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Post by jk on Jun 23, 2023 4:15:28 GMT -5
The British composer Minna Keal (née Nerenstein, 1909–1999) wrote a number of works as a student but only resumed composing after a gap of more than half a century. Aged 80, she experienced her return to composition as a beginning rather than an end and felt as if she were living her life in reverse. "Her Symphony (1980–1985), a powerful, stormy, dissonantly chromatic work, organized around Golden Sections and making melodic use of 12-tone technique, has attracted considerable attention and was given its first complete performance at a BBC Promenade Concert in 1989" ( source): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minna_Keal
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Post by jk on Jun 24, 2023 4:09:02 GMT -5
The Israeli-American composer Shulamit Ran (born 1949) was the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music (the first being Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in 1983) with her Symphony (1990), regrettably unavailable on YouTube. "Each composition I create is a journey into the unknown. Although I aim to keep a close rein over every decision I make regarding pitch, timing, colour, the architecture of a piece and a myriad of other decisions large and small, the compositional process is still a grand adventure. I always aim, hope, to keep my performer and listener engaged and curious about what's to happen next. In the case of Under the Sun's Gaze, my desire was to compose a sonorous, brilliant composition, one that would feel 'tight' but also expansive. I wanted to surprise the listener, but also to make the unexpected 'feel right'." Under the Sun's Gaze: Concerto da Camera III (2003–2004) requires nine players: - flute doubling alto flute - flute doubling piccolo - 2 clarinets doubling bass clarinets - soprano saxophone - percussion - violin - cello - piano en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shulamit_Ran
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Post by jk on Jun 25, 2023 4:13:25 GMT -5
Cecilie Ore (born 1954) gained international acclaim during the 1980s for several of her electro-acoustic works. 1988 saw her winning both the first and second prize (how on earth did she manage that?) at the International Rostrum for Composers in the Electro Acoustic category for her work Etapper. This electro-acoustic piece, whose title translates as stages, is "based on a text selected from the novel Kontrapunktisk by the Norwegian writer Ole Robert Sunde and was commissioned by The Norwegian Centre of Writers. "In the piece the spoken and whispered sounds from the writer's reading of the text have been transformed, mainly by the use of digital and analogue filtering, echo and reverb techniques. Transitions of noise, also derived from these vocal sounds, have been used to mark the hidden transfigurations that lead the development from one stage to the next." [ Source] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilie_Ore
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Post by jk on Jun 26, 2023 3:41:18 GMT -5
Arguably the greatest claim to fame of the contralto, singing teacher and composer Charlotte Sainton-Dolby (1821–1885) is that Felix Mendelssohn, delighted by her singing in his oratorio St. Paul, wrote the contralto music in his Elijah for her voice, though she didn't sing in that work until some months after the premiere in 1846. Her compositions were popular in her day but according to Nigel Burton in the Women Composers book they "now seem insipid, her songs relying too heavily on the duller aspects of Mendelssohn's style". As if to confute this, here is the rousing "Triumphal March" from her then most popular work, the cantata The Legend of St Dorothea (1876): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Sainton-Dolby
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Post by jk on Jun 27, 2023 3:03:25 GMT -5
Kimi Sato (born 1949) had the distinction of being taught by Olivier Messiaen, whose illustrious roster of pupils includes the likes of Boulez and Stockhausen. It was on Messiaen's recommendation that she was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1984. Initially I couldn't find anything of hers on YouTube. This curious state of affairs was resolved on seeing this Japanese upload, giving it a listen -- armed with the description of her music in my women composers book -- and letting Google Translate loose on the title, which gave me "Prelude 'Emerald Illusion' for Amateur Orchestra": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimi_Sato
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Post by jk on Jun 28, 2023 3:20:10 GMT -5
Reine Colaço Osorio-Swaab (1881–1971) started composing late in life, with her first published works appearing in 1930. Three years earlier she had translated The Legend of Ba'al Shem by Austrian-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber into Dutch. She seems to have spent her entire life in Amsterdam; she never spoke about the war years. Her post-war music is predominantly atonal yet firmly rooted in melody. One such piece is this three-movement Sonatine for solo oboe . Written in 1959 when she was 78, it is the only work of hers to be found on YouTube: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reine_Cola%C3%A7o_Osorio-Swaab
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Post by jk on Jun 29, 2023 3:50:30 GMT -5
In the winter of 1922–23, the Danish composer Nancy Dalberg (1881–1949) stayed with her husband in Algeria in the hope that the mild North African climate would alleviate her recurrent health problems. While there, she took the opportunity to travel (by camel) to the oases of the Sahara and write down folk music which she later made use of in a trio, Arabic Music from Sahara (1928) for oboe, viola and drum, regrettably unavailable online. Her less exotic but nonetheless exhilarating Capriccio for Orchestra (c. 1918) is marked "Allegro energico": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Dalberg
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Post by jk on Jul 7, 2023 2:27:21 GMT -5
"The Calm Before", which I heard while briefly holidaying in the sunny south of NL, is the third track on the London-born musician Poppy Ackroyd's 2018 album Resolve. Unlike previous albums on which she plays everything, principally piano and violin, Resolve features guest instrumentalists, Manu Delago on hang, Mike Lesirge on flute and clarinets and Jo Quail on cello. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poppy_Ackroyd
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Post by jk on Jul 8, 2023 4:26:33 GMT -5
The Croatian composer Dora Pejačević has had to wait until now for a mention in this thread (or its predecessor) -- a shameful state of affairs mirroring the general neglect accorded her music until a short while ago. Long regarded as a national treasure in her own country, the tragically short-lived Ms Pejačević (1885–1923) is graced with no less than four works in this season's BBC Proms: Sonata in E minor, Op. 35 for cello and piano (1913); Ouverture in D minor, Op. 49 for large orchestra (1919); her combined songs for voice and orchestra (1915–1920); and this Symphony in F-sharp minor, Op. 41 for large orchestra (1916–17, revised 1920). If I've understood my source correctly, the symphony is scored for 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets in B b (doubling?) 2 clarinets in A, bass clarinet in B b (doubling?) bass clarinet in A, 3 bassoons, double bassoon, 6 horns (of which 2 offstage?), 2 trumpets in B b, 2 tenor trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, cymbals, chimes, triangle, xylophone, glockenspiel, harp and strings. To quote the Proms catalogue: "Listening to her Symphony, a work overflowing with late-Romantic passion, I'd challenge anybody not to wonder why it has taken so long for her to reach the international limelight." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Peja%C4%8Devi%C4%87
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Post by jk on Jul 9, 2023 3:12:30 GMT -5
The Dutchwoman Dina Appeldoorn (1884–1938) attended the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where one of her composition teachers was the composer and organist Johan Wagenaar. She herself later held piano classes there before turning to composing in earnest. In the 1930s she became involved with the Esperanto movement and wrote a great many songs in the constructed language. In 1934, she found a fan in Eduard Flipse, who was then conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. He and his orchestra promoted her work in the music community and in the concert hall. Her impressionist Pastorale for alto saxophone and small orchestra dates from that year: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dina_Appeldoorn
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Post by jk on Jul 10, 2023 3:05:49 GMT -5
Continuing this miniseries of Dutch women composers, Margriet Hoenderdos (1952–2010) first studied the piano in Zwolle and then composition with Tom de Leeuw in Amsterdam, graduating in 1985 with that year's Composition Prize in tow. According to Grove Music Online (most likely Helen Metzelaar), "[t]he works of Margriet Hoenderdos are characterized by a rigorous methodological approach rarely encountered in contemporary Dutch music. Hers is a radical research into the essence of sound." De lussen van Faverey (1990) is Ms Hoenderdos' response to poetry by Hans Faverey that he had specifically asked her to set to music. Instead of creating a traditional song cycle to Faverey's words, she transformed them into a woodwind quintet, framed as nine short movements: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margriet_Hoenderdos
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Post by jk on Jul 11, 2023 8:09:30 GMT -5
Born in what is now Djakarta, the Dutch composer and pianist Cornélie van Oosterzee (1863–1943) spent a disrupted youth that took her from The Hague to the Dutch East Indies and back again. Her studies then took her to Germany in the late 1880s, early '90s and she eventually settled in Berlin, living there until her death. There she wrote almost exclusively works for orchestra, some of which were performed with success by Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; regrettably, most of her work was lost during WWII. All that YouTube has to offer are these Four Mélodies for Clarinet and Piano, arrangements of songs that survived: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn%C3%A9lie_van_Oosterzee
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Post by jk on Jul 12, 2023 3:17:36 GMT -5
Anna Cramer (1873–1968) spent many years in Germany, first studying composition and then as a resident, before moving to Vienna in the mid 1920s. The complex harmonies and surprising modulations in the four collections of songs published up to 1910 disturbed some of her critics. Her own troubled life caused her to be hospitalized on two occasions; she spent the last eight years of her life in a nursing home in Blaricum (NL). Ten years before her death, she stored a suitcase of manuscripts at a bank in Amsterdam. These are now kept at the Nederlands Muziekinstituut in The Hague. A number of her songs have recently been recorded ( here). From Zwei Notturnos, this is "Im Pavillon": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Cramer
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Post by jk on Jul 13, 2023 15:31:50 GMT -5
Gerda Geertens (born 1955) studied music and then philosophy in her home province of Groningen before moving to Rotterdam to study composition with Klaas de Vries. To quote Helen Metzelaar (again), "she often interweaves different musical effects in kaleidoscopic fashion, building up tension until it is released as a dramatic outburst." Ms Geertens is well represented on YouTube by collaborations and instructional videos but finding a work by her alone was no easy matter. There was an unusable video of piano music and this chamber work, Schijnbewegingen (literally "feints", 2014) for saxophone ensemble, here getting its first performance on 16 May of that year. Cool to see her onstage at the end: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerda_Geertens
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Post by jk on Jul 14, 2023 3:53:52 GMT -5
Josina van Boetselaer (née Aerssen, 1733–1797) rubbed shoulders with Dutch Royalty from an early age. Her music teacher was court violinist Francesco Ricci, who dedicated six ariettas (short arias) to her, praising her singing as well as her composing talents. She also became acquainted with the likes of Leopold Mozart, who was accompanying Wolfgang and Nannerl on tour. (She seems also to have had a reputation as a portrait painter, although none of her paintings has survived.) Like yesterday's composer, today's is represented on YouTube by just one work, Che non mi disse un di (1780). My spies tell me it's one of five pieces comprising Josina's opus 4. Both it and opus 2 set words by Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782), the most celebrated librettist of the 18th century. A year earlier, Metastasio had written thanking her for the arias she had sent him. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, it was highly unusual for someone from the Dutch Republic to set Metastasio's texts to music. (Once again, my thanks to Helen Metzelaar for much of this information.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josina_van_Aerssen
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Post by jk on Jul 15, 2023 6:11:40 GMT -5
The Dutch Romantic composer and conductor Elisabeth Kuyper (1877–1953) has a hat-trick of firsts to her name, all in Berlin. In 1901, she was the first woman to be admitted to the Meisterschule für Komposition. She also became the first woman composer to be awarded the German Mendelssohn Scholarship and the first woman to be appointed Professor of Composition and Theory at the Hochschule für Musik, in 1905 and 1908 respectively. Ms Kuyper was a fervent supporter of women's rights in the male-dominated world of classical music (astonishingly, no major orchestras employed women at the time). Her major achievement in that field was to found women's symphony orchestras in Berlin, The Hague, London and New York, all regrettably forced to close down due to insufficient financial backing. Her Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in B Minor, Op. 10 had its premiere in 1908 conducted by its dedicatee, the by then 70-year-old Max Bruch (was Bruch the soloist?). The accompanying orchestra consists of 3 flutes, 3 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, harp and strings: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Kuyper
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Post by jk on Jul 16, 2023 4:16:39 GMT -5
During her short life, Gertrude van den Bergh (bapt.1793–1840) was regarded as one of the top pianists in Europe, admired by the likes of Felix Mendelssohn, Louis Spohr and the piano virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles. She was also the first Dutchwoman to publish an instruction manual on the fundamentals of music theory, Principes de musique (circa 1830). In that year too, she was invited to join a prestigious music promotion society (Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Toonkunst) five years before it officially accepted women. One of just seven compositions of hers that have survived is Rondeau pour le piano forte, op. 3 (circa 1820-21): nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_van_den_Bergh
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Post by jk on Jul 17, 2023 6:58:15 GMT -5
Johanna Bordewijk-Roepman (1892–1971) is better represented on YouTube (and indeed generally) than many of her predecessors in this thread. Still, I would have preferred to have linked her Les Illuminations for voice and orchestra (1940) to a text by Arthur Rimbaud. It was her first major success as a composer, performed in that year by the Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest under Eduard Flipse, whose lessons in orchestration were the only music lessons she ever received. In 1914 she married the celebrated Dutch author Ferdinand Bordewijk, who provided the libretti for a one-act opera and an oratorio in the 1940s. Instead of these presumably unrecorded works, here is her Violin Sonata of 1923: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanna_Bordewijk-Roepman
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Post by jk on Jul 18, 2023 3:37:53 GMT -5
The music educator and composer Catharina van Rennes (1858–1940) had a successful career as a singer in oratorios and was highly praised for her interpretations of Schumann lieder. Ms van Rennes also established her own singing school and developed her own teaching technique. These days she is best remembered as a prolific composer of children's songs, some of which are still sung today ( here). This Little Suite is the only instrumental work she wrote: nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharina_van_Rennes
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Post by jk on Jul 19, 2023 12:26:55 GMT -5
Jeanne Beijerman-Walraven (sometimes spelt Beyerman, 1878–1969) was born to Dutch parents in Semarang (Indonesia) before moving to NL, where she studied harmony and composition privately with Frits Koeberg in The Hague. Beijerman-Walraven's early compositions were Late Romantic in style, reflecting the influence of Mahler, Bruckner and Franck; later she adopted a more contemporary atonal language, her mature works being strongly expressionist. Although she received recognition early in her career, her work was seldom played after the 1920s. From 1910, this is her Concert-Overture, played by the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest in what is possibly the only recording of her music: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Beijerman-Walraven
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Post by jk on Jul 20, 2023 2:39:00 GMT -5
Ig Henneman (born 1945) studied viola and violin at the Amsterdam and Tilburg conservatories and composition with Robert Heppener, presumably in Amsterdam. On completing her studies, Ms Henneman worked as a violist in orchestras. In 1978 she co-founded the all-female rock band FC Gerania, which is when she started to compose. In 1985 she founded the Ig Henneman Quintet. She also improvises on viola with the Henneman Sextet, Duo Baars-Henneman with Ab Baars and the Queen Mab Trio. In 1983 she composed a score for Women of Ryazan ( Baby ryazanskie, 1927), a Soviet silent drama film directed by Olga Preobrazhenskaya, Russia's first female film director. "Since the nineties the music of the Russian composers Galina Ustvolskaya en Sofia Gubaidulina has been an inspiration for Henneman, who is attracted by the extremes of the former's structural severity and the latter’s improvisational freedom, also to be found in the work of the Hungarian composer György Kurtág. However, her influences are wide ranging and include jazz and pop music as well." [ Source] Rather than one of her pieces for solo instrument or duo, which quite frankly tire after a while, here is the David Kweksilber Big Band playing Shapes Lines and Layers, which Ms Henneman wrote for that band in 2015:
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Post by jk on Aug 9, 2023 7:34:39 GMT -5
The criminally neglected Dorothy Gow (1892–1982) was born in London, the youngest of six children from a Scottish family. The Music Society performed her works as early as 1922, and after this initial success, Ms Gow began studying at the Royal College of Music, where her teachers included Ralph Vaughan Williams. She was living at 184 Earls Court Road at the time of the 1901 census. [From her wiki] "Back at the Royal College of Music, * she formed a club with fellow composers Elisabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams. George Caird writes that due to her 'acute shyness, diffidence and ill-health she never enjoyed quite the same success as they (her colleagues) did.' Anne Macnaghten [sic] considered that Gow was perceived as being a composer of 'great distinction whose work became widely known and now is in danger of being forgotten.' Elisabeth Lutyens wrote that she was 'utterly devoid of malice or ambition. Her talent is original and her ear remarkable and the few works she has written are, to me outstanding.'" [ Source] Of her handful of compositions (just three of which are listed in the British Library Catalogue), only one has made it onto CD, the Oboe Quintet in one movement, which my spies tell me was written in 1936. No longer available on YouTube (but possibly on Spotify), a brief fragment from the opening "Moderato" can be heard here. Better than nothing, I suppose. * The time in between her two RCM stints was spent in Vienna studying with Egon Wellesz; this period would have the greatest impact on her compositional style.
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Post by jk on Aug 10, 2023 8:38:36 GMT -5
Grace Williams (1906–1977) is generally regarded as Wales's most notable female composer. In 1949, she became the first British woman to score a feature film, Blue Scar. Like her friends Elizabeth Maconchy, Dorothy Gow and Imogen Holst, Ms Williams studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music. Like Dorothy Gow, who may also have been awarded a travelling scholarship, she chose to study with Egon Wellesz in Vienna, in her case for more than a year. Her Symphony No. 2 was originally composed in 1956 and substantially revised in 1975, two year before the composer's death. This stirring work is scored for 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (2nd doubling cor anglais), 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (two players), harp and strings: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Williams
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Post by jk on Nov 1, 2023 7:55:33 GMT -5
I heard this remarkable piece this morning on Dutch radio. My phone gave me a title (“Heartweaving”) and a composer (Daniela Mars) but said nothing about the low-pitched wind instrument I was hearing. Was it a tuba of some kind? Turns out it was a bass flute, played by the composer with Paul Smith at the piano: tjflutes.com/artists/danielamars
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Post by jk on Dec 6, 2023 14:54:49 GMT -5
This afternoon, Dutch "classical" radio played the opening movement, "Kevään tulo" (The Coming of Spring), from Helvi Leiviskä's Orchestral Suite No. 2, Op. 11, from a CD released last October by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dalia Stasevska. That first movement is unavailable on YouTube, as is the closing "Epilogi" (Epilogue) -- understandably, as they want you to buy the album -- so instead here are the two middle movements, "Humoreski" (Humoresque)… ...and "Kehtolaulu" (Lullaby): If I've done my sums correctly, the work is scored for two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets, one trombone, timpani, percussion (one player) and strings. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvi_Leivisk%C3%A4
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