Composer Galina Ustvolskaya: The Shostakovich-Trained Iconoclast

By Emily E. Hogstadt, Interlude

Composer Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) has been called “the lady with the hammer” and is known for her connection to Dmitri Shostakovich.

Galina Ustvolskaya and her dog

But she was so much more than this. She was also fiercely independent, staggeringly talented, and completely unafraid. She not only refused to fit in a musical mold but threw out that mold entirely.

Today, we’re taking a look at the life and times of Soviet composer Galina Ustvolskaya.

Ustvolskaya’s Childhood

Galina Ustvolskaya was born on 17 June 1919 in Petrograd to an unmusical family. Her father was a lawyer, and her mother was a teacher from impoverished nobility.

Her childhood was lonely and full of financial pressures.

“I would wear an old coat of my father’s (which was too long for me) and his muffler, which I gave to a young friend. I loved to give gifts, although we did not have anything to spare. Since childhood, I could not tolerate these kinds of pressures.”

Her desire for financial security would later impact her career choices.

She loved music deeply from an early age. When she was young, her parents took her to a performance of Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin, but the family had to leave when she started crying. “I want to be an orchestra,” she told them.

Time with Shostakovich

Ustvolskaya studied at a school for young people associated with the Leningrad Conservatory. In 1939, when she turned twenty, she joined Dmitri Shostakovich’s composition class. That year, she was the only woman in that class.

Shostakovich was intrigued by her and in awe of her talent. “I am convinced that the music of G. I. Ustvolskaya will achieve world fame and be valued by all who hold truth to be the essential element of music,” he wrote once. He also said, “It is not you who are under my influence, but I who am under yours.”

He valued her opinion so much that he asked for her feedback on his own compositions. He also used a theme from her clarinet trio in his fifth string quartet (from 1952) and his Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti (from 1974, toward the very end of his life). 

Ustvolskaya studied in his class twice – once from 1939 to 1941 and again from 1947 to 1948. That six-year break coincided with the war, as well as the devastating two-and-a-half-year siege of Leningrad.

A month into the siege of Leningrad, Shostakovich was evacuated to Moscow and Ustvolskaya to Tashkent, the current-day capital of Uzbekistan, along with others linked to the Conservatory. In 1943, she worked in a hospital in the city of Tikhvin, two hundred kilometers from St. Petersburg.

Galina Ustvolskaya

She later made it very clear that she was not keen on an association with Shostakovich. She called his music “dry and lifeless” and wrote to her publisher, “One thing remains as clear as day: a seemingly eminent figure such as Shostakovich, to me, is not eminent at all, on the contrary, he burdened my life and killed my best feelings.”

Her distaste for him may have been rooted in extra-musical reasons. She later claimed that Shostakovich proposed marriage to her, but she turned him down.

Later, she went even further: “There is no link whatsoever between my music and that of any other composer, living or dead,” she once proclaimed. 

Ustvolskaya and Soviet Propaganda

From 1947 to 1977, she taught composition at the Leningrad Conservatory. She didn’t think of herself as a particularly talented professor – composition was her true calling – but teaching was a way to make a living.

In February 1948, a resolution went out from the Soviet government, accusing some composers of Formalism (i.e., failing to compose music that fully supported the state).

After this, she split her creative self into two parts. One composed propaganda pieces acceptable to Soviet leadership, while the other wrote secret avant-garde works that she knew might never be heard. 

Writing music to please the authorities was soul-destroying, but she was apparently very good at it. Her tone poem Stepan Razin’s Dream opened the Leningrad Philharmonic’s 1949 season, to acclaim. She was even nominated for the Stalin Prize.

However, in 1962, she hit her limit. From that time on, she vowed to only write what she truly wanted to write, and she worked to destroy all traces of everything she ever wrote for political reasons.

Fortunately, later in the century, the Soviet Union started being easier on modernist composers, and allowing them to share some of their more controversial music. Ustvolskaya slowly began sharing some of the music she’d been keeping hidden.

Ustvolskaya’s Later Years

Galina Ustvolskaya

By the 1970s the Leningrad Union of Composers began presenting evenings of her music, and critics were impressed.

Her music has several distinguishing features, including extreme dynamics, unusual instrumentation, and brutal and relentless repetition.

The website Ustvolskaya.org writes, “Ustvolskaya’s music is unique, unlike anything else; it is exceedingly expressive, brave, austere, and full of tragic pathos achieved through the most modest of expressive means.” 

Unfortunately, for years, hardly anybody outside the Soviet Union heard it. But in 1989 her work was performed at the Holland Festival, and it made a big impression on audiences.

She was living as a bit of a hermit by the 1990s, but she traveled to Amsterdam to watch performances of her work. Although she hated interviews, she agreed to one with journalist Thea Derk. But when the time for the interview came, she nearly backed out, and only agreed to partake after she was assured she could answer questions with monosyllables, without elaboration. (Luckily, Derk was able to get more than that out of her.)

She was asked how she liked the performance she’d heard. “Not very much,” she said bluntly. She elaborated: “The acoustics were not favourable, so that the piano didn’t come out properly, and the five double basses should have been placed more to the front. Moreover, the ensemble, recruited more or less ad hoc from members of the Concertgebouw orchestra, hadn’t as yet properly mastered the score, and the reciter wasn’t adequately amplified. But yesterday it was better and I hope it will again be better tonight.”

Ustvolskaya’s Death and Legacy

A perfectionist iconoclast to the end, Galina Ustvolskaya died in 2006 in St. Petersburg. She was eighty-seven years old.

In 1998 she gave a description of her life to an interviewer that serves as a kind of thesis statement about her music:

“The works written by me were often hidden for long periods. But then if they did not satisfy me, I destroyed them. I do not have drafts; I compose at the table, without an instrument. Everything is thought out with such care that it only needs to be written down. I’m always in my thoughts. I spend the nights thinking as well, and therefore do not have time to relax. Thoughts gnaw me. My world possesses me completely, and I understand everything in my own way. I hear, I see, and I act differently from others. I just live my lonely life.”

Tchaikovsky for Beginners: 12 Pieces to Make You Love Tchaikovsky

 by Emily E. Hogstad  February 26th, 2024

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on 7 May 1840 in Votkinsk, a town almost eight hundred miles east of Moscow.

Nowadays he is remembered as music’s quintessential Russian Romantic, and a forebear to giants like Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich.

Pyotr Il’ych Tchaikovsky

Today we’re looking at twelve pieces spanning the length of Tchaikovsky’s composing career. Before we jump in, here are some things you should know about him.

• Tchaikovsky wrote music in an era of nationalism:
  During his lifetime, artists of all kinds were inspired by their national identities.
  Tchaikovsky often found himself caught up in debates about whether Russian composers should focus on creating uniquely Russian music or copying a more Western European style (he preferred the idea of striking a balance between both).
  That said, the Russian vocabulary of his work is unmistakable, and it influenced future Russian and Soviet composers for generations to come.
• Tchaikovsky was gay. He married in 1877, but it was the most traumatic experience of his life. Six weeks after the wedding, he fled the country to recover. He and his wife never reconciled, but they also never divorced.
• Tchaikovsky suffered from crippling self-doubt. He was enamored by his work one moment, then repulsed by it the next. This emotional seesaw is a hallmark of his works, as well.
• Tchaikovsky was able to write much of his music due to the financial aid of a wealthy woman named Nadezhda von Meck, who pledged to support him…just as long as they never met in person. This unusual arrangement worked well for both parties, and the letters they exchanged became important emotional outlets for each of them.
• Tchaikovsky died of cholera in 1893, supposedly after drinking a glass of contaminated unboiled water, but conspiracy theories have surrounded his death for generations. Some people believe it was suicide or forced suicide, perhaps due to his homosexuality.

Tchaikovsky tomb at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery

If that peek at Tchaikovsky’s dramatic life intrigues you, keep reading. Here are twelve pieces that will make you fall in love with Tchaikovsky:

Piano Concerto No. 1 (1874) Tchaikovsky’s 

has become one of the most popular works for piano and orchestra ever written, but originally, it was criticized.

A 34-year-old Tchaikovsky brought the score to pianist Nikolai Rubinstein as soon as he finished it, looking for feedback. Rubinstein was brutal in his assessment: he hated it.

Tchaikovsky wrote later, “I need and shall always need friendly criticism, but there was nothing resembling friendly criticism. It was indiscriminate, determined censure, delivered in such a way as to wound me to the quick.”

But when the work was premiered in Boston in 1875, the audience loved it. They continue to love it to this day.

You can hear elements in this work that read as Russian, especially the lush sweeping string passages and folk dance rhythms.

Swan Lake (1875-1876) 

We don’t know exactly where the story of Swan Lake came from, although it’s possible that Russian folklore was an inspiration.

In this ballet, a prince is told by his mother that he must marry as soon as possible and that a slate of options will be presented to him at a ball the following night. A flock of swans flies overhead. To distract himself from his imminent engagement, the prince embarks on a hunt.

Swan Lake ballet performance
© PortsmouthNH.com

One swan transforms into a beautiful woman named Odette. A sorcerer has enchanted her, and the only way she can return to human form is if someone who has never loved before promises to love her forever. She is then turned back into a swan.

The following night at the ball, the sorcerer arrives with a woman who looks just like Odette. Unfortunately, the sorcerer has transformed his own daughter to look like Odette, and the real Odette is still stuck by the lake. Obliviously, the prince falls in love with the fake Odette.

But when the prince discovers the girl’s true identity, he rushes to the real Odette and apologizes. Unable to break the spell, the two decide to die together. They reunite after death.

A variety of alternative endings exist, too, but the story is always secondary to Tchaikovsky’s dramatic music.

It’s easy to see why Tchaikovsky poured his heart and soul into this project. It touches on his love of dance and drama, tapping into an unrestrainedly emotional Russian style of writing. It also reflects the despair of a man being forced to marry, and the tragedy present in doomed love.

Slavonic March (Marche slave) (1876) 

In 1876, an organization called the Russian Musical Society commissioned a piece from Tchaikovsky to be played at a benefit concert for wounded Serbian veterans.

At the time, Serbia and the Ottoman Empire were fighting the Serbian-Ottoman wars, in which Serbia was seeking its independence from the Empire. Russia had allied itself with Serbia in the struggle. So this work is a bit of musical propaganda.

Tchaikovsky uses Serbian folk songs in this work, as well as the melody from the Russian imperial anthem God Save the Tsar. He intertwines these melodies with a militaristic musical language that’s heavy on brass, piccolo, and percussion.

Even though the military conflict it was written about is long over, the work remains popular for its heart-on-sleeve bombast.

Violin Concerto (1878)

Tchaikovsky married a pianist named Antonina Miliukova on 18 July 1877. His crush, violinist Yosif Kotek, was one of the witnesses. Six weeks later, Tchaikovsky fled the country alone to come to terms with his disastrous decision.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Yosif Kotek

In March 1878, he ended up at his patroness’s Swiss estate. Kotek came to visit, and the two struck up a productive creative partnership. With Kotek’s help, inspiration, and feedback, Tchaikovsky wrote his violin concerto in under a month. Today it is one of the most popular violin concertos in the repertoire, and it’s bursting with longing, regret, and joy.

Things didn’t end well between Tchaikovsky and Kotek. Any attraction they had for one another quickly cooled, especially after Kotek began seducing a string of women. But the violin concerto remains as a monument to their deep affection for one another.

Serenade for Strings (1880)

The patroness whose Swiss estate Tchaikovsky had fled to was none other than Nadezhda von Meck.

In 1877, the same year as his wedding, she began sending Tchaikovsky 6000 rubles a month, a hugely generous income that enabled him to quit teaching and focus solely on composition.

Nadezhda von Meck © en.tchaikovsky-research.net

His connection with her helped kick off a new era in his creative life. The Serenade for Strings is one of the pieces from early in their creative partnership.

Tchaikovsky wrote this serenade as a kind of antidote, because he was burnt out from composing another work that he feared was artistically worthless…

1812 Overture (1880) 

The work that Tchaikovsky feared was artistically worthless was the 1812 Overture, a work that has become among Tchaikovsky’s most popular.

The overture was commissioned to celebrate the completion of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in St. Petersburg, a monument that had been started generations earlier, after Napoleon’s ill-fated attempt to overtake Russia.

The historical event was massive and the cathedral was massive, so the overture had to be massive, too. Tchaikovsky wrote parts for a large orchestra with a huge percussion section, a brass band, pealing church bells, and even cannons, which were supposed to be set off by electric switch.

The scale of the premiere deflated after the assassination of the tzar in 1881. It took until the 1950s for a recording to be made that actually included cannon fire.

Capriccio Italienne (1880)

One of the destinations that Tchaikovsky escaped to while avoiding his new wife was Italy. Tchaikovsky was enchanted by Italy. He wrote to Nadezhda von Meck:

“I have already completed the sketches for an Italian fantasia on folk tunes for which I believe a good fortune may be predicted. It will be effective, thanks to the delightful tunes which I have succeeded in assembling partly from anthologies, partly from my own ears in the streets.”

Even though the purportedly Italian-inspired Capriccio is also very Russian, it works well, anyway. It remains a moving musical portrait of what Tchaikovsky saw as he was recovering and coming to terms with the trauma of his marriage.

Romeo and Juliet Overture (1880) 

Another coping mechanism that Tchaikovsky used during this time was reworking music from his past.

In the late 1860s, when he was a young music professor in St. Petersburg, Tchaikovsky fell in love with a magnetic singer named Désirée Artôt. Since Artôt ended up being the only woman in his entire life who Tchaikovsky felt this way about, some people speculate that he may have been in love more with her singing than with her as a person.

Désirée Artôt

The two discussed marriage, but she ultimately married another man…possibly because she heard about Tchaikovsky’s same-sex attraction.

Shattered by the rejection, Tchaikovsky wrote a symphonic poem based on the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. He struggled with mixed feedback from renowned composer Mily Balakirev. One version was premiered in 1870, and a second in 1872, but neither one stuck.

Fortunately, during his burst of creative productivity in 1880, he finally figured out what he wanted to say with the piece, and reworked it a third time, to great effect.

The love theme was adored by audiences, and it remains cultural shorthand for love, even today.

Orchestral Suite No. 4 in G major “Mozartiana” (1887) Play

Mozart had always been Tchaikovsky’s favorite composer. In 1887, on the centenary of the premiere of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, Tchaikovsky came out with this orchestral suite to celebrate his hero.

This work is unusual in Tchaikovsky’s output in that it is based on Mozart piano pieces (as well as a slightly treacly reworking of a passage from his Requiem).

It’s fascinating to hear how this most Romantic of Russian composers treats the delicate work of Mozart, the Classical era’s poster child. It reveals a new side to Tchaikovsky’s interests and musical personality that isn’t often seen.

Symphony No. 5 (1888) 

In 1888, Tchaikovsky wrote a note to himself: “Introduction. Complete resignation before Fate – or, what is the same thing, the inscrutable designs of Providence.”

This idea of a symphony exploring the idea of unalterable fate – with all of the darkness, joy, and inevitability that such an idea implies – became a part of his fifth symphony, which opens with a theme that has come to be known as the “fate” theme, and which recurs throughout the work.

He updated von Meck: “I shall work my hardest. I am exceedingly anxious to prove to myself, as to others, that I am not played out as a composer. Have I told you that I intend to write a symphony? The beginning was difficult, but now inspiration seems to have come. We shall see…”

He finished it in a few months, but the premiere was unsuccessful. He updated von Meck, “Having played my Symphony twice in Petersburg and once in Prague, I have come to the conclusion that it is a failure. There is something repellent in it, some over-exaggerated color, some insincerity of fabrication which the public instinctively recognizes.”

However, within a matter of months, having returned to it and performed it again, he changed his mind yet again, writing to his nephew, “I have started to love it again. My earlier judgment was undeservedly harsh.”

Whether you love it or hate its over-the-top emotion, take solace in the fact that at some point, Tchaikovsky agreed with you!

The Nutcracker (1892) 

For The Nutcracker, which would turn out to be his last ballet, Tchaikovsky partnered with legendary choreographer Marius Petipa.

Their partnership became extremely granular. Petipa gave measure-by-measure instructions about what he was envisioning for the dance, and Tchaikovsky delivered. Despite this, the colorful score feels incredibly free and organic.

The initial response to The Nutcracker was lukewarm, but future generations came to treasure it. After dancer George Balanchine choreographed a version in New York in the 1950s, it became established as a December holiday tradition, especially in America.

The Nutcracker has become so popular that it has single-handedly helped keep many ballet companies afloat in financially difficult times. Tchaikovsky would no doubt be pleased!

Symphony No. 6 (1893) 

Tchaikovsky began the composition of the sixth symphony by creating notes…and then ripping them up.

But he kept trying. In 1893, he wrote to his nephew, “I am now wholly occupied with the new work … and it is hard for me to tear myself away from it. I believe it comes into being as the best of my works.”

What resulted was his darkest music yet, exploring themes of loss and mortality. Notably, it ends on a quiet, tragic note, instead of the much more common flurry of triumph.

Composing the work seems to have excised dark feelings for Tchaikovsky. His brother wrote later, “I had not seen him so bright for a long time past.”

The symphony was premiered in late October 1893. On the Wednesday after its premiere, he went to a restaurant and supposedly drank unboiled water. On Thursday, he began showing symptoms of cholera. On Monday, he was dead.

Tchaikovsky on his death bed

For obvious reasons, the sixth symphony is the most mythologized piece in Tchaikovsky’s entire output. It is difficult to listen to it and not think of the tragic fate that befell its composer a few days after its premiere. This juxtaposition has led to all sorts of conspiracy theories.

Conclusion

There are many reasons why Tchaikovsky is one of the most beloved composers in classical music history.

His music is accessible and affecting. He knew how to spin a melody and how to orchestrate, and he never got caught up in academic arguments at the expense of the music. For him, expressing emotion was always the most important thing, and audiences through the generations have responded to that.

Add in the struggles he faced with depression and self-doubt, and the lifelong struggle of hiding his homosexuality and never being able to be in an open relationship with a man, and he becomes a relatable – albeit tragic – figure for many people.

One thing is clear. As long as orchestral music is played, it seems likely that audiences will be hearing and loving Tchaikovsky.

How Can I Be a Better Musician?

Ten Top Classical Musicians Share Their Tips

By Emily F. Hogstadt, Interlude

Over the years, we’ve had the honor of talking with many of the greatest musicians in classical music today.

Today, we’re gathering some of their best advice for musicians in one article. If you ever find yourself stuck in a rut creatively, we’re here to help!

Here’s some of the best advice our experts have given us:

1. Try yoga!

Violinist Elena Urioste

With the amount of travel and moving through the world, and with the flexibility that our extremely irregular profession requires of us, something like a yoga or mindfulness practice – even if you spend just five minutes breathing or doing some gentle stretches at some point in the day – can be a real safe haven for us, a sort of refuge.

Violinist Elena Urioste

Yoga and other practices that make you more mindful will help you be more aware of your surroundings and more “plugged-in” to what you’re thinking about and playing.

Remember, you’ll never be able to play your best if you’re not taking care of yourself mentally, emotionally, and physically. 

2. You can teach yourself how to perform.

Noa Kageyama © Rosalie O’Connor

Learning how to practice more effectively and learning how to prepare for performances – especially how to get into a better headspace, and how to stay laser-focused in a performance (and what exactly to think about or focus on during a performance) changed my experience on stage. It was incredibly empowering to discover that I had control over my learning rate, and that I was also in charge of how well performances went too.

Performance Psychologist Noa Kageyama

In our March 2023 conversation with him, Noa Kageyama reframed the experience of performance anxiety.

He posits that it’s not something we’re always destined to have, but that changes we can make can provide more control over our performances.

3. Don’t be afraid of failure. In fact, give yourself the chance to screw up.

Pianist Hyung-ki Joo © Julia Wesely

The problem is there’s such a concentration on having to be ‘perfect’, whatever that means. But then you get cornered into this area of fear: fear of failing. And when you’re in that place of fear, creativity has no room to breathe and breed, because you don’t give yourself the chance to screw up.

Pianist Hyung-ki Joo

Pianist Hyung-ki Joo, half of the comedic duo Igudesman & Joo, is an expert at embracing creativity and fleeing fear! He has co-created a hugely popular comedy stage act to make musicians and music-lovers laugh. And as comedian Stephen Colbert has said, it’s impossible to laugh and be afraid at the same time. Something to keep in mind next time you take the stage!

Mozart Will Survive 

4. Try adding narration or other disciplines to your musical performances. It might help the audience connect with you!

Tal Walker

I feel that making classical music accessible and approachable through diverse programming (of both performers as well as composers) is a good starting point. I found that narrated and/or interdisciplinary performances often help the audience to better connect with the music. Any other creative initiatives (such as performing in non-conventional venues) is always helpful to de-associate classical music with the status symbol elitist image it sometimes possesses and make it relevant and exciting for younger audiences.

Pianist Tal Walker

The next time you’re planning a performance, see if you can join forces with other artists, whether by including their art in the lobby, inviting dancers onstage, or bringing in actors to provide some kind of historical context via narration.

Collaboration is the name of the game when it comes to creating engaging performances.

5. Program contemporary music. Remind people that not all classical music is old or dead.

Brianna Matzke

The art form of classical music is a living, breathing art form! I can’t tell you how often a new acquaintance is surprised to learn that there are still living composers; there is too much of an association between classical music and being “old” and/or “dead.” If we continue to promote and program beautiful, moving, and surprising contemporary music, audiences around the world will understand that classical music has relevance for their lives. Ultimately, I hope that by promoting contemporary music we can build larger and stronger communities surrounding our music-making and also that we can use our music-making to support our communities!

Pianist and Educator Brianna Matzke

As Brianna Matzke talks about in her full interview, presenting contemporary music isn’t just about crafting a performance. Done right, it’s also about fostering a sense of discovery and community between performers and audiences.

6. When learning a concerto, don’t just study your part. Study the orchestra part too, and be inspired by it.

Maxim Vengerov © IDAGIO – Diago Mariotta Mendez

“Once you know the full score, it adds a new dimension to your performance. It’s no longer a violin piece with orchestral accompaniment… you can refer to one or another line in the orchestra and that’s where you draw your inspiration… The impact that the orchestra has on the soloist is vast. And if you’re not part of it, then it’s a different piece.”

Violinist Maxim Vengerov

In July 2022, it was our pleasure to talk to Maxim Vengerov, an absolute legend of violin playing. His advice for learning all parts of your solo will change how you study concertos, whether you ever play them with orchestras or not.

Maxim Vengerov Plays Waxman, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Ravel and Bazzini 

7. Don’t desire a solo career just for the sake of having a solo career. Prioritize opening new doors and reaching more people instead.

Paul Katz

I first think we need to consider: why do we aim to become musicians? The ambition for a solo career and practicing six hours a day or more while letting the world go by, doesn’t necessarily bring fulfillment. We each need to consider how we can be the best musician and person we can be, while continuing to represent the highest artist values and generating purpose. How can the next generation fill a niche, open new doors, reach more people?

Cellist and Educator Paul Katz

There are a number of times when pursuing a professional musical career can feel like crossing things off a very stressful, high-stakes checklist. In his interview with us, Paul Katz, founder of the website CelloBello, reminds musicians to stay grounded and relevant.

CELLOBELLO: Virtuosity, Expression, Mastery, Education 

8. Don’t be afraid to play challenging or complex music for kids!

Evelyn Chang

Make classical music available for all children! Music is music, it’s personal that either you like it or not. When you play music to very young kids they don’t categorise the music, they just know if they enjoy it or not. And yes, it takes more time and some learning to know how to listen to music of more complex textures in order to enjoy it on a different level, but it’s all a matter of time and exposure, in my opinion. The earlier they start the longer they can enjoy it. Knowing how to listen to music is one of the most wonderful gifts in life.

Pianist and Composer Evelyn Chang

Evelyn Chang works with young kids and knows her audience very well. So next time you have young audience members, bring out a challenging piece and see what they think! They may well be more receptive than the adults in your audience.

9. You don’t have to be a professional musician to accomplish incredible things in music.

© Paul Wee

The single most important point I would stress is to remember that your love for music and your instrument isn’t linked to your identity as an aspiring or professional musician. A genuine love for music isn’t the same thing as being in love with the idea of being a successful professional musician. Sadly, I’ve known many musicians who have confused the two. Ask yourself at every stage why you are doing what you are doing, and never lose sight of why you fell in love with music in the first place: treasure that flame. The joy and riches to be found in music are far bigger than any career, and if you don’t end up being a professional musician, that won’t detract from your ability to enjoy all the treasures that music has to offer – in fact I sometimes wonder whether it leaves you better placed to appreciate them.

Pianist and Barrister Paul Wee

The astonishing Paul Wee sustains a career as a barrister and as a pianist! In our full interview, we talked to him about balancing these two demanding identities…and also why having a day job might actually be a wise path for an ambitious musician to consider.

10. Don’t wait for inspiration to hit. Actively work to find out what inspires you.

Andrew Garrido
© BBC

I’ve found you can’t just wait to be inspired, rather you need to find inspiration from within, and that comes from the love of music; if you find new ways to love music, you’ll find new ways to be inspired.

Pianist Andrew Garrido

We hope that something in this list inspired you to think about music-making from a new angle.

Thank you to our contributors and our interview subjects for sharing their combined centuries of knowledge with our readers!

Eight of the Greatest American Women Composers

By Emily F. Hogstadt, Interlude

The history of American classical music is dominated by names like Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, and others.

However, not all of the composers who contributed to American classical music have been men! On the contrary, many of the best composers in American history have been women.

Today we’re looking at the lives and work of eight American women composers.

Amy Beach (1867-1944)

Amy Beach is widely considered to be the first major American woman composer.

Amy Beach

She was born Amy Cheney in 1867 in New Hampshire. From the beginning, it was clear she was a prodigy. At the age of just four, she composed waltzes in her head while out of the house, then returned home to play them on piano.

She began formal piano lessons with her mother at the age of six. A couple of years later, her family moved to suburban Boston. At fourteen, she briefly studied harmony and counterpoint. This would be her only formal compositional training.

She made a brilliant orchestral debut at 16. But two years later, in 1885, her performing career came to a halt when she married a doctor named H. H. A. Beach, who was twenty-four years her senior.

A condition of the marriage was that she could only perform in public twice a year, and she had to donate any money she earned to charity. Because of this, she began gravitating toward composition.

In 1892, she had her Mass in E-flat Major premiered at the Handel and Haydn Society.

Four years later, the Boston Symphony premiered her Gaelic Symphony, marking the first time a major American orchestra had played a symphony by a woman.

Four years after that, the Boston Symphony premiered her piano concerto.

In 1910, she was widowed, a change in circumstance that granted her freedom to pursue a performing career.

Margaret Ruthven Lang (1867-1972) 

Margaret Ruthven Lang was born in Boston to musical parents. Her father was a conductor, pianist, and composer and ensured that she had a good musical education.

In 1886, she went to Munich to study violin. After she returned to America, she studied composition with professors from the New England Conservatory of Music.

Margaret Ruthven Lang

In 1893, the Boston Symphony premiered her Dramatic Overture, marking the first time a major American orchestra had played a woman’s work. (It just barely beat out Beach’s Gaelic Symphony.)

Sadly, Lang had fierce self-doubts and destroyed many of her manuscripts. It seems likely that her orchestral works were among these.

After her father’s death in 1909, she became less involved with music and more interested in religion, becoming a devoted Episcopalian. Her final work, Three Pianoforte Pieces for Young Players, was published in 1919.

However, she lived for decades more and ended up setting a patron record at the Boston Symphony, having been a subscriber there for 91 consecutive years. She died just short of her 105th birthday.

Florence Price (1887-1953) 

Florence Price was born to a Black family in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her father was a dentist and her mother was a music teacher.

From an early age her musical talent was apparent. She gave her first public piano performance at the age of four, and she had her first piece published when she was eleven.

Florence Price © University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections

She graduated from high school at the age of fourteen and then enrolled at the New England Conservatory of Music.

After graduation in 1910, she returned to Little Rock to teach and start a family. She married a lawyer named Thomas J. Price in 1912 and had three children with him.

To escape the ever-present domestic terrorism of the Jim Crow era, the family moved to Chicago in 1927. Surrounded by the artists that made up the Chicago Black Renaissance, Price returned to her musical career.

She also made a big life change when she divorced in 1931. She remarried the same year to an insurance agent named Pusey Dell Arnett, but the relationship fizzled out. During this time of transition, to make ends meet, she played organ at movie theaters and roomed with friends.

In 1932, her hard work paid off when she won the Wanamaker Foundation Award for her Symphony in E-minor. The following year, the Chicago Symphony performed the symphony, making it the first time a Black woman had seen her work played by a major American orchestra.

Florence Price died in 1953 of a stroke. She has been experiencing a revival over the past few years in America as audiences are rediscovering her charming, deeply moving work.

Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953)

Ruth Crawford Seeger

Ruth Crawford Seeger was born in Ohio in 1901. Her minister father died young and her mother was forced to open a boarding house to make up for the loss of his income.

In 1907 she began piano lessons, and after high school, she settled on a musical career.

In 1921 she moved to Chicago and began attending the American Conservatory of Music. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees there between 1921 and 1929.

After her graduation, she became the first woman composer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. She used the money to study in Paris and Berlin.

In 1932 she married her composition teacher, Charles Seeger, who was fifteen years her senior. From 1933 to 1943 she had four children with him.

Her most famous works date from between 1930 and 1933, when she was writing fearlessly modernist works that embrace dissonance and serial techniques.

She died of intestinal cancer in 1953.

Margaret Bonds (1913-1972) 

Margaret Bonds was born Margaret Majors in Chicago. Her parents were a Black doctor and his church musician wife, who divorced when she was four. She took her mother’s maiden name and became known as Margaret Bonds.

Margaret was a prodigiously gifted child who wrote her first piece of music at the age of five. In high school, she studied composition with Florence Price and William Dawson.

Margaret Bonds

In 1929, when she was sixteen, she began studying at Northwestern University, where she earned her master’s degrees in piano and composition. The atmosphere at the school was deeply racist and difficult for her to endure.

While at Northwestern, in 1933, she soloed with the Chicago Symphony, becoming the first Black person to ever do so.

In 1939, with her degrees from Northwestern in hand, she moved to New York City to go to Juilliard. She married a probation officer in New York in 1940.

Bonds was good friends with poet Langston Hughes and they collaborated on a variety of creative projects over the years.

She also spent time creating projects that would uplift Black artists and the wider community.

In 1964 she composed one of her most ambitious works, the Montgomery Variations, which graphically portrayed the violence and resilience of the 1960s civil rights movement. She dedicated the work to Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1966, she moved to Los Angeles, where she died in 1972.

Julia Perry (1924-1979) 

Julia Perry was raised in Kentucky and Ohio.

She studied voice, piano, and composition at Westminster Choir College. She continued her postgraduate studies at the Berkshire Music Center and Juilliard.

Julia Perry

In 1952 she traveled to Paris to study with legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger. She spent a little over five years in Europe, then returned to America, where she became a teacher herself.

She preferred to write for voice, and wrote several incredible works in vocal genres, including her Stabat Mater. But she also wrote great works for instrumental ensembles, too, including twelve symphonies, two piano concertos, and a violin concerto.

At the time of her death she was working on an opera, which remains unfinished.

Jennifer Higdon (1962-) 

Jennifer Higdon was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a painter and his wife, and raised in Georgia and Tennessee.

She didn’t listen to much classical music as a child, and only began playing an instrument in high school, when she started learning percussion and flute.

Jennifer Higdon

She attended Bowling Green State University for flute performance and began studying composition there. She later earned her master’s degree and PhD in composition from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied under George Crumb.

In 1994 she became a professor at the Curtis Institute of Music, the most selective music school in America.

Her compositional style is tonal and accessible; it’s sometimes called neoromantic. Her music has received popular and critical acclaim. She has won three Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Classical Composition (they were awarded for her percussion concerto, viola concerto, and harp concerto). In 2010 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Jessie Montgomery (1981-) 

Jessie Montgomery was born to a composer and a playwright in New York City in 1982. She earned her bachelor’s degree in violin performance from Juilliard, and her master’s degree in film and media composition from New York University.

She values diversity, arts education, accessibility, and uses her music to engage with ideas and issues surrounding equity and social justice.

Jessie Montgomery

Her work blends all kinds of musical influences from all around the world, including countries like Mexico, Cuba, and Zimbabwe, and genres like swing, samba, and even techo.

In 2021, she was named the Chicago Symphony Composer-In-Residence.

Today she is one of the most frequently performed new music composers in America.