Ursula Mamlok facts for kids

Ursula Mamlok (born February 1, 1923 – died May 4, 2016) was a talented composer and teacher. She was born in Germany and later became an American citizen.

Early Life and Musical Training

Ursula Mamlok was born Ursula Meyer in Berlin, Germany. She came from a Jewish family. From a young age, she studied piano and learned how to compose music with teachers like Gustav Ernest and Emily Weissgerber.

In 1938, her family had to leave Nazi Germany. This was after a terrible event called Kristallnacht, which was a nationwide attack on Jewish people. Because of strict immigration rules, her family first moved to Guayaquil, Ecuador.

In 1940, Ursula moved by herself to New York City. She received a full scholarship to study at the Mannes School of Music because of her amazing compositions. Her parents joined her in 1941, and she became an American citizen in 1945.

Learning from the Masters

During her four years at the Mannes School, Ursula studied with the famous conductor George Szell. Later, in the 1950s, she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from the Manhattan School of Music. There, she studied with Vittorio Giannini.

She also learned from other important teachers. These included Roger Sessions and Ralph Shapey for composition, and Eduard Steuermann for piano. Steuermann was known as one of the best piano teachers of his time.

Musical Inspirations

While Paul Hindemith was one of her first influences, Ursula Mamlok said that composers who used a style called Serialism had the biggest impact on her music. These composers included Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern.

Even with these influences, she once said: "My music is colorful, with the background of tonality – tonal centers … I can't shake it completely." This means her music, even when modern, still had a sense of a main musical key or center.

Her Compositions

Ursula Mamlok wrote a lot of music for small groups of instruments. This type of music is called chamber music. It's usually played by a few musicians in a smaller room, not a big orchestra in a large concert hall. She also wrote many pieces for the piano.

She composed some pieces for a full orchestra too. One example is a concerto for the oboe. A concerto is a piece of music where a solo instrument, like the oboe, plays with an orchestra. She also wrote several songs and pieces for a singer with a small group of instruments. Her husband, Dwight Mamlok, wrote the words for her 1987 song "Der Andreasgarten."

Ursula's Musical Style

Ursula Mamlok described her own music and style by saying:

My main concern is that the music should convey the various emotions in it with clarity and conviction. It interests me to accomplish this with a minimum of material, transforming it in such multiple way so as to give the impression of ever-new ideas that are like the flowers of a plant, all related yet each one different.

This means she wanted her music to clearly show feelings, using just a few musical ideas and changing them in many creative ways.

Career and Achievements

Ursula Mamlok was also a very important teacher. She taught at many universities and colleges, including New York University (from 1967 to 1976), City University of New York, Temple University, and Kingsborough Community College. She taught at the Manhattan School of Music for an amazing four decades! She also helped lead the League of Composers/International Society for Contemporary Music.

Awards and Recognition

Ursula Mamlok received many awards and grants for her work. She got two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (in 1974 and 1981). She also received a grant from the Fromm Foundation in 1994 and a special fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation in 1995.

Many organizations asked her to compose new music. These included the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Eastman School of Music, the Alaria Chamber Ensemble, and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

In 1984, one of her chamber music pieces, When Summer Sang, was chosen to represent the United States at the International Rostrum of Composers. This piece was for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. In 1987, she received a Commendation of Excellence for her important contributions to concert music.

Her compositions were published by several companies, including the C. F. Peters Corporation, American Composers Edition, McGuinness and Marx, Casia Publishing, and Hildegard Publishing. She also made many of her musical scores available herself. In 2006, Ursula Mamlok moved back to Berlin, where she passed away on May 4, 2016.

Notable Students

Ursula Mamlok taught many students who became successful composers themselves. Some of them include:

• Alba Lucía Potes Cortés
• Alex Shapiro
• Tania León