Composers of the Day: February 23rd

Donne 365 celebrates women in music every day! Check here the composers of the day for February 23rd.

23 FEBRUARY

AMY ELISE HORROCKS - BRAZIL

Born 23 February

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EMILY HOWARD - UK

Born 23 February

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Check here last year's composers of the day

23 FEBRUARY 2019

RUTH GIPPS - UK   

BORN 23 FEBRUARY

Ruth Gipps was an accomplished all-round musician, as a soloist on both oboe and piano as well as a prolific composer. Her repertoire included works such as Arthur Bliss's Piano Concerto and Constant Lambert's The Rio Grande. When she was 33 a hand injury ended her performance career, and she decided to focus her energies on conducting and composition.

An early success came when Sir Henry Wood conducted her tone poem Knight in Armour at the last night of the Proms in 1942. A turning point in Gipps' career was the Symphony No. 2, Op. 30, first performed in 1946, which showed the beginnings of her mature style. Gipps' music is marked by a skilful use of instrumental colour, and often shows the influence of Vaughan Williams, rejecting the trends in avant-garde modern music such as serialism and twelve-tone music. She considered her orchestral works, her five symphonies in particular, as her greatest works. Two substantial piano concertos were also produced. After the war, Gipps turned her attention to chamber music, and in 1956 she won the Cobbett prize of the Society of Women Musicians for her Clarinet Sonata, Op. 45.

Her early career was affected strongly by discrimination against women in the male-dominated ranks of music (and particularly composition), by professors and judges as well as the world of music criticism. (For example, she was not even considered for the post of conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra where her longtime associate George Weldon vacated it, because the thought of a woman conductor was "indecent".) Because of it she developed a tough personality that many found off-putting, and a fierce determination to prove herself through her work.

She founded the London Repertoire Orchestra in 1955 as an opportunity for young professional musicians to become exposed to a wide range of music, and the Chanticleer Orchestra in 1961,a professional ensemble which included a work by a living composer in each of its programs, often a premiere performance. Later she would take faculty posts at Trinity College, London (1959 to 1966), the Royal College of Music (1967 to 1977), and then Kingston Polytechnic at Gypsy Hill.

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Seascapes Op. 53 by Ruth Gipps

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ELINOR WAREEN - USA  
BORN 23 FEBRUARY

The American pianist and composer, Elinor Remick Warren, studied piano as a small child with Kathryn Cocke, taking up composition studies at 14. Her first works were pubIlished while she was still in high school. After attending Mills College in Oakland, California, she studied with Olga Steeb, Paolo Gallico, Frank La Forge, and Clarence Dickinson in New York. Much later she received training from Boulanger in Paris (1959).

Elinor composed in a predominantly neo-Romantic style. She attended Mills College, where she studied piano with Leopold Godowsky and Harold Bauer. Her composition instructors included Olga Steeb, Paolo Gallico, Frank La Forge, Clarence Dickinson, and Nadia Boulanger. During her lifetime she wrote over 200 compositions.

On June 17, 1925, she married Dr. Raymond Huntsberger in Los Angeles. The union produced one son before they divorced four years later. In 1936 she married the film producer Z. Wayne Griffin (1907–1981).She died at her home at the age of 91.

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Requiem Introit Kyrie by Elinor Remick Warren 

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