"I am NOT a Woman Composer!" The Life and Music of Louise Talma (1906-1996)

By -


I am writing a biography about composer, pianist, and pedagogue Louise Talma. The working title of this biography is “I am NOT a Woman Composer!” The Life and Music of Louise Talma (1906-1996). I have an advance contract with the University of Illinois Press. Three more chapters, three more years (yes, my 12-month, full-time job takes lots of time). But now that I am about halfway through the book, the momentum is helping. Right now, I am writing Chapter IV which is built around the correspondence between Talma and Pulitzer Prize winner Thornton Wilder. Together they wrote a three-act grand opera, The Alcestiad. It was premiered in Germany in 1962 to twenty minutes of audience cheers, but has never been performed since or in the original language. Talma declared it "too expensive."

I am writing this book because when I ask people how many twentieth century female composers they can name, I hear crickets. Talma is part of the fabric of twentieth century art music history that could be lost. Also, women who write music are still, today, in the twenty first century, struggling. This is still current news. Equity is a long way off.

Below, find a brief outline of each chapter. Feel free to contact me for more information. And stay tuned! Three more chapters, three more years!

Chapter Summaries:

Introduction. This section will set the stage with background of research activities involved as well as the materials, collections consulted and individuals interviewed.

I. Prelude: 1906-1925. This background chapter will include the context of early years in France where Talma was born. I will investigate the myth her mother perpetuated that Louise’s father died before her birth and chronicle the move of Louise and her mother, Cécile, to the states in 1914; early musical training with Cécile and at the Institute of Musical Art (later, The Juilliard School); early piano performances; piano and composition awards.

**II. Marraine: Fontainebleau and Nadia Boulanger: 1926-1942. Because of the influence Nadia Boulanger had on Talma personally and because Boulanger was a giant figure in the world of Twentieth Century American music, focus on this affiliation is essential for a clear picture of Talma the musician, the teacher, and the woman. This chapter aims to portray their relationship through examination of a correspondence spanning over fifty years (from 1928-1979) and consisting of more than five hundred items with thousands of pages.

**III.  Live Free or Die: The MacDowell Colony:  1943-1951. Talma was devastated after the death of her mother. She had a falling out with Boulanger and was emotionally undone. Her family was gone, she was alienated from her godmother – she was suicidal. Along with the family doctor, who took her in during the crisis, she credits Marion Bauer, her teacher at NYU, with rescuing her. Bauer suggested a residency at the MacDowell Colony. Starting in 1943 Talma found refuge in these woods and wrote most of her music there.

*IV.  Thorny: Serialism, Thornton Wilder, and The Alcestiad: 1952-1963. Talma met Thornton Wilder in 1952 at the MacDowell Colony. He transformed her life. They collaborated on an opera, The Alcestiad. It took three years to write and two to orchestrate. The two met all over the world to work on it. In 1952, Louise joined a growing number of composers who adopted the 12-tone technique. Wilder was taken by her atonal sound world.

V.  A Wreath of Blessings: 1964-1996. After The Alcestiad Talma received recognition and awards and arrived as a composer in her own right. She wrote a chamber opera ten years later, Have You Heard? Do You Know? – the only work for which she also wrote the text. It is a rhapsody to nature as a solution to our hectic, modern world. Accounts of her later life are enriched with stories derived from interviews with academic colleagues and fellow colonists during her many residencies at MacDowell. As feminism rose, she struggled with gender issues.

** Draft completed
* Draft in progress

Humbly submitted,

Sarah B. Dorsey

sbdorsey@gmail.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Other Features

MLA Women in Music Blog Feature: Anne LeBaron

By -
Image
Tune into composer, avant-garde harpist, professor, and writer Anne LeBaron's YouTube channel or SoundCloud channel and experience her music while learning about her. Anne LeBaron: biography [text by Anne LeBaron; photos provided by Anne LeBaron] A West Coast experimentalist who is an innovative performer on the harp as well as a composer embracing unusual challenges, Anne LeBaron’s compositions have been performed around the globe. Venues in Italy, Mexico, Sydney, Vienna, Sweden, Kazakhstan, New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere have programmed her works for chamber groups, opera, cantatas, and presented her as a performer. Her operas celebrate legendary figures such as Pope Joan, Eurydice, Marie Laveau, the American Housewife, and Aldous Huxley. Her current opera-in-progress, Huxley’s Last Trip , (formerly LSD: The Opera) was awarded one of the first Discovery Grants from Opera America. The orchestra includes instruments built by American compos
Read more

Mu Phi Epsilon

By -
Image
In 1903, Dr. Winthrop Sterling, Dean of the Metropolitan College of Music, Elocution and Dramatic Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, had a dream that women music students should have an organization that would bring them together, providing a sense of well-being and guidance. He enlisted the help of his 19-year-old assistant and fellow faculty member, Elizabeth Mathias (later Elizabeth Mathias Fuqua) to establish such an organization. Image courtesy of the Mu Phi Epsilon 1904 Year-Book   Mu Phi Epsilon was to be chartered as a National Music Sorority, the first of its kind in the United States, working for a stronger foothold in the musical world where there could be equal opportunities for both sexes. Thus, the Mu Phi Epsilon Alpha Chapter held its first meeting with thirteen young women on that fateful November 13, 1903 (yes, it was a Friday!). The establishment of the Beta Chapter at the New England Conservatory in Boston soon followed, November 30, 1903.   Imag
Read more

Dr. Deon Nielsen Price: concert pianist, composer, music professor, mother of five

By -
Image
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1934, Deon Nielsen was living at Fort Clayton in the Panama Canal Zone around 1946, when her father was stationed there. She was already a pianist and, at age 12, had her first paying job as a ballet school accompanist. She and her family regularly attended concerts at the National Theater. At one, she heard pianist Arthur Rubinstein , and at another, pianist Gyorgy Sandor . "I even slipped backstage during intermission for their autographs," she remembers. Those great pianists inspired her to become a concert pianist herself. Nearly 60 years later, in June 2005 , Deon returned to Panama with her son, Dr. Berkeley Price, a clarinetist--this time to give a concert. "Returning to the site of my early ambition now completes a circle," she told the audience. Ironically, Gyorgy Sandor died later that year. Deon attended high school in San Francisco, and took lessons from C.W. Reid at the San Francisco Academy of Music. She accompa
Read more