30 NOVEMBER 2019

CLAUDE ARRIEU - FRANCE

BORN 30 NOVEMBER

Claude Arrieu was a prolific French composer.

Claude Arrieu was a classically trained musician from an early age. She became particularly interested in works by Bach and Mozart, and later, Igor Stravinsky. However, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel provided her the most inspiration.

Dreaming of a career as a virtuoso, she entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1924. She became a piano student of Marguerite Long and took classes from Georges Caussade, Noël Gallon, Jean Roger-Ducasse and Paul Dukas. In 1932, she received first prize for composition.

From this point on, she developed her personal style. She was particularly interested in the evolution of musical language and various technical means available. In 1935, she joined the French Radio Broadcasting Program Service, where she was employed to 1947. She participated in the development of a wide range of programming, including Pierre Schaeffer’s experimental radio series, La Coquille à planètes (1943–1944). In 1949, she won the Prix Italia of the RAI for her score Frédéric Général.

She wrote music in all styles, composing works of "pure music" as well as music for theatre, film, radio, and music hall, contributing her own voice to every situation, dramatic or comic, with a particular taste for rhythm and imagery. Her musical gift is typified by its ease of flow and elegance of structure. Vivacity, clarity of expression, and a natural feel for melody are her hallmarks.

Among her important chamber music compositions are her "Trio for Woodwinds" (1936), "Sonatina for Two Violins" (1937), and "Clarinet Quartet" (1964). Her "Sonatine for flute and piano" made a big impression at its first radio performance in 1944 by Jean-Pierre Rampal and H. Moyens.

Although Arrieu’s instrumental works strongly contributed to her legacy, it is vocal music that most markedly distinguish her career. Voice inspired her to set many poems to music, including those by Joachim du Bellay, Louise Levêque de Vilmorin, Louis Aragon, Jean Cocteau, Jean Tardieu, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Éluard. Examples include Chansons Bas for voice and piano based on poems by Mallarmé (1937); Candide, radio music on texts by Jean Tardieu based on Voltaire; and À la Libération, cantata of seven poems on love in war, on poems by Paul Éluard

Source: Wikipedia and Windrep

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Sonatine by Claude Arrieu

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ANA LARA - MÉXICO
BORN 30 NOVEMBER

Ana Lara (born 30 November 1959) is a Mexican composer.

Ana Lara was born in Mexico City and studied at the National Conservatory of Music with Mario Lavista and Daniel Catán and later with Federico Ibarra. She continued her studies at the Warsaw Academy of Music with Zbigniew Rudzinski and Wlodzimierz Kotonski. She also studied ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland, graduating with a Master of Arts degree.

After completing her studies, Lara worked as a composer and music producer. In 1989 she began producing a Mexico City University Radio (Radio UNAM) contemporary music program, and in 2000 she was nominated as Best Classical Album Producer at the Latin Grammy Awards. She founded and served as artistic director of Mexico's International Festival Música y Escena, and served as artistic director of the Puebla Instrumenta Verano 2004 summer courses. She also teaches music and seminars on Latin American and twentieth century music.

Source: Wikipedia and Ana Lara Official Website

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Y los ojos e la luz by Ana Lara

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29 NOVEMBER 2019

MABEL MAMBRETTI - ARGENTINA

BORN 29 NOVEMBER

Mabel Mambretti is an argentinian composer and was born in Buenos Aires. She is also a musicologist, music critic and pedagogue, Mabel began studying piano, solfeggio and music theory in her city with Elizabeth Bagnes and Helvecia Braga. Graduated from the Carlos Lopes Buchardo Conservatory, she studied composition, musicology and criticism at the Faculty of Music of the Catholic University of Argentina. She also got a degree in Music Composition in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Mabel was invited by the Venezuelan government to be the Head of the Department of Musical Organology at the Latin American Institute of Ethnomusicology. There, she also taught musicology, musical organology and other subjects.

Back in Argentina, she joined the faculty of Carlos Lopes Buchardo National Conservatory of Music. She has published articles in Argentine magazines such as Obertura, Polifonía and Reencuentro.

Her compositions have been performed in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, USA, Spain, France, England and Belgium.

She is a member of the board of the Asociación Compositores Unidos de Argentina, as well as the board of the Editorial Argentina of Composers and the Argentine Union of Music Composers.

Source: Polymnia and CiWeb

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L'Esperance by Mabel Mambretti

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ISSIE BARRATT - UK
BORN 29 NOVEMBER

Issie Barratt (born 29 November 1964) is a British composer, known for her work in Big Band jazz and jazz education.

Issie has been awarded commissions by the Philharmonia Orchestra, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Bohuslän Big Band, The PRS Foundation for New Music, Delta Sax Quartet, 4th Dimension String Quartet, Voice of the North, North Cheshire Wind Orchestra, Vortex Foundation Big Band, Swiss Gemeinderat of Unterägeri, Trinity College of Music’s Contemporary Jazz Ensemble, Conservatoires UK Big Band and Youth Music with performances often featuring artists such as Anders Bergcrantz, Tim Garland, Mark Lockheart, Joe Locke, Dennis Rollins, Carl Rütti, Steve Waterman and Annie Whitehead.

Issie was responsible for establishing Trinity College of Music’s Jazz Faculty in 1999, which she continued to run until 2006, before holding the position of Senior Jazz Fellow until 2012. As well as directing ensembles from Trinity College of Music, Barratt has also co-directed the Conservatoires UK Big Band 2003-2008 performing annually at Leeds College of Music’s International Jazz conference (alongside fellow artists and educators Bob Mintzer, Tim Garland, Mike Hall, Julian Joseph, Gerard Presencer, Mike Gibbs and Mark Donlon), appearing with CUK Big Band Tim Garland the International Association of Jazz Educators’s Conference in 2008. Issie has also lead various projects at the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal College of Music, contributed to the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music’s jazz syllabi and written several research papers on jazz related topics. Since September 2006 Barratt has held the position of Founding Artistic Director for the National Youth Jazz Collective (initially funded by Youth Music before becoming an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation in 2015). Issie's also an active Board Director of BASCA (the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters) and chair of BASCA's Jazz Committee, Jazz adjudicator for Music for Youth’s annual national festival, Issie is the founding director of Fuzzy Moon Records. She was winner of Jazz Educator of the Year at the 2014 Parliamentary Awards.

Source: Wikipedia and Issie Barratt Official Website

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The Man with gun he tangos by Issie Barratt

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28 NOVEMBER 2019

PAMELA HARRISON - UK

BORN 28 NOVEMBER

Pamela Harrison (28 November 1915 – 28 August 1990) was an English pianist, music teacher and composer.

Pamela Harrison was born in Orpington, England, and studied with Gordon Jacob and Arthur Benjamin at the Royal College of Music in London. During World War II, she worked as a school teacher.

Harrison's work was influenced by composers including E.J. Moeran, Arnold Bax and John Ireland, and French music. She made her debut as a composer with String Quartet in 1944 at the National Gallery concerts. She went on to produce a variety of music, including chamber, orchestral and vocal music, with settings including Baudelaire, Herrick, Dowson and Edward Thomas. Her work for small orchestra, A Suite for Timothy, was composed for the first birthday of her son.

Harrison died in a car accident in Firle, East Sussex.

Source: Pamela Harrison Official Website and Wikipedia

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Five Pieces for Flute and Piano by Pamela Harrison

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MIRJAM TALLY - ESTONIA
BORN 28 NOVEMBER

Mirjam Tally, born November 28, 1976 in Tallinn, is an Estonian composer living in Sweden since 2006.

Her music is a flow of playful contrasts where a sense of humour and poetic use of sound are blended to mix. Beside writing works for contemporary music scene, she is active as a film composer. In recent years, importance of orchestral music has increased in her oeuvre. Mirjam Tally is also active as a performer: she has a duo “Unejõgi” (“Dream river”) together with Estonian folk musician Meelika Hainsoo. Elements of Estonian folk music are mixed with electroacoustic sounds, with influences of minimalism, glitch, drone and electronic pop.

She has graduated from the Estonian Academy of Music as a student of Lepo Sumera in 2000. Since 2006, Tally lives on the island of Gotland, Sweden. In 2009-2010, she was Composer in Residence at Swedish Radio P2 channel. In 2017, Tally was Composer in Residence at Studio Acusticum in Piteå, and at Västerås Sinfonietta, Sweden. In 2018, Tally´s album “Interferences” won the Manifest prize in Sweden, in category “best experimental”.

In 2009, Tally’s orchestral work “Turbulence” was selected as one of recommended works at International Rostrum of Composers. She has received 2 prizes for her work “Turbulence” – the Composer Prize of the Estonian Music Days Festival (2007) and the small Christ Johnson Music Prize (2008) by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

Source: Mirjam Tally Official Website and Emic

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Kuu Vari by Mirjam Tally

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27 NOVEMBER 2019

CHIARA MARGARITA COZZOLANI - ITALY

BORN 27 NOVEMBER

Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (27 November 1602 – ca. 1676-1678), was a Baroque music composer, singer and Benedictine nun. She spent her adult life cloistered in the convent of Santa Radegonda, Milan, where she became abbess and stopped composing. More than a dozen cloistered women published sacred music in seventeenth-century Italy.

The youngest daughter born into a wealthy merchant family in Milan, Italy, Margarita Cozzolani entered the convent and took her vows in 1620. She added "Chiara" as her religious name.

Her writings are very prolific, with some stylistic characteristics being the usage of sequences and switching modes. The duets and solos in her 1642 Concerti Sacri had followed suit in the Lombard style. Her four musical opere were published between 1640 and 1650, which is the date of her Vespers, perhaps her best-known single work. There is also a Paschal Mass. Her first publication, Primavera di fiori musicali, is lost. In the convent of Santa Radegonda, the nuns sang during major religious feast days. This drew a great deal of attention from the outside world. As abbess of Santa Radegonda, Cozzolani defended the nuns' music, which came under attack from Archbishop Alfonso Litta, who wanted to reform the convent by limiting the nuns' practice of music and other contact with the outside world. The archbishop's qualms could not have been reassured by the ecstatic report of Filippo Picinelli, in Ateneo dei letterati milanesi (Milan, 1670) who found that "the nuns of Santa Radegonda of Milan are gifted with such rare and exquisite talents in music that they are acknowledged to be the best singers of Italy. They wear the Cassinese habits of St. Benedict, but they seem to any listener to be white and melodious swans, who fill hearts with wonder, and spirit away tongues in their praise. Among these sisters, Donna Chiara Margarita Cozzolani merits the highest praise, Chiara in name but even more so in merit, and Margarita for her unusual and excellent nobility of invention...".

Donna Chiara Margarita Cozzolani disappears from the convent's records after 1676. The first modern edition of her complete motets, for one to five voices and continuo, appeared in 1998.

Source: Hoasm and Wikipedia

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Bone Jesu by Chiara Margarita Cozzoloni

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JOHANNA SENFTER - GERMANY
BORN 27 NOVEMBER

Johanna Senfter was born on 27 November 1879 in Oppenheim am Rhein. She was the youngest of six children of a very well-to-do family. Her uncle, the Oppenheimer pharmacist Carl Koch, attained great wealth and recognition in 1824 through the invention of the industrial production of the antipyretic substance quinine. The name "Millionensenfter" is still known to the residents of Oppenheim today. Johanna's music-loving mother Elise Senfter encouraged the musical talent of her youngest daughter through early instruction at the piano and on the violin.

In 1895 she began to study composition (with Iwan Knorr), violin (Adolf Rebner), piano (Karl Friedberg) and organ (Prof. Gelhaar) at the Hoch Conservatoire in Frankfurt on the Main.
From 1908 to 1910 she was a pupil of Max Reger who had recognized her musical talent and encouraged her to undertake additional studies in his composition class at the Royal Conservatoire of Leipzig which she completed with distinction in 1909. In 1910 she received the Arthur Nikisch Prize for the best student composition of 1909.

Johanna Senfter was a very versatile composer whose works were strongly influenced by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms and her teacher Max Reger, with whom she enjoyed a friendly relationship following her studies. After Reger's in death 1916 she continued to develop her late romantic compositional style, at times approaching the limits of tonality but without stepping beyond them. The works of her models Bach, Brahms and Reger also stood at the centre of her work as the artistic director of both Oppenheim Music Societies. After the Second World War she withdrew almost completely from public musical life, but continued to compose for the rest of her life. She died in Oppenheim on 8 August 1961.

Source: En-Schott and Mugi Hamburg

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Sonate Für Klarinette und Klavier by Johanna Senfter

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26 NOVEMBER 2019

MARIA FRANCESCA NASCINBENI - ITALY

BORN AROUND 1640

Maria Francesca Nascinbeni (1658–1680) was an Italian composer. She studied in Ancona, Italy, with Augustinian monk Scipio Lazzarini. He included her motet "Sitientes venite" and works by two of his other students in his "Motetti a due e tre voce." At age sixteen (December 1674) Nascinbeni published one volume of music including songs, canzonas, madrigals and motets for organ and one, two and three voices. All that is known of her life is from the prefaces to her music volumes.

Source: Oxford Index and Wikipedia

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Una Fiamma Rovente by Maria Francesca Nascinbeni

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TERESA TANCO CORDOVEZ DE HERRERA - COLOMBIA
BORN IN 1859

Teresa Tanco Cordovez de Herrera (born in 1859, died in 1946) was a Colombian pianist and composer. She traveled to Europe with her sister in 1882 and made her debut in Paris at the Salle Pleyel Saint-Saens and has recevied favorable reviews. She composed for voice, sacred pieces, the polka for piano L'aube (Three in the morning) and the zarzuela Simila similibus. This last musician-theatrical work was released in 1883 and has a libretto by Carlos Sáenz Echeverría1. She died in the city of Bogotá.

Source: Wikipedia

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L'Aube - Las Tres de La Manana by Teresa Tanco Cordovez de Herrera

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