RUTH SCHÖNTHAL - GERMANY
BORN 27 JUNE
BORN 27 JUNE
Ruth Schonthal was born in Hamburg of Viennese parents. At the age of five she began composing and became the youngest student ever accepted at the Stern'sche Konservatorium in Berlin. In 1935, Schonthal and her family were forced to leave Nazi Germany for Stockholm on account of her Jewish heritage. She later studied at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in Stockholm, where at the age of fourteen, she had her first sonatina published. At the RAM she studied composition with Ingemar Liljefors and piano with Olaf Wibergh. Then, she was once again forced to flee as a result of the rising political tension, and eventually traveled to a variety of places: first the USSR, then Japan, and then Mexico City, where at the age of 19 she gave a very widely acclaimed piano performance of her own compositions, including her First Piano Concerto, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Among the audience members was the noted German composer Paul Hindemith, who obtained a scholarship for her to study with him at Yale in 1946. She was one of the few of Hindemith's students to graduate from the Conservatory with honors.
In 1950, Schonthal married the painter Paul Bernhard Seckel (b. 1918) and settled in New York City, eventually moving to New Rochelle, where she lived for most of her life. One of her three sons is Al Seckel, an authority on visual illusions.
Schonthal received commissions for chamber music, operas, symphonic compositions, as well as works for organ and piano. She taught composition and music theory at NYU until 2006 when deteriorating health forced her to resign. She also taught composition and piano privately and was the first composition teacher of American composer Lowell Liebermann. One close student of hers, between 2003 and 2005, the unknown Stephanie Germanotta, went on to great fame in the pop music world as Lady Gaga. Schonthal used her music to support herself and her family throughout her life: she wrote for television and commercials, played the piano in various bars and clubs, and taught privately in New York.
Her works are widely performed in the US and abroad, but her music is perhaps most well known in her native Germany. Her music is published by Oxford University Press, Southern Music Co, Carl Fischer, G. E. Schirmer, Sisra Press, Fine Arts Music Co, Hildegard Music Publishing Co, nd Furore and recorded on LP on the Capriccio, Crystal, Leonarda, Opus One and Orion Labels, many of them reissued on CDs on the Leonarda and Cambria labels.
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A Bird Song About by Ruth Schöntal
A Bird Song About by Ruth Schöntal
DARIA SEMEGEN - GERMANY
BORN 27 JUNE
Daria Semegen is a composer of instrumental, vocal and electronic music. As a recognized authority on electronic music composition, she has been the subject of many articles and several dissertations including A. E. Hinkle-Turner's doctoral dissertation "Daria Semegen: A Study of the Composer's Life", Work and Music (University of Illinois-Urbana).
Semegen's writings on creative process, aesthetics and pedagogy have been published in the U.S. and abroad. She studied at the Eastman School of Music, in mixed-media workshops at the Rochester Institute of Technology, at Yale and Columbia Universities and in Warsaw, Poland as a Fulbright fellow. She taught at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center from 1971-1975 and was a sound engineer at the Collection of World Music (Columbia University) working with field recordings of native musics from many continents.
Her awards include six National Endowment for the Arts grants, two BMI awards, two awards from Yale University, a National Chamber Music Competition prize, an ISCM International Electronic Music Competition prize; fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, Tanglewood and Chautauqua; a Pennsylvania Institute for the Arts & Humanistic Studies award; and the 1994 Alumni Achievement Award from Eastman School of Music.
Prof. Semegen was the first woman awarded a McKim Commission from the Library of Congress. Recordings of her music include Rhapsody (for Yamaha MIDI grand piano), Electronic Composition No. 1; Arc (electronic/dance); Spectra, Music for Violin Solo; Jeux de Quatres.. Other works include Arabesque(electronic), Vignette (piano), Elegy-Caprice (toy piano- for J.Cage) , Epicycles (electronic/dance); Triptych (orchestra), Dans la Nuit (baritone & orchestra), Lieder (soprano & ensemble); virtuoso solo works including violin, contrabass and clarinet solos.
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