ELIZABETH MACONCHY - UK
BORN 19 MARCH
Elizabeth Maconchy was a composer of great versatility and unfailing integrity, amply deserving of a British critic’s description of her as ‘one of the most substantial composers these islands have yet produced’. Born to Irish parents in Hertfordshire on 19 March 1907, she grew up in rural Ireland, playing the piano and writing music from the age of six. She studied at the Royal College of Music with Vaughan Williams, who remained a lifelong friend; but she was attracted less by English pastoralism than by the central European modernism of Bartók and Janáček, and she completed her studies with K.B. Jirák in Prague.
In the post-war era, Maconchy was greatly in demand as a composer amongst the leading professional ensembles, orchestras and soloists of the day, whilst also writing for amateurs and students, and was recognised as a leader of her profession: she chaired the Composers’ Guild of Great Britain, was President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music, and in 1987 was appointed Dame of the British Empire. She lived in an Essex village with her husband, the scholar and medical historian William LeFanu, to whom she was married for over sixty years; the younger of their two daughters is the composer Nicola LeFanu. ‘Betty’ Maconchy, as she was affectionately known by many, died in November 1994.
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KATIA TIUTIUNNIK - AUSTRALIA
BORN 19 MARCH
Katia Tiutiunnik is an Australian violist, scholar and composer. She is of Russian, Ukrainian and Irish descent.
Tiutiunnik's compositions have been published in Australia, Italy and the United States and are held in several international libraries, including the Bodleian Library at Oxford University (which also holds a copy of her doctoral thesis, The Symbolic Dimension: An Exploration of the Compositional Process), Harvard College Library, the National Library of Australia and the Wiener Music Library at Columbia University. On 11 December 2009, a revised version of Tiutiunnik's doctoral dissertation was published as a book and released internationally. Tiutiunnik's published dissertation received an extensive, scholarly review by Australian musicologist, Dr. Sally Macarthur, in the prestigious, peer reviewed journal, Musicology Australia, in July 2011.
The symbolic dimensions of a number of Tiutiunnik's compositions have been associated with the motif of the journey through darkness to illumination. Also, several of Tiutiunnik's works have been inspired by Islamic mysticism and related traditions—the musical symbols therein often manifesting themselves in the form of compositional processes emanating from her interpretations of Near Eastern traditions of numerology. Other important influences on the symbolic dimensions of Tiutiunnik's compositions include the landscapes, flora and fauna of Australia; historical and current events pertaining to the Middle East, in addition to the religion and mythology of Ancient Mesopotamia.
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Night Journey for String Quartet by Katia Tiutiunnik
Night Journey for String Quartet by Katia Tiutiunnik
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