BETSY JOLAS - FRANCE
BORN 5 AUGUST
BORN 5 AUGUST
Betsy JOLAS is the daughter of translator Maria Jolas and poet and journalist Eugène Jolas, founder of the well known literary magazine "transition", in which the "Finnegans Wake" of James Joyce was published under the heading "work in progress". She came to the U.S. in 1940, completed her general schooling, then started studying composition with Paul Boepple, piano with Helen Schnabel and organ with Carl Weinrich. After graduating from Bennington College, Betsy Jolas returned to Paris in 1946 to continue her studies with Darius Milhaud, Simone Plé-Caussade and Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique of Paris.
Prize winner of the International Conducting Competition of Besançon (1953), she has since won many awards, including Copley Foundation of Chicago (1954), ORTF (1961), American Academy of Arts (1973), Koussevitsky Fondation (1974), Grand Prix National de la Musique (1974), Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris (1981), Grand Prix de la SACEM (1982). Betsy Jolas became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1983.
In 1985 she was promoted to Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 1992 she received the Maurice Ravel Prix International and was named "Personality of the Year" for France. In 1994 she was awarded the Prix SACEM for the best première performance of the year for her work "Frauenleben". She was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995 and made Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 1997.From 1971 to 1974 Betsy Jolas replaced Olivier Messiaen at his course at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique of Paris and was appointed to the faculty in 1975.
She has also taught at Tanglewood, Yale, Harvard, Mills College (Darius Milhaud chair), Berkeley, USC and San Diego University, to name a few.Her works, written for a great variety of combinations, have been Widely performed throughout the world by first class artists such as Elisabeth Chojnacka, Kent Nagano, William Christie, Claude Helffer, Kim Kashkashian... and by leading groups : The Boston Symphony Chamber Players, the) Concord Quartet, the Domaine Musical, the Percussions de Strasbourg, the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the London Sinfonietta, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Philharmonia, etc. Twelve of her works have been recorded for EMI, Adès, CRI, Erato, Barclay, several of which have been the recipients of grand prize gramophone awards.
♫ LISTEN
Petite Suite Varieé by Betsy Jolas
TERA DE MAREZ OYENS - NETHERLANDS
BORN 5 AUGUST
BORN 5 AUGUST
Tera de Marez Oyens was a Dutch composer. She studied at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam with a major in piano, studying the instrument with Jan Odé, and graduated in 1953 (Metzelaar n.d.). Here, her talent for composition was discovered as she wrote her first pieces. These included chamber music and song cycles. After that she came in contact with youth groups, for whom she also wrote individual pieces.
She then became the cantor of the Reformed church community of Hilversum. Because of this she was very busy with church music. She wrote 14 melodies for the church songbooks that appeared in 1973. The lyrics for these songs were supplied by, among others, Muus Jacobse, Willem Barnard and Ad den Besten, whom she knew personally.
In the 1960s she became interested in electronic music, and studied with Gottfried Michael Koenig at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht (Metzelaar n.d.). Sound and Silence (1971) and Mixed Feelings (1973) are pieces of electronic music she composed, and Pente Sjawoe is an example of a work in which the tone poem plays an important role.
In 1978 she became an instructor at the conservatory in Zwolle, where she taught until 1988. Her lessons focused especially on the development of the student's own style. But she wanted to continue to write her own pieces and after the death of her second husband she became a full-time composer. At that time she wrote The Odyssey of Mr. Good-Evil (1981). In 1988 she contributed pieces to the international cello competition in Scheveningen, and in 1989 she was composer in residence at the Georgia State University in Atlanta.
She wrote over 200 works of music, many commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Culture and various broadcasting networks. In 1995 she was asked to write a piece (Unison) for the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.
She had been married to Gerrit de Marez Oyens and Menachem Arnoni. Despite the fact that she had become seriously ill, in 1996 Tera de Marez Oyens married the renowned cartoonist Marten Toonder. She died on 29 August of that year in Hilversum.
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