works of theirs are available". Nina B gets a mention somewhere here, Zara Levina fares better, and Nina Makarova (1908–1976) gets the best treatment of all. Married to one of my earliest musical idols, the composer Aram Khachaturian, Ms Makarova wrote this stirring Symphony in D Minor, which she herself conducted in 1947. Olaf Koch does the honours on this occasion with the USSR State Symphony Orchestra: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Makarova* A footnote in the book requires mentioning, certainly in light of the women composers of so many nationalities I've discussed here in the past couple of years: "Only three European countries have women composers to show; the other two are England and France."
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Post by jk on Jan 20, 2022 13:48:22 GMT -5
A year or two ago, I heard a work on Dutch classical radio by Florence Price (1887–1953), her Symphony No. 1 in E Minor (1931–32). This had the distinction of being the first symphony written by an African-American woman to be performed by a major orchestra. It has a whiff of Dvořák about it, but only a whiff. I really like the mood it conveys. Here is a highly recommended version released last year by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra: I: Allegro ma non troppo: II: Largo, maestoso: III: Juba Dance. Allegro: IV: Finale. Presto: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Price
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