COLLECTION OF WONDERFUL FEMALE MICROTONAL COMPOSERS
Lately I have been getting back into just intonation tuning and learning more about the pieces I love including La Monte Young’s Well Tuned Piano and 'Micheal Harrison’s Revelation. Both these pieces are for microtonal piano and are connected through Micheal Harrison being La Monte Young’s student. I also like the work of Harry Partch and the work Stimmung by Stockhausen. I suddenly had a thought, why do I only know about the work of male microtonal composers and where can I learn about innovative female microtonal composers. I posed this question in the Xenharmonicon microtonal Facebook group and lots of names came up. I have started a list that I plan to add to and possibly make into a little research project. Here is what I have so far. Feel free to suggest others to me! I need to find my favourite piece by each of these composers, the country they lived and worked in and their year of birth.
Catherine Lamb (born 1982, USA) : Berlin-based composer/violist. Recently I discovered Lamb’s piece Parallaxis Forma (2014) for Voice and Ensemble and I love it! Like some of my pieces it is in just intonation tuning, uses IPA notated vowels for the vocalist and even has microtonally tuned wine glasses! You can see the score here: http://www.sacredrealism.org/catlamb/works/scores/2016/Lamb_parallaxis_forma_example_20.pdf There is a scrolling score here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAN3yCtlkf0&t=85s
Amelia Huff aka Zhea Erose : Amelia Huff has been an incredible discovery for me. In her Now and Xen interview she said she ‘worships’ the harmonic series. She writes incredibly beautiful music in just intonation tuning and has many well produced You Tube videos. Huff’s Fluorescence for acoustic just intonation piano is really listenable and I would recommend this track on Youtube where you can see Amelia paying her composition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BBdJly4-OY I have a lot more listening to do of Huff’s work so I am planning to do that on my lockdown walks. Huff is also an incredible just intonation theorist and has she has her own approach/ theory called ‘Primodality’. You can hear her lecture about ‘Primodality’ here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKxXdD-lkwI
Marguerite Brown (b.1990) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist.
1st Prize Winner - Solo (Daisy) - Marguerite Brown - 6th Microtonal Guitar Competition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvLMuFs4wns
Bio: Marguerite’s work for refretted guitars was recently published in the microtonal journal Edition Zalzal, as well as presented at the 2021 21st Century Guitar Conference and the Pacific Pythagorean Music Festival. She was also recently awarded the Mivos/Kanter Prize (2021) for her string quartet in just intonation titled chroai: tetrachords, which will be performed in New York City during Mivos Quartet’s 2022-23 season. Marguerite holds a BM in music composition from Cornish College of the Arts (2013), a MA from the University of California, Santa Cruz (2019), and is currently a PhD student in music composition at the University of California, San Diego.
Listen on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/marguerite-brown
Elaine Walker
Dolores Catherine
Barbera Hero
Wendy Carlos
Vivian Tylinska
Erica Dal Bassa
Katarina Miljkovic
Ellen Fullman
Anne La Berge,
(Dorothy?) Oram
Margo Schulter
Chiyoko Szlavnics
Julia Werntz
Gayle Young
Eleni Ralli
Terumi Narumshima AUSTRALIA