Meet the ComposHER: Thea Musgrave

Thea Musgrave is a Scottish composer of opera and classical music. She studied music in Edinburgh and in Paris - there, she was a pupil of Nadia Boulanger for four years. Thea has more than 160 mature works to date for choir, orchestra, chamber ensemble and the stage.

She has a respected career in composition and was commissioned by several important companies, such as the Royal Opera House, the BBC Orchestras and Choirs and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Learn more about her in the Meet the ComposHer of this week!

I actually began in Medical School, which in Edinburgh, was adjacent to the Music School – which eventually inspired me more than cutting up frogs.

Two teachers – Nadia Boulanger, with whom I studied 4 years in Paris; and
Sir Donald Francis Tovey, whom I never met.But I devoured every word he ever wrote (I studied with his pupil Mary Greerson).

Finding a trusting my own voice as a composer.

I start with an idea which leads me to define the shape, form, and dramatic interaction of the piece before I develop it in often painstaking detail – in which the proportions, harmonic implications, and melodic and contrapuntal details often get re-worked into an organic whole!

I set the Robert Burns poems I chose for SONGS FOR A WINTER’S EVENING as a kind of Scottish FRAUEN-LIEBE UND LEBEN, - tracing the energy and flirtatiousness of a younger girl through sensual attraction to the satisfaction of a life-long relationship.

Songs for a Winter's Evening by Thea Musgrave

My former pupil, now colleague, Janice Hamer has written an important opera LOST CHILDHOOD on the haunting guilt issues resulting from the Holocaust. Here is an extract: