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Biography of Thea MusgraveName: Thea MusgraveBirth Date: May 27, 1928 Death Date: N/A Place of Birth: Edinburgh, Scotland Nationality: Scottish Gender: Female Occupations: composer Thea Musgrave Thea Musgrave (born 1928) was a prominent Scottish-born composer whose works include operas, ballet scores, orchestral pieces, chamber music, and vocal and choral works. Her music was performed in Great Britain, Europe, and the United States.Thea Musgrave was highly regarded for her talent in a wide variety of musical forms. Her compositional techniques included serial writing and electronically generated sound, but her personal style was not confined to one school of composition. She described the form of some of her music as "dramatic-abstract" and said, Music goes from moment to moment, and I'm very conscious of voice-leading. I'm also conscious of the big gesture, the route the music will follow, and that is where tonality comes in, creating the feeling of home. The feeling of home can be established by a chord or a color or a rhythm. Or when you arrive at E-flat. It's not E-flat major, but you …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…theater piece for chorus and instruments.Recent works include The Voice of Ariadne (1989), Piccolo Play (1991), a multimedia piece Echoes Through Time(1989), Pierrot(1994), and Simon Bolivar(1995). She also wrote a book The Choral Music of 21st Century Women Composers (1997), with Elizabeth Lutyens and Elizabeth Merconchy.Thea Musgrave wrote, in addition to the pieces already mentioned, many others including songs, ballet music, and incidental pieces. She forged an individual style of composition that explored the dramatic possibilities of music and the ways in which that drama can assist in creating large musical structures within the framework of the 20th-century musical language. Further Reading Thea Musgrave: A Bio-bibliography (1984) by Donald Hixon contains a biography and a complete list of works, a discography, and a bibliography of writings by and about Musgrave and her music. In addition, her works are listed in the International Encyclopedia of Women Composers published by R. R. Bowker in 1981. |