Louise Talma

Composer, born in Arachon, France. She studied in New York and with Nadia Boulanger in France and taught at Hunter College (1946–76). Her music is typically Neoclassical, later mixed with serialism, but always personal. She has been called ‘the dean of women composers’, and her works include the opera Alcestiad (1955–6), based on a Thornton Wilder text.

She was raised in New York City and studied at the Institute of Musical Arts (Juilliard School of Music, 1922–1930) and received her bachelor of music degree from New York University and masters of arts degree from Columbia University.

She began composing in a spare neoclassical tonal style featuring static harmonies, short distinct melodies in counterpoint, ostinatos, and pedal points varied through mode, tempo, rhythm, metre, articulation.

She began using the twelve tone technique in 1954 after hearing Irving Fine's String Quartet, and returned to a neo-tonal style in her last works of the 1980s and 1990s. She wrote most of her compositions at the MacDowell Colony where she also met composers of the "Boston school", Arthur Berger, Lukas Foss, Irving Fine, Alexie Haieff, Harold Shapero, and Claudio Spies.

She was the first woman to receive two Guggenheims, be elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1974), and to receive the Sibelius Medal for composition from the Harriet Cohen International Music Awards in London (1963). (All Music Guide)

Her works include Song of the Songless (1928), Three Madrigals (1928), Two Dances (1934), In principio erat verbum (1939), Six Etudes (1954), The Alcestiad (1955–1958) with text by Thornton Wilder, Full Circle (1985), Spacings (1994), A Time to Remember (1966–1967) based on speeches of John F.