Photograph of Marion Bauer Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Marion Bauer (1882-1955) 

Marion Bauer was a significant American modernist composer, as well as a teacher and a music critic. She was Nadia Boulanger’s first American student, and became an influential pedagogue herself, teaching composition at New York City University and the Julliard School. Bauer was also a Pacific Northwest composer: she was born in Walla-Walla and her parents were married at Temple Beth Israel right here in Portland, Oregon!

In this video, the Portland Youth Philharmonic plays Bauer’s tone poem Sun Splendor in a 2016 performance at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Sun Splendor originally premiered in 1947, in a performance by the New York Philharmonic directed Leopold Stokowski. 

Photograph of Mana-Zucca courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Mana–Zucca (1885-1981) 

Piano prodigy, singer, actress, and composer Gussie Zuckermann was born in New York City to a Polish immigrant family. She adopted her unique stage name in her teens. Mana–Zucca’s early successes included a Carnegie Hall performance in 1902 in a concert presented by Walter Damrosch, followed by a European concert tour, during which she met musical luminaries such as Teresa Carreño. Mana–Zucca was incredibly versatile: she wrote orchestral music, chamber music, and popular songs; she sang in musical comedies; she established a musical salon at her Miami home. In this video, you’ll hear three of her piano works: her Prelude, Op. 73; Bolero de Concert, Op. 72, No. 2; and Badinage, Op. 288. 

Photograph of Vally Weigl courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Vally Weigl (1884 or 1889-1982) 

Born in Austria, Vally Weigl studied musicology at Vienna University, as well as composition and piano. She and her husband, composer Karl Weigl, emigrated to the United States in 1938 to escape Nazi oppression. (Weigl’s sister, Käthe, would be murdered at a Nazi death camp several years later). In addition to composing, Weigl was an influential music therapist, serving at New York Medical College and publishing widely in her field.

Our Weigl selection is her New England Suite, composed in the 1950s. This lyrical, rapturous chamber work describes scenes from New England in four movements: “Vermont Nocturne,” “Maine Interlude,” “Berkshire Pastorale” and “Connecticut Country Fair.”  

Photograph of Vivian Fine courtesy of VivianFine.com

Vivian Fine (1913-2000) 

American composer and pianist Vivian Fine enrolled at Chicago Musical College at a mere five years of age, and as an adult, she went on to study with Ruth Crawford Seeger and Roger Sessions. Her work as a collaborative pianist for New York dance companies led to several dance compositions, including one for Martha Graham. Among Fine’s many accomplishments, she taught at the Julliard School, New York University, and Bennington College in Vermont, and she helped found the American Composers’ Alliance. Vivian Fine composed her Piece for Muted Strings (Elegiac Song) in 1937, and it premiered in March of 1939 at a League of Composers concert in New York City. The work is a response to the Spanish Civil War: Fine was strongly opposed to Franco’s Fascist regime. Fine designated the work “for the children of Spain.”  

Photograph of Miriam Gideon courtesy of the Milken Archive

Miriam Gideon (1906-1996)  

Miriam Gideon was particularly drawn to sacred music. Her father was a Reform rabbi, and her uncle, whom she visited every summer as a child, was the director of music at Temple Israel in Boston. Gideon studied composition with Lazare Saminsky and Roger Sessions, as well earning degrees from Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary, where she also taught for forty years. Gideon holds the distinction of being the first woman commissioned to compose a setting for Jewish liturgy. In addition to her many sacred and choral works, Gideon’s instrumental pieces, like this Air for Violin and Piano (1950) display a compelling, expressive, freely atonal musical language. 

Photograph of Judith Shatin by Peter Schaaf, courtesy of JudithShatin.com

Judith Shatin (b. 1949) 

Judith Shatin is a composer equally at home in traditional classical sonorities and electronic music. A graduate of the Julliard School and Princeton University, Shatin is Professor Emerita at the University of Virginia and the founder of the Virginia Center for Electronic Music. Shatin’s Hark My Love (1991) is a tender piece for choir and piano, dedicated to Shatin’s husband.

In her program note, Shatin writes, “Hark My Love is a setting of verses from the Song of Songs in Marvin Pope’s translation for the Anchor Bible (verses 8-10, 14, 16-17). This richly-textured symbolic text sparked my musical imagination, and the lyrical translation and rhythmic flow of this translation seemed especially apt for musical interpretation. I tried to capture something of the spirit and content of the word in the musical flow and text setting.”

Photograph of Shulamit Ran courtesy of the Milken Family Foundation

Shulamit Ran (b. 1949) 

Israeli-American composer Shulamit Ran wrote her first songs in Hebrew when she was a child growing up in Tel Aviv. Ran studied at the Mannes School of Music, and she serves on the faculty of the University of Chicago. Her many accolades include a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for music. Our playlist features Ran’s Birds of Paradise, a work for flute and piano commissioned by the Chicago Flute Club’s 25th Anniversary Commission. In her program note for Birds of Paradise, Ran writes, “My decision to name this 12-minute work Birds of Paradise was based purely on the imagined vision of a fantastical bird of many bright and amazing colors and the ability to soar high and in different speeds, conjured up in my mind.” 

Photograph of Julia Wolfe by Peter Serling, courtesy of JuliaWolfeMusic.com

Julia Wolfe (b. 1958) 

Julia Wolfe is an American composer whose eclectic style draws on classical, folk, minimalist and rock musics. In 2015, her oratorio Anthracite Fields, about Pennsylvania coal mining, won the Pulitzer Prize for music. The oratorio was part of a series she has created about the American worker, which continued in 2019 with Wolfe’s Fire in My Mouth. Scored for women’s and girls’ choirs and orchestra, this composition explores the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a tragedy in which 146 garment workers perished due to the lack of safety precautions taken by factory management. Wolfe commemorated the fire’s victims by scoring the piece for exactly 146 vocalists. 

In her program note, Wolfe explains, “I had been thinking about immigrant women in the workforce at the turn of the century. They fled their homelands to escape poverty and persecution. The garment workers arrived to these shores with sewing skills. Many of the women wound up working on these huge factory floors — hundreds of women sitting at sewing machines. Fire in My Mouth tells the story of the women who persevered and endured challenging conditions, women who led the fight for reform in the workplace.” 

Photograph of Lera Auerbach by Friedrich Reinhold, courtesy of LeraAuerbach.com

Lera Auerbach (b. 1973) 

Lera Auerbach is a leading contemporary composer and a versatile artist: she is also a concert pianist, visual artist and poet. Her catalogue includes symphonies, string quartets, ballets and operas: she frequently explores traditional genres in a contemporary voice. Aurebach’s 1999 set of 24 Preludes for Violin and Piano is part of a tradition laid down by Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, which explored each major and minor key in preludes and fugues for keyboard. Chopin’s 24 Préludes extended this tradition in a curious way: Chopin’s “preludes” were not a prelude to anything else, simply standalone miniatures in forms of his own devising. Chopin’s take on preludes gave composers a genre that offers a great deal of freedom. Auerbach first dove into this tradition with her 24 Preludes for Piano, Op. 41 (1998), and she explored it further in her 24 Preludes for Cello and Piano, Op. 47. 

From Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson by Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland composed this song cycle in 1950, and it is among the best-known musical settings of Dickinson. The cycle became a recital staple for many singers, including the late American soprano Phyllis Curtin, who admired Copland’s sensitivity to Dickinson’s unique syntax: “It is the pattern of Emily’s remarkable speech that Aaron understood absolutely.”

Heart! We will forget him!
You and I — tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave —
I will forget the light!

When you have done, pray tell me,
That I may straight begin!
Haste! lest while you’re lagging
I remember him!

From Three Pieces after Emily Dickinson by Mary Howe

Three Pieces after Emily Dickinson (1941) is a work for string quartet by American composer and pianist Mary Howe. Howe, a student of Nadia Boulanger, was an important musical force in early 20th-century Washington, D.C.: she was a co-founder of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Chamber Music Society of Washington. Along with Amy Beach, Howe also co-founded the Society of American Women Composers in 1925. “Summer of Hesperides” is inspired by the last line this Dickinson poem:

Except the smaller size
No lives are round —
These — hurry to a sphere
And show and end —
The larger — slower grow
And later hang —
The Summers of Hesperides
Are long.

From Nine Songs by George Walker

American composer George Walker had a strong affinity for vocal music. His Lilacs, for voice and orchestra, won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1996 – the first won by an African-American composer. Walker’s many art songs include several Emily Dickinson settings, including “I Went to Heaven,” from his 1991 cycle of Nine Songs.

I went to Heaven —
‘Twas a small Town —
Lit — with a Ruby —
Lathed — with Down —

Stiller — than the fields
At the full Dew —
Beautiful — as Pictures —
No Man drew.
People — like the Moth —
Of Mechlin — frames —
Duties — of Gossamer —
And Eider — names —
Almost — contented —
I — could be —
‘Mong such unique
Society —

From Of Being Is a Bird by Augusta Read Thomas

Of Being Is a Bird (Emily Dickinson Settings) is a 2015 work for soprano and orchestra by American composer Augusta Read Thomas. “The most triumphant Bird I ever knew or met” is the third movement in the cycle. This exuberant setting portrays the bird’s delightfully unpredictable flight patterns, and its contrapuntally treated melodies show the stylized influence of birdsong.

The most triumphant Bird I ever knew or met
Embarked upon a twig today
And till Dominion set
I famish to behold so eminent a sight
And sang for nothing scrutable
But intimate Delight.
Retired, and resumed his transitive Estate —
To what delicious Accident
Does finest Glory fit!

By Tōru Takemitsu

Quotation of Dream (1991) for two pianos and orchestra is a neo-impressionist work inspired by the ocean. Water, in all its forms, is a common theme in the music of Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu. This work, which the composer wrote for Paul Crossley and Peter Serkin, explores its extra-musical theme with quotations: musical quotations from Debussy’s tone poem La mer, and a subtitle quoted from Emily Dickinson’s “My river runs to thee.”

My River runs to thee —
Blue Sea! Wilt welcome me?
My River wait reply —
Oh Sea — look graciously —
I’ll fetch thee Brooks
From spotted nooks —
Say — Sea — Take Me!

From Seven Dickinson Songs by Emily Lau

American composer Emily Lau is the founder of The Broken Consort, an innovative chamber ensemble that is in residence with Portland’s own Big Mouth Society. Lau’s Seven Dickinson Songs come from The Broken Consort’s 2019 album, Isle of Majesty. “I Never Saw a Moor” is a haunting, neo-Renaissance work scored for early instruments and percussion, which beautifully captures the mystery of Dickinson’s rather metaphysical text. You may have heard Emily Lau’s Dickinson settings recently on our show Club Mod!

I never saw a Moor —
I never saw the Sea —
Yet know I how the Heather looks
And what a Billow be.

I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in Heaven —
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given —

From Letters from Emily by Grant Edwards

Letters from Emily is a new oratorio by Portland composer Grant Edwards, which premiered in 2019. The work sets twenty-seven Dickinson poems to music, and one is referenced in the title:

This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me,—

Edwards explains, “Our lives are our ‘letters to the world’—a world which promises nothing in return. The sun sets, the sun rises, love is gained and lost, sanity is exposed as madness (and vice-versa)—yet, at times, hope flies in from where we least expect it.”

The ninth movement is an exhilarating chorus on one of Dickinson’s most beloved poems.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.