DORA PEJACEVIC - HUNGRIA
BORN 10 SEPTEMBER
Dora Pejačević (10 September 1885 – 5 March 1923) was a Croatian composer, a member of the Pejačević noble family. She was one of the composers to introduce the orchestral song to Croatian music and her Symphony in F-sharp minor is considered by scholars to be the first modern symphony in Croatian music.
Dora began to compose when she was 12. She studied music privately in Zagreb, Dresden and Munich and received lessons in instrumentation (from Dragutin Kaiser and Walter Courvoisier), composition (from Percy Sherwood) and violin (from Henri Petri in Munich). She was largely self-taught, however. She married Ottomar von Lumbe in 1921. Although Pejačević led a lonely life, she met many prominent musicians and writers, and befriended Austrian journalist and writer Karl Kraus and Czech aristocrat and patroness of arts Sidonie Nádherná von Borutín. Dora died in Munich in 1923, a result of complications following a difficult childbirth (of her son Theo), and is buried at the cemetery in Našice, Croatia.
Dora Pejačević is considered a major Croatian composer. She left behind a considerable catalogue of 58 opuses (106 compositions), mostly in late-Romantic style, including songs, piano works, chamber music, and several compositions for large orchestra, arguably her best. Her Symphony in F-sharp minor is considered by scholars the first modern symphony in Croatian music.
♫ LISTEN
Piano Quartet in D Menor by Dora Pejacevic
EDNA BENTZ WOODS - USA
BORN 10 SEPTEMBER
BORN 10 SEPTEMBER
Edna Bentz Woods was an American composer and pianist married to an executive of the Aeolian Company, W Creary Woods. Apart from this snippet, a Duo-Art catalogue of about 1927 provides the sole source of information on the obscure composer of this charming work.
From it we learn that Edna Bentz (the name under which her nine or so piano rolls were published) ‘has won success both in recitals of classical and romantic music and in the vaudeville field. She received an excellent musical training from some of the best teachers of America and Europe, among them Busoni and Egon Petri in Berlin, where she was studying when the Great War began.
Her compositions number more than fifty pieces, and range from classical models to the most modern, syncopated dance music’.
♫ LISTEN
Elegie for flute and piano by Edna Bentz Woods
Elegie for flute and piano by Edna Bentz Woods
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