NANCY DALBERG - DENMARK
BORN 6 JULY
BORN 6 JULY
Nancy Dalberg was a Danish composer. She grew up on the Danish island of Funen (Fyn) where she learned to play the piano. Her father, a well-off industrialist, refused her wish to study at the Royal Conservatory in Copenhagen. In the end she took up composition because of medical issues that affected her arm. She had private composition lessons with Johan Svendsen, Fini Henriques and Carl Nielsen. Her output was not particularly large and most of her works were written between 1914 and 1935. Her compositions include around 40 songs, orchestral music and chamber works. She was the first Danish woman composer to write a symphony. It was premiered to critical acclaim although it was noted with surprise and perhaps a touch of condescension that Dalberg was a woman. The two strongest influences that can be heard in her music are those of Svendsen and Nielsen although she writes entirely with her own voice.
Her chamber music has received the most attention and one of her three string quartets, her Second String Quartet in G minor, Op.14 has entered the repertoire of many Scandinavian ensembles and was recorded on a Dacapo CD in 1999. (Dacapo 8.224138) The parts and score to this work were republished by Edition Silvertrust in June 2007.
Writing of Dalberg's String Quartet No.2 in Walter Willson Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, Wilhelm Altmann, one of the most respected chamber music critics, states:
“Nancy Dalberg published this work without giving her forename, and, had I not learned by chance that it was composed by a woman, considering also the austerity and native strength of her music, it would never have occurred to me that it was a woman speaking to us. Her mastery of the technique of composition is remarkable, and she has something definite to say.”
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Capriccio by Nancy Dalberg
Capriccio by Nancy Dalberg
MARIA HOFFER - AUSTRIA
BORN 6 JULY
Maria Hofer was a renowned organist, pianist and composer. The daughter of an accomplished female singer, she was born in Amstetten, Lower Austria. Already as a child she was learning the organ, and within a few years was permitted to participate in church services as organist.
Maria Hofer’s later musical education took place at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where she studied piano teaching. She also began an organ study, but soon resigned because she did not get along with her teacher. According to Maria Hofer's Curriculum Vitae written in 1966/1967 and other auto/biographical documents her tutors included Franz Schmidt, Hermann Graedener, Ernst Ludwig, and Richard Stöhr. Her ability to improvise at the organ was fostered by the organist of St. Stephan's Cathedral, Victor Boschetti; she began to compose in earnest during the First World War.
One of Maria Hofer's non-performing roles was to advise the Viennese publishing-house Universal Edition about organ works; she herself described the post as important for her musical development, since it brought her into contact with many prominent artistic figures, including Maurice Ravel, Alexander Zemlinsky, Darius Milhaud, Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Alfredo Casella, Alma Mahler, Franz Werfel, and Stefan Zweig.
Universal Edition also published some of her compositions, including the 'Toccata für Orgel' (1937). This work was dedicated to the composer's long-time friend, Yella Hertzka, the wife of UE's director Emil Hertzka and an active feminist. Between 1926 and 1938, in fact, Maria Hofer lived in the house of the Hertzkas. Yella Hertzka was also a leading member of the Austrian branch and the international executive committee of the 'Women's International League for Peace and Freedom' (WILPF), which Maria Hofer joined at Friederike Zweig-Winternitz's suggestion, and for which she created a 'peace anthem' in 1925.
After end of war Maria Hofer’s work got the deserved appreciation: Contract compositions, concerts, radio broadcastings and publications contributed to the distribution of her works.
Influenced by the personality of Maria Hofer, an active musical life developed in Kitzbühel during the two decades after 1945. For the glockenspiel the composer had initiated, she wrote a number of pieces. With these works in numerous concerts, alternating with organ concerts, she addressed the native as well as the foreign audience. A multitude of liturgical compositions and church service on the organ for decades complete the picture of this exceptional woman.
Absolutely impoverished and disappointed, Maria Hofer distanced herself especially from her early works and shortly before her death destroyed many of her compositions.
A comprehensive appraisal of the compositional work of Maria Hofer is difficult because of the only fragmentary tradition. The Toccata for Organ is one of the few completely passed down compositions for this instrument. The completion of fragments, for example an organ fugue over the theme of the Andreas Hofer song, is intended.
Maria Hofer was a renowned organist, pianist and composer. The daughter of an accomplished female singer, she was born in Amstetten, Lower Austria. Already as a child she was learning the organ, and within a few years was permitted to participate in church services as organist.
Maria Hofer’s later musical education took place at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where she studied piano teaching. She also began an organ study, but soon resigned because she did not get along with her teacher. According to Maria Hofer's Curriculum Vitae written in 1966/1967 and other auto/biographical documents her tutors included Franz Schmidt, Hermann Graedener, Ernst Ludwig, and Richard Stöhr. Her ability to improvise at the organ was fostered by the organist of St. Stephan's Cathedral, Victor Boschetti; she began to compose in earnest during the First World War.
One of Maria Hofer's non-performing roles was to advise the Viennese publishing-house Universal Edition about organ works; she herself described the post as important for her musical development, since it brought her into contact with many prominent artistic figures, including Maurice Ravel, Alexander Zemlinsky, Darius Milhaud, Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Alfredo Casella, Alma Mahler, Franz Werfel, and Stefan Zweig.
Universal Edition also published some of her compositions, including the 'Toccata für Orgel' (1937). This work was dedicated to the composer's long-time friend, Yella Hertzka, the wife of UE's director Emil Hertzka and an active feminist. Between 1926 and 1938, in fact, Maria Hofer lived in the house of the Hertzkas. Yella Hertzka was also a leading member of the Austrian branch and the international executive committee of the 'Women's International League for Peace and Freedom' (WILPF), which Maria Hofer joined at Friederike Zweig-Winternitz's suggestion, and for which she created a 'peace anthem' in 1925.
After end of war Maria Hofer’s work got the deserved appreciation: Contract compositions, concerts, radio broadcastings and publications contributed to the distribution of her works.
Influenced by the personality of Maria Hofer, an active musical life developed in Kitzbühel during the two decades after 1945. For the glockenspiel the composer had initiated, she wrote a number of pieces. With these works in numerous concerts, alternating with organ concerts, she addressed the native as well as the foreign audience. A multitude of liturgical compositions and church service on the organ for decades complete the picture of this exceptional woman.
Absolutely impoverished and disappointed, Maria Hofer distanced herself especially from her early works and shortly before her death destroyed many of her compositions.
A comprehensive appraisal of the compositional work of Maria Hofer is difficult because of the only fragmentary tradition. The Toccata for Organ is one of the few completely passed down compositions for this instrument. The completion of fragments, for example an organ fugue over the theme of the Andreas Hofer song, is intended.
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