Louise Talma facts for kids

Louise Juliette Talma (October 31, 1906 – August 13, 1996) was an American composer, teacher, and pianist. She studied music in New York and France. Her teachers included famous musicians like Isidor Philipp (piano) and Nadia Boulanger (composition). From 1935, she focused mainly on composing music.

Louise Talma taught at the American Conservatory in France and at Hunter College in New York. She made history with her opera The Alcestiad. It was the first full-length opera by an American woman to be performed in Europe. She was also the first woman to join the National Institute of Arts and Letters. She received the Sibelius Medal for Composition.

Early Life and Education

Louise Talma was born in Arcachon, France, on October 31, 1906. Her mother, Alma Cecile Garrigues, was an American singer. Louise and her mother moved to New York City in 1914. Louise grew up surrounded by music. She was also very good at science and thought about becoming a chemist. But she chose to become a musician instead.

After high school, Louise went to the Institute of Musical Arts in New York in 1922. This school later became the Juilliard School. She studied both piano and composition there. She earned her music degree from New York University in 1931. Then, she got her master's degree from Columbia University in 1933.

Every summer from 1926 to 1935, Louise studied piano in France. She learned from Isidor Philipp at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau. In 1928, she also began studying composition with Nadia Boulanger. She decided to focus on composing music in 1935 and continued studying with Boulanger until 1939. Louise Talma also started teaching at Hunter College in New York in the late 1920s.

Musical Journey and Style

In 1926, Louise Talma performed her first piano concert in New York. That summer, she met Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory in France. Boulanger became a very important person in Talma's life. With Boulanger's help, Talma decided to stop playing piano professionally and focus on composing. She also became a Roman Catholic in 1934, with Boulanger as her godmother. Louise dedicated her life to music, much like Boulanger did. She never married. After becoming a Roman Catholic, she composed many religious pieces.

Talma's early music, from 1925 to 1951, is called her "neo-classical period." This means her music used ideas from older, classical music styles. From 1952 to 1967, she entered her "serial period." In this style, composers use a specific order of notes (a "series") to create melodies and harmonies. Even after this period, many of her later works still used some of these serial ideas.

Major Achievements

Louise Talma's early works were very successful. Her Piano Sonata No. 1 (1943), Toccata for Orchestra (1944), and Alleluia in the Form of Toccata for piano (1945) were highly praised. These pieces helped her become known as an important American composer.

Because of her success, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition. She was the second woman to receive this award, and the first to get it two years in a row (1946 and 1947). In the 1940s, Talma spent her summers at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Many of her important works were written there. She taught music full-time at Hunter College from 1928 until 1979. She even helped write two harmony textbooks for her students.

In 1952, Talma started using serial techniques in her music. Her first complete serial work was a setting of e. e. cummings's poem "Let’s Touch the Sky." Other works like her String Quartet (1954) and Piano Sonata No. 2 (1955) also used these new ideas. She created her own way of using serial elements, allowing her music to still have a sense of traditional melody.

The Alcestiad Opera

In 1954, Louise Talma began working on a grand opera with writer Thornton Wilder. They decided to base the opera on Wilder's play about the Greek figure Alcestis. Talma finished The Alcestiad in 1958.

American opera houses were interested in the opera, but they thought it would be too hard for American performers and audiences. However, Thornton Wilder was popular in Germany. So, Die Alkestiade (the German name for the opera) was first performed by the Oper Frankfurt in Germany in 1962. This was a huge moment! It was the first time a full-length opera by an American woman was performed at a major European theater. Even though it was well-received, it is not widely known today because it requires a lot of resources to perform.

Still, The Alcestiad secured Talma's place as a pioneering American and female composer. In 1963, she was the first female composer to win the Harriet Cohen International Music Award. In 1974, she was the first woman elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Later Works and Legacy

Louise Talma wrote many different types of music. This included pieces for singers, choirs, solo piano, small groups of instruments (chamber ensembles), and orchestras. She also wrote a smaller opera and set texts by famous writers like Auden, Dickinson, and Shakespeare to music.

After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Talma dedicated several works to him. These included Dialogues for piano and orchestra (1964) and A Time to Remember (1967). The latter was an oratorio that used Kennedy's own words. Her piece The Tolling Bell (1969), which used texts by Shakespeare and others, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in music.

In 1976, Talma wrote her own story for her chamber opera, Have You Heard? Do You Know?. This work was about the Cold War and dreams of a perfect world. She continued to compose a lot of music even into her eighties. Louise Talma passed away in Saratoga Springs, New York, on August 13, 1996. She was working on a piece called The Lengthening Shadows at the Yaddo colony when she died.

A book about her music, Louise Talma: A Life in Composition, was published in 2014 by musicologist Kendra Preston Leonard.

List of Works

Opera

• The Alcestiad, based on a story by Thornton Wilder, first performed in Frankfurt, Germany, on March 1, 1962.

Orchestra

• Toccata (1944)
• Dialogues for piano and orchestra (1963–1964)
• The Tolling Bell for baritone and orchestra (1967–1969) (uses texts by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Donne)
• Full Circle (1985)

Chamber Music

• Wedding Piece: Where Thou Goest I Go for organ (1946)
• Song and Dance for violin and piano (1951)
• String Quartet (1954)
• Violin Sonata (1962)
• Three Duologues for clarinet and piano (1968)
• Summer Sounds for clarinet and string quartet (1973)
• Lament for cello and piano (1980)
• Studies in Spacing for three wind instruments and piano (1982)
• Ambient Air for flute, violin, cello & piano (1983)
• Fanfare for Hunter College for two trumpets and three trombones (1983)
• Seven Episodes for flute, piano and violin (1987)
• Conversations for flute and piano (1987)
• Spacings for viola and piano (1994)

Piano

• Two Dances (1934)
• Four-handed Fun (1939)
• Piano Sonata No. 1 (1943)
• Italian Suite (1946)
• Venetian Folly: Overture and Barcarolle (1946–47)
• Alleluia in the Form of a Toccata (1947)
• Pastoral Prelude (1949)
• Six Etudes (1954)
• Piano Sonata No. 2 (1955)
• Passacaglia and Fugue (1955)
• Three Bagatelles (1955)
• Soundshots (1974)
• Textures (1977)
• Kaleidoscopic Variations (1984)
• Ave Atque Vale (1989)

Vocal Music

• Song of the Songless (1928)
• Five Sonnets from the Portuguese (1934)
• Late Leaves (1934)
• Never Seek to Tell Thy Love (1934)
• A Child's Fancy, song cycle (1935)
• I Fear a Man of Scanty Speech (1938)
• Seven Songs for Voice and Piano
  • One need not be a Chamber to be Haunted (1941)
  • Leap Before You Look (1945)
  • Sonnet (1946)
  • Spring & Fall: To a young child (1946)
  • Glory to God for Dappled Things (1949)
  • Sonnet (1950)
  • Rain Song (1973)
• Terre de France, song cycle (1945)
• La Corona, Holy Sonnets of John Donne for voice and piano (1951–54)
• Birthday Song for tenor, flute and viola (1960)
• Have You Heard? Do You Know? for soprano, mezzo-soprano and instrumental ensemble (1976)
• 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird for tenor or soprano and oboe, flute or violin, and piano (1979)
• Diadem for tenor and Pierrot ensemble (1980)
• Wishing Well for soprano and flute (1986)
• Infanta Marina, song cycle for soprano (1990)
• The Lengthening Shadows (1993)