29 JULY 2019

JESSICA CURRY - UK  
BORN 29 JULY

Jessica is an internationally acclaimed BAFTA-winning composer of contemporary classical music and is also co-founder of renowned games company The Chinese Room. Her work has been performed in diverse and high-profile venues such as The Old Vic Tunnels, The Barbican, Sydney Opera House, The Royal Albert Hall, Great Ormond Street Hospital, The Wellcome Trust, MOMI New York, The Royal Opera House, Sage Gateshead and Durham Cathedral. The Washington Post have described her music as “stupendous” and The Guardian praised her “gorgeous orchestral score” for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. The Rapture score has been voted in to the Classic FM Hall of Fame for the last two years.

Jessica's music has had extensive airplay on Radio 3 and Classic FM, as well as on radio stations and in concert halls around the world.

Jessica is currently London Oriana Choir’s composer in residence and she’s also been selected for PRSF’s New Music Biennial which is taking place in London’s Southbank and Hull in July 2019.

The recipient of a PRSF Women Make Music grant, Jessica's large scale choral and brass band work, The Durham Hymns, (a collaboration with Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy) premiered at Durham Cathedral.

Jessica was awarded the Outstanding Contribution award at Women in Games in 2018. She was also a finalist in the Hospital Club awards in the Games and Creative Industry categories 2017. 

Jessica also works as a freelance composer and is available for hire on games, film, television and other projects. 

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So Let us Melt - Great Friends by Jessica Curry  

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SOPHIE MENTER - SWEDEN
BORN 29 JULY   

Sophie Menter was born in Munich, the daughter of cellist Josef Menter and singer Wilhelmine Menter (née Diepold). She studied piano with Siegmund Lebert and later Friedrich Niest. At 15, she played Carl Maria von Weber's Konzertstück for piano and orchestra with Franz Lachner conducting.

Her first concert appearances took her to Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Switzerland, and in 1867 she became acclaimed for her interpretation of Liszt's piano music at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. In Berlin, Menter became acquainted with the famous pianist Carl Tausig; she became a pupil of Liszt in 1869 after studying with Tausig and Hans von Bülow. Between 1872 and 1886 she was married to cellist David Popper, with whom she had a daughter named Celeste. In 1881 she first appeared in England and was awarded honorary membership of the Royal Philharmonic Society two years later. In 1883 she became professor of piano at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory but left in 1886 to continue concertizing.

Because of her popularity, Menter succeeded with music that no other pianist would touch. This included Liszt's First Piano Concerto, which she played in Vienna in 1869, 12 years after its disastrous premiere there. One of her recital specialties was a piece entitled Rhapsodies. This was a composite of three of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies—Nos. 2, 6 and 12—along with fragments from several others. She also composed various pieces for piano, mainly in a brilliant style, yet referred to her own compositional talent as "miserable."

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Romance Op. 5 by Sophie Menter 

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10 JULY 2019

GRACIANE FINZI - MOROCCO 
BORN 10 JULY

Graciane Finzi was born in Casablanca in 1945. Her parents, both teachers at the Casablanca Conservatory, instilled in her a love of musicand, while attending the same Conservatory, she attained the level necessary to enter theNational Advanced Music Conservatory in Paris when she was only 10 years old.

Between 1975 and 1979, she was Musical Director of "La Défense Festival."In 1979, she was appointed FulI Professor at the Paris National Advanced Music Conservatory.

Official Représentative for the French Association for Artistic Action, 1997-2000.Vice-President of the International Society for Contemporary Music.2001: Résident Composer with the Lille National Orchestra.

The works of Graciane Finzi have been played throughout the world by major soloists andorchestras (Paris, New York, London, Rome, Moscow, Helsinki, Vancouver, Nuremburg, Buenos Aires, Cologne, Calgary. Bremen. Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Madrid, Warsaw, Mexico, Athènes, Barcelone, Santiago du Chili etc...)

During my early period as a composer, l took account of the individuality of different orchestral instruments, bringing them together in juxtaposed groups which each had its own. Dynamic, impulses, colours and rhythm, thus multiplying what we call in the profession the "true parts".

Nowadays, l have moved towards a more harmonie language, where the multiplicity of soundlevels are organised to form giant harmonies. Poles of attraction form between the notes which guide our understanding of a music which never aims at abstraction, but the immediate expression of life as the deepest feelings of man.

- Can we use the term romanticism? Perhaps. l do not know.

- Expression? Yes, l hope so.- Feelings? Very certainly, that is what l am striving for.

Thriller by Graciane Finzi 

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SOPHIA WESTENHOLZ - GERMANY 

BORN 10 JULY

Sophia Maria Westenholz, née Fritscher (1759-1838) was a German composer, musician, singer and music educator. She was born into a privileged family and spent most of her life in the courts of Schwerin and Ludwigslust, capitals of the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. She studied music with Konzertmeister Johann Wilhelm Hertel in Schwerin beginning at age ten and entered the court orchestra at sixteen. The court moved from Schwerin to Ludwigslust, and Sophia married the new Konzertmeister Carl Friedrich Westenholz, appointed in 1767, who was also a composer of sacred works.

When Carl Westenholz died in 1789, Sophia received the title of Kapellmeisterin at Ludwigslust, and continued her career as a singer, teacher and pianist. In this role, she taught music to the Ludwigslust princesses and composed and performed her own works at court. Three of her eight children became notable musicians. She retired from her court position in 1821 with a pension and had a number of her compositions published in her lifetime.

Morgen by Sophia Westenholz 

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8 JULY 2019

JOHANNA KINKEL - GERMANY
BORN 8 JULY

Johanna Kinkel was a German composer, writer, and revolutionary. Kinkel was born in Bonn. In 1840, after five months of unhappy marriage, she was divorced from the Cologne bookseller Matthieux. Her second marriage, in 1843, was to the German poet Gottfried Kinkel. They had four children. Following the 1848 Revolutions she was forced to abandon Germany and flee to London. She was found dead in her garden in 1858 from a fall; although suicide was suspected, there was no way to verify this. Her tombstone was inscribed Freiheit, Liebe und Dichtung (meaning Freedom, Love, and Poetry).

Kinkel was an author of considerable merit. She wrote on musical subjects, including regular review articles of music events for the Bonner Zeitung, a newspaper she and her husband edited in cooperation with Carl Schurz. An autobiographical novel of hers, Hans Ibeles in London, was published posthumously in 1860. She also had a substantial output of musical compositions. Many of these compositions were written for the Maikäferbund (Maikäfer Group — the Maikäfer being the beetle Melolontha melolontha which emerges from the ground in May), a group of poets which she directed and Gottfried also helped lead. This group was founded in 1840 and lasted until the 1848 revolution. It had an annual festival. She also wrote music for her children which was published.

She died on 15 November 1858 in London and is buried in Brookwood Cemetery with her daughters Marie Kinkel (January–February 1861) and Johanna Kinkel (1845-1863).

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Sechs Lieder Op. 19, No. 2 and No. 3 

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RITA SROHL - FRANCE 

BORN 8 JULY

Rita Strohl (born Aimée Marie Marguerite Mercédès Larousse La Villette, on 8 July 1865 was a French pianist and composer.

Rita was a gifted student and attended the Paris Conservatory at the age of 13, where she studied piano and solfège. She studied composition and voice privately. She was also a member of the Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique.  In 1884, she started publishing her chamber music trios, and the following year her Messe pour six voix, orchestre, et orgue résonne.

She is the author of several vocal, symphonic and chamber music pieces. She was endorsed by Camille Saint-Saëns, Vincent d’Indy and Gabriel Fauré. Jane Bather sang her Chansons de Bilitis, and Pablo Casals played her music. Notably honored by Pierre Louÿs and Henri Duparc, she appears in the dictionary of contemporaries, where she’s reported to be “officer of academia”. Her music has gained renewed interest in recent years.

Solitude by Rita Strohl

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3 JULY 2019

WILHELMINE VON BAYREUTH - GERMANY 
BORN 3 JULY

Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia (Friederike Sophie Wilhelmine; 3 July 1709 – 14 October 1758) was a princess of the German Kingdom of Prussia (the older sister of Frederick the Great) and composer. She was the eldest daughter of Frederick William I of Prussia and Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, and granddaughter of George I of Great Britain. In 1731, she married Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. The baroque buildings and parks built during her reign shape much of the present appearance of the town of Bayreuth, Germany.

The margravine's memoirs, Memoires de ma vie, written or revised in French between 1748 and her death, are preserved in the Royal Library of Berlin. They were first printed in two forms in 1810: a German translation down to the year 1733 from the firm of Cotta of Tübingen; and a version in French published by Vieweg of Brunswick, and coming down to 1742. There have been several subsequent editions, including a German one published at Leipzig in 1908. An English translation was published in Berlin in 1904. For the discussion on the authenticity of these entertaining, though not very trustworthy, memoirs, see G. H. Pertz, Uber die Merkwürdigkeiten der Markgrafin (1851). See also Arvede Barine, Princesses et grandes dames (Paris, 1890); E. E. Cuttell, Wilhelmine, Margravine of Baireuth (London, 2 vols., 1905); ' and R. Fester, Die Bayreuther Schwester Friedrichs des Grossen(Berlin, 1902). Writer William Thackeray recommended the memoirs to "those who are curious about European Court history of the last age".

In addition to her other accomplishments, Wilhelmine was also a gifted composer and supporter of music. She was a lutenist, a student of Sylvius Leopold Weiss, and the employer of Bernhard Joachim Hagen. 

Musical Works: 

Keyboard Concerto in G minor

1. Allego, G minor. 2. Cantabile, B flat major. 3. Gavottes I & II, G minor. Cembalo, Fl, Strings

The obbligato flute part could have been played either by her brother or her husband, as both were flautists (and pupils of Quantz). Each movement takes wing from solid and vigourous openings. There is a stubborn insistence about the first tutti's repeated octave jumps, offset by the buoyancy of its striding sequences. She has a Bach-like flair for phrase extensions, which is also evident in the final gavotte where the solo shadows the orchestra and emerges to take the lead. Some of the ideas in the 34 bar slow movement are more son-of-Bach in style; and in the D minor second gavotte, which serves as a central 'trio' to the first, there is a delicate episode of rather French, languishing descents.

Argenore - opera c. 1740. 7 soloists (3 sop., 1 mezzo-sop., 2 alto, 1 bariton (or mezzo-sop.), & orchestra (1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 trumpets, strings, continuo). Performed in 1740 for her husband's birthday.

Cavatinen - short songs; voice, strings, harpsichord.

Flute Sonata - flute & keyboard, c. 1730.

Some chamber music still survives.

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Concert for harpsichord and strings by Wilhelmine v. Bayreuth

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LUCREZIA ORSINA VIZZANA - ITALY  

BORN 3 JULY

Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana (also "Lucretia") was an Italian singer, organist, and composer. She entered the Camaldolese convent of S Christina in Bologna in 1598. She was taught by her aunt, Camilla Bombacci, who was the convent organist, and by Ottavio Vernizzi, who was the unofficial music master. Vizzana's works are influenced by stile moderno (seconda prattica) music, especially the works of Claudio Monteverdi.

Vizzana's motets were published in Componimenti musicali de motetti concertati a l e più voci in 1623, the only collection of music ever published by a Bolognese nun. There are ten solo motets, eight duets, one trio, and one quartet all with continuo. The works feature other characteristics of the stile moderno. Furthermore, many convents used motets for double choir as a way of exploiting the musical gifts of the nuns in reaction to the decree from the Council of Trent that nuns must be confined within a convent. Vizzana's O invictissima Christi martir is an example of this. This piece along with Sonet vox tua in auribus cordis mei; Usquequo oblivisceris me in finem; O magnum mysterium; Ornaverunt faciem templi; Domine Dominus noster, quam admirabile; and Protector noster can all be found in Martha Furman Schleifer and Sylvia Glickman's Women Composers: Music through the Ages. However, Vizzana's music also reflects a much older practice of female spirituality stretching back to the later Middle Ages as opposed to the new post-Tridentine religious traditions for women. Most of her motets were created for feast days, reflecting many liturgical, artistic, and devotional moments in convent life. However, other motets allude to the inner strife in the convent and its decline from 1620 onward.

In 1622, an anonymous letter was sent to the Cardinal Archbishop Ludovico Ludovisi in Rome reporting many scandals and issues in the convent, especially the issue of conflict within the convent. These allegations were followed by a long investigation of the convent that caused much inner strife amongst the nuns. It was revealed that much of the inquietude and rivalries amongst the nuns resulted from the musical life of the convent. It is often believed that the stress of the turmoil led to Vizzana's early retirement from music and mental instability.

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Sonet vox tua by Lucrezia Orsini Vizzana

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27 JUNE 2019

RUTH SCHÖNTHAL - GERMANY 
BORN 27 JUNE

Ruth Schonthal was born in Hamburg of Viennese parents. At the age of five she began composing and became the youngest student ever accepted at the Stern'sche Konservatorium in Berlin. In 1935, Schonthal and her family were forced to leave Nazi Germany for Stockholm on account of her Jewish heritage. She later studied at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in Stockholm, where at the age of fourteen, she had her first sonatina published. At the RAM she studied composition with Ingemar Liljefors and piano with Olaf Wibergh. Then, she was once again forced to flee as a result of the rising political tension, and eventually traveled to a variety of places: first the USSR, then Japan, and then Mexico City, where at the age of 19 she gave a very widely acclaimed piano performance of her own compositions, including her First Piano Concerto, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Among the audience members was the noted German composer Paul Hindemith, who obtained a scholarship for her to study with him at Yale in 1946. She was one of the few of Hindemith's students to graduate from the Conservatory with honors.

In 1950, Schonthal married the painter Paul Bernhard Seckel (b. 1918) and settled in New York City, eventually moving to New Rochelle, where she lived for most of her life.  One of her three sons is Al Seckel, an authority on visual illusions.

Schonthal received commissions for chamber music, operas, symphonic compositions, as well as works for organ and piano. She taught composition and music theory at NYU until 2006 when deteriorating health forced her to resign. She also taught composition and piano privately and was the first composition teacher of American composer Lowell Liebermann. One close student of hers, between 2003 and 2005, the unknown Stephanie Germanotta, went on to great fame in the pop music world as Lady Gaga. Schonthal used her music to support herself and her family throughout her life: she wrote for television and commercials, played the piano in various bars and clubs, and taught privately in New York.

Her works are widely performed in the US and abroad, but her music is perhaps most well known in her native Germany. Her music is published by Oxford University Press, Southern Music Co, Carl Fischer, G. E. Schirmer, Sisra Press, Fine Arts Music Co, Hildegard Music Publishing Co, nd Furore and recorded on LP on the Capriccio, Crystal, Leonarda, Opus One and Orion Labels, many of them reissued on CDs on the Leonarda and Cambria labels.

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A Bird Song About by Ruth Schöntal

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DARIA SEMEGEN - GERMANY 

BORN 27 JUNE

Daria Semegen is a composer of instrumental, vocal and electronic music. As a recognized authority on electronic music composition, she has been the subject of many articles and several dissertations including A. E. Hinkle-Turner's doctoral dissertation "Daria Semegen: A Study of the Composer's Life", Work and Music (University of Illinois-Urbana).

Semegen's writings on creative process, aesthetics and pedagogy have been published in the U.S. and abroad. She studied at the Eastman School of Music, in mixed-media workshops at the Rochester Institute of Technology, at Yale and Columbia Universities and in Warsaw, Poland as a Fulbright fellow. She taught at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center from 1971-1975 and was a sound engineer at the Collection of World Music (Columbia University) working with field recordings of native musics from many continents.

Her awards include six National Endowment for the Arts grants, two BMI awards, two awards from Yale University, a National Chamber Music Competition prize, an ISCM International Electronic Music Competition prize; fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, Tanglewood and Chautauqua; a Pennsylvania Institute for the Arts & Humanistic Studies award; and the 1994 Alumni Achievement Award from Eastman School of Music.

Prof. Semegen was the first woman awarded a McKim Commission from the Library of Congress. Recordings of her music include Rhapsody (for Yamaha MIDI grand piano), Electronic Composition No. 1; Arc (electronic/dance); Spectra, Music for Violin Solo; Jeux de Quatres.. Other works include Arabesque(electronic), Vignette (piano), Elegy-Caprice (toy piano- for J.Cage) , Epicycles (electronic/dance); Triptych (orchestra), Dans la Nuit (baritone & orchestra), Lieder (soprano & ensemble); virtuoso solo works including violin, contrabass and clarinet solos.

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Music for Contrabass Solo by Daria Semegen

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22 JUNE 2019

CLARA FAISST - GERMANY 
BORN 22 JUNE

Clara Mathilda Faisst was a German pianist, composer and writer.

Faisst was born in Karlsruhe, Baden. She studied music at the Karlsruhe Conservatory and later traveled to Berlin, then in Prussia, to study under the noted pianist Max Bruch (1838 – 1920). After completing her studies, she worked as a pianist, music teacher and composer.

During World War II, Faisst conducted house concerts. She was a prolific composer, producing over a hundred separate works, including ballads, choral pieces and sonatas for violin and piano. She corresponded with Albert Schweitzer and the two became good friends. Faisst never married and died in Karlsruhe at age seventy-six. As she had no family, her possessions were put out as trash, but some of her letters and music were rescued and preserved.

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BEATRIZ CORONA - CUBA 

BORN 22 JUNE

Beatriz del Carmen Corona Rodríguez is a composer, choir director, arranger and musical producer. She is one of the most solid and prestigious composers of Choral Music in Cuba as well as one of Cuba's most prolific contemporary composers.  Her catalog of choral works as well as her arrangements for voices in different formats define her as an important choral music composer of today.

As a composer she has managed to offer a vast musical production with a catalog with around 200 choral works of different formats: orchestral music, chamber music, religious works, incidental music for movies (for the films Amor Vertical and Sabor Latino), (the latter with her brother Kiki Corona).

Her interest in the human voice predominates in her compositions as insurmountable sound medium.
Beatriz'music nourishes the repertoire of almost all the choirs of our music schools, that of choral, symphonic and chamber ensembles such as the Exaudi, National choirs, and the Schola Cantorum Coralina. The Santiago de Cuba Symphony Orchestra and the D'Camera Trio conducted by the pianist Marita Rodríguez.

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11 JUNE 2019

ALICE SAMTER - GERMANY  
BORN 11 JUNE

Alice Samter was a German music educator and composer. Alice Samter was born in Berlin to a middle-class family. She trained and worked as an accountant while studying piano, improvisation, choral work and school music at Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory and the Academy of Music in Berlin. In 1945 she received a degree in music and became a teacher in the Spandau schools where she began to compose school opera. After she retired from teaching in 1970, she became a composer full-time. She was a member of several organizations of composers, including GEDOK Berlin, the International Working Group on Women and Music and the International League of Woman Composers (USA). Her work has been performed internationally, and in 1988 she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.

In 1999 she established the Alice Samter Foundation at the Berlin University of the Arts to support music students at the university. She also donated funds to the Berlin State Library for the purchase of Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn manuscripts.

Samter's family home was destroyed by a bomb during the war and she moved with her mother and adopted sister to an apartment in Charlottenburg where she continued to live for the rest of her life. She was the subject of documentary films through West German Broadcasting (WDR), and her papers are housed in the Berlin State Library. She wrote her last song in 2003.

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Monolo Einer Geige by Alice Samter

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MARGARETHE DANZI - GERMANY 
BORN 11 JUNE

Maria Margarethe Danzi (née Marchand) was a German composer and soprano.

Margarethe Marchand was born in Germany. Some sources give her birthplace as Munich and others Mannheim, and it was possible that the family was on tour in Frankfurt on the date of her birth. She was the daughter of the singer, actress and dancer Magdalena Brochard Marchand and Theobald Hilary Marchand, director of the National Theatre of Mannheim. Margarethe studied music and composition in Munich with Franziska Lebrun and in Salzburg with Leopold Mozart. She apprenticed in supporting roles and debuted in 1787 at the age of 12 at the Mannheim Court Theater, performing the title role in 'The Youth' by Johann Jakob Engel.

In 1790 she married conductor and composer Franz Danzi, and performed with him as prima donna of the troupe Domenico Guardasonis on European concert tours. After 1796 Margaret also performed as prima donna at the Munich Court Theatre.

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Sonata II in Bb Major: II. Andante Amoroso 

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8 JUNE 2019

LENI ALEXANDER  - POLAND 

BORN 8 JUNE

Helene Alexander Pollak was born in Breslau, and her family lived in Hamburg and then emigrated to Chile in 1939 to escape the Nazis. 

She studied piano under the Montessori system of music and received a diploma in 1942 for teaching and worked with youth and disabled children while developing an interest in composition. Between 1949 and 1953, she studied with Fré Focke, Rene Leibowitz, and Olivier Messiaen. Between 1963 and 1968, she also studied electronic music and wrote a number of electronic pieces.

She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1969 and lived for several years in Paris and Cologne. Besides new music classical compositions and musical theater, Alexander was active in composition for television soundtracks and composed for soap opera. In her later years, she composed several "hörspiel" pieces, or "plays for listening", several of them for the WDR Radio of Cologne. 

Alexander's compositions were mainly instrumental and were performed by orchestras in countries including Chile, Italy, France and the United States.

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Méralo by Leni Alexander 

MARGARET BUECHNER - USA    
BORN8 JUNE

Margaret Buechner was a German-born American composer.

Born in Hanover, she emigrated to the United States in 1951 and became an American citizen in 1961. She had studied composition and composed chamber music before the war; after she came to America, her teacher, Otto Luening, encouraged Buechner to write symphonic music. 

During the 1950s, her compositions emphasized ballet music scored for large orchestra. Her later compositions were dramatic symphonic and choral works, often with historical or patriotic themes. Her works include the ballets Phantomgreen and Elizabeth, along with tone poems The Old Swedes Church and Erlkönig(based on the Goethe poem). Other major works are two related to her adopted country: Liberty Bell for chorus and orchestra, which incorporates a 1959 recording of the actual bell by Columbia Records, and the "symphonic trilogy" The American Civil War. She died in Midland, Michigan, at the age of 76.

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Immensee/Elizabeth by Margaret Buechner