Cluster „Female Composers from the 19th Century“

Cluster „Female Composers from the 19th Century“ – Annegret Huber

BECHTEL Lydia

Dr. Lydia Bechtel, soprano, serves as an Assistant Instructional Professor of Applied Voice and Music History at Pittsburg State University in Kansas. She earned her DMA in Vocal Performance and MM in Musicology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, while serving as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Voice. While in Kansas City she also worked as an Adjunct Professor of Applied Voice at Northwest Missouri State University and Rockhurst University.

Bechtel has performed a number of operatic roles with companies in the U.S. and abroad. Recent performances include appearances with UMKC Opera, AIMS in Graz, Varna International Opera, Wichita Grand Opera, Boulder Opera, and Opera on Tap Colorado. Her roles include Fanny-La Cambiale di Matrimonio, Gretel-Hänsel und Gretel, Lisette-La Rondine, Serpetta-La Finta Giardiniera, Le feu-L’enfant et les sortilèges, Ilia-Idomeneo, and Mabel-Pirates of Penzance. As a soloist Bechtel has been heard in Beethoven’s Mass in C, Bach’s Coffee Cantata, BWV 159 Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem, and Handel’s Messiah.

Equally committed to scholarly endeavors, Dr. Bechtel presented her research at the 2018 CMS National Conference in Vancouver, “Pauline Viardot’s Transcriptions of Chopin’s Mazurkas: A Study in Artistry,” and presented a poster on public musicology at the 2019 ATMI National Conference in Louisville. In 2019 she earned the prestigious P.E.O. Scholar Award, which allowed her to complete research on Pauline Viardot at the Harvard Houghton Library, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and Mediathèque Hector Berlioz. Her musicology thesis “Beyond Prima Donna: Pauline Viardot’s Collaboration on Meyerbeer’s Le prophète, Gounod’s Sapho, and Berlioz’s Arrangement of Orphée,” earned her the Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award at UMKC and research related to Meyerbeer’s Le prophète was recognized by the National Opera Association as the winner of their Scholarly Paper Competition in 2020.

Dr. Bechtel received her MM in Vocal Performance from Colorado State University where she served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, teaching both Applied Voice and Music Theory Fundamentals. She earned her BM in Vocal Performance summa cum laude from Oklahoma State University.

Salon Savvy: The Chamber Operas of Pauline Viardot as a Vehicle for Performance and Pedagogy

If a composer writes a piece of music and no one else hears it, are they still a composer? This question may have challenged the career aspirations of a number of female composers in the nineteenth century who struggled to have their works publicly performed. However, through innovative performance contexts, composers like Pauline Viardot (1821-1910) were able to have their works performed. While Viardot’s mezzo-soprano voice gave life to the works of Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864) and Charles Gounod (1818-1893) at the Paris Opera; her gender prohibited her from having her own compositions heard on the same stage. Thus, she focused her compositional efforts on smaller chamber operas that could be performed by developing singers in the successful salon that she operated. This paper will explore how Viardot utilized her salon as a vehicle for performance of her chamber operas Le dernier sorcier (1869) in Baden-Baden and Cendrillon (1904) in Paris. Additionally, it will highlight the pedagogical purposes of these works, as Viardot recognized the practicality of composing for her own students.

The chamber operas of Pauline Viardot demonstrate not only her compositional abilities, but her savvy navigation of the male dominated worlds of composition and vocal pedagogy in the nineteenth century. Recognizing the context in which she created these works helps to better understand her role as a composer and salon hostess in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, it reveals the usefulness of programming these works for young singers in the twenty-first century to continue their role as pedagogical operas for the developing singer.

BRAGA-POSTL Rannveig, HUBER Annegret, LINDQUIST Therese, WOSNITZKA Susanne

BRAGA-POSTL Rannveig

The Icelandic – Austrian mezzo soprano Rannveig Braga-Postl started her studies in Reykjavík - Iceland. She continued at the Academy for Music and Arts in Vienna (Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Wien) and graduated with a special distinction of the Austrian ministry of education and arts. Her first engagement was at the Vienna State Opera where she was engaged as a permanent singer for several years. Since then, she has participated in performances in many other opera houses, f. e. the Opera Frankfurt, Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, the theatres in Wiesbaden, Mannheim, Basel, Klagenfurt and Graz, as well as taking part in the Easter – and summer festivals in Salzburg and made several radio and television recordings.

She has also participated in many CD recordings: La Traviata – Naxos 1991; Die Frau ohne Schatten - Decca 1992; Salome – Decca 1995; “Cristals” with The Reykjavík Chamberorchester 1992 and “Verleih mir Flügel” with the Icelandic Symphony Orchester 1996. Her Solo CD´s – Schubert Songs and Songs from Schubert, Schumann, Wolf and Grieg - where nominated for the Icelandic Music Award.

Besides her career as a singer, Rannveig Braga - Postl is a professor for singing at the University for Music – Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien. She has been invited to give master classes at the Tunghai University in Taiwan, at the Shenyang Conservatory in China, the University of Arts in Reykjavík and at the Austria Master Classes (AMC) in Austria.

In the past years Rannveig Braga-Postl has participated and organized several projects and premiere recordings with students to promote the music of women composers.

HUBER Annegret

musicologist, music theorist, pianist. As professor for musicology at the mdw_University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and Head of the Department of Composition, Electroacoustics, and Tonmeister Education she teaches music analysis for future composers, music theorists and sound engineers and supervises doctoral candidates with their scholarly as well as artistic research projects. Research interests: historical and systematic aspects of music theory, music analysis and their methodologies; analysis as action and practice of knowing; functions/modes of music-analytical argumentation in diverse contexts such as music historiography, gender/diversity/intersectionality studies, post-colonial studies, media studies, (social-)epistemology and cultures of music knowledge production.

LINDQUIST Thérèse

The Swedish pianist Thérèse Lindquist is professor for Lied and Oratorio at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, Austria. She has collaborated with many renowned singers, for example, Wolfgang Holzmair with whom she has recorded highly acclaimed CDs: Webern Pur (INW Salzburg); Lieder by Max Kowalski (Bridge Records); and Wunderhorn Lieder (Col legno). She has given concerts and master classes throughout Europe, Japan, Korea and the United States, and has served as official accompanist for the International Mozart Competition and the International Robert Schumann Competition. Recently she gave a masterclass on the Lieder of Viktor Ullmann at the Jerusalem Academy of Dance and Music.

Beginning in the 1990s, Prof. Lindquist has worked to promote the music of women composers. Her CD of Lieder by Josephine Lang with American soprano Dana McKay (Deutsche Schallplatten) was praised as a „miniature masterpiece“ in the first edition of Dieter Kühn’s biography of Clara Schumann. Most recently, she gave masterclasses for singers and pianists as part of the female composer project „Eine exklusive Gesellschaft“ at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

WOSNITZKA Susanne

Mag. phil. Susanne Wosnitzka researches since 20 years for the history of women composers and works e.g. for the Archiv Frau und Musik in Frankfurt/Main, in the managing board of musica femina münchen and as a sc. advisor for the German Mozart Society and the Swedish Association for Women Composers (KVAST). Her research also focuses on the South German development of musical culture in concerts and theaters.

VANderHART Chanda

Chanda VanderHart enjoys a tripartite, interdisciplinary career as a musicologist, collaborative pianist and Musikvermittlung expert. She has performance degrees from the Eastman School of Music and received three graduate collaborative piano degrees from Milan and Austria before completing a PhD (summa cum laude) in musicology from the mdw-University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. wíth the dissertation, “Die Entwicklung des Kunstliedes im Wiener Konzertleben zwischen 1848 und 1897.” Her international performance career has taken her to the Musikverein in Vienna, the Malmö Opera, the Banff Centre, Kala Mandir in Kolkata, City Recital Hall in Sydney, and she is currently faculty at the mdw and has also lectured at the Sorbonne, the Institute for European Studies, the Malta School of Music and the Kunstuniversität Graz. She has published for the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg Centre for Popular Culture and Music, authored the lexicon article on Ernestine de Bauduin for MuGI (Musik und Gender im Internet), and is currently writing a monograph on song recital practices in Vienna to be released with a series of historical recordings as well as creating an English version of Schumann's Dichterliebe, recorded with tenor Erik Stokloßa in 2021. VanderHart co-founded the interdisciplinary concert series Mosaïque, the multimedia storytelling platform Talespin, Musical Tales for Big and Small, and created the podcast series on gender and lied accomp animent “Too Many Frocks”.

COMPTON Catherine (Co. ARMSTRONG Allan)

Soprano Catherine COMPTON is visiting lecturer in music in voice and opera theater at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Previously, she served on the voice faculty of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, where she taught applied voice, diction, and music entrepreneurship. As a Fulbright fellow in Leipzig, Germany, Compton developed a performance project centering the songs and correspodence of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Compton was a 2018 NATS Intern with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. She has completed coursework for the Doctor of Music in Voice degree at the Jacobs School of Music and holds a certificate in vocology from IU and an M.M. in voice performance and pedagogy from the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder.

Pianist and vocal coach Allan ARMSTRONG is assistant professor of music in voice at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he specializes in art song literature and opera coaching. In 2021 he received the prestigious IU Trustees Award for outstanding teaching. He is the official accompanist of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions for both the Colorado/Wyoming District and the Rocky Mountain Region.

Armstrong was previously a member of the piano faculty at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, where he co-directed the Bravo Opera Company. At UTRGV in 2016-2017 he conducted and prepared Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, which won 1st place in the National Opera Association’s collegiate production competition.

In 2005, Armstrong coached and recorded the newly revised version of Béla Bartók's Bluebeard’s Castle under the direction of the composer’s son, Peter Bartók. In 2010, he was a featured solo pianist in a recital of the complete piano works of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Del Tredici at New York University Steinhardt.

„Könnt ich zu den Wäldern flüchten“. Song Cycles of Fanny Hensel and Ingeborg von Bronsart

Catherine Compton, soprano, and Allan Armstrong, piano, will perform Fanny Hensel's Anklänge and Ingeborg von Bronsart's Wildenbruch Lieder. These two neglected song cycles are important works of the 19th century. They represent the compositions of two virtuosic pianist-composers with personal connections to the poets they set. Full of sweeping romantic lines, both cycles feature imagery of forests and flowers. These songs also bridge binaries often imposed on 19th century women composers: public vs. private spheres of influence; decorative display vs. serious craft; and domestic vs. professional performance.

Hensel wrote Anklänge (Echoes) in 1841. These three pieces (performed attacca) are settings of Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff from a collection of his poetry entitled Sängerleben. The composer uses chromaticism and tonal shifts to illustrate the combination of colors and sounds in birds, forests, and air. The third song of the group begins with the text "Könnt ich zu den Wäldern flüchten / If I could flee to the forests," conveying the artist's desire to find solace and unity in nature.

The Wildenbruch Lieder, op. 16 were written in 1882 and consist of five settings of Ernst von Wildenbruch, a close family friend. The periodic features of the seasons and the lives of flowers are compared to the blossoming and death of a relationship. Ingeborg von Bronsart imposes a circular form on the cycle with an intricate tonal plan and recurring melodic motifs in the first and final songs. In her youth Ingeborg was a piano student of Franz Liszt, who compared her playing to a volcano. The Wildenbruch Lieder have dazzling piano accompaniments to compliment the expansiveness of the vocal writing.

Timing:

Anklänge [6 minutes]

i. Vöglein in den sonn'gen Tagen

Ach! wie ist es doch gekommen

iii. Könnt ich zu den Wäldern flüchten

Wildenbruch Lieder, op. 16 [12 minutes]

Abendlied

Ständchen

iii. Zwei Sträusse

Der Blumenstrauss

Letzte Bitte

GEPPERT Johannes, COMPTON Catherine

Johannes Geppert studied classical singing with Wolfgang Bruneder and Maria Bayer at the Academy of Music Vienna and later with Kurt Widmer (Basel), Jessica Cash (London) and others. He performed as a soloist in concerts, lieder recitals, masses and opera projects in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and other European countries. From 1995 to 2004 he was a vocal coach at the University of Music Graz. 2014 he started to work as a voice teacher at the University of Music in Vienna, Institute for vocal pedagogy. Additional functions include his membership of the „Plattform Gender“ and initiating an internet compendium of vocal literature composed by women.

TINTES-SCHUERMANN Helen (Co. TONNA Anna, Chanda VANDERHART)

Helen Tintes-Schuermann is a versatile singer-actress who performs in opera, operetta and musical theater in roles including Carmen, Azucena (Il Trovatore), Suzuki (Madame Butterfly), Marcellina (Le Nozze di Figaro), the Witch (Hansel and Gretel) and Mme. Giry (The Phantom of the Opera). Tintes has performed with many European and USA companies, including the Gran Teatro del Liceu (Barcelona), Staatstheater Kassel (Deutschland), Theater an der Wien/Raimund Theater (Vienna), Chicago Opera Theatre, Light Opera Works (Chicago), F-M Opera (Minnesota), St. Petersburg Opera (FL), Gulfshore Opera (Fl). She has also sung at numerous European festivals, including the Monte Carlo Festival, Ascona Festival, Bodensee Festival and Fest in Hellbrunn/Salzburg. An international operatic highlight was performing with Gwyneth Jones in Strauss’ Elektra at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, Spain. As a concert artist, Tintes has appeared as soloist with orchestras, fine arts series and universities throughout the USA and is a frequent recitalist in German Lied and Spanish/Latin American song. Recent engagements include performances with Gulfshore Opera in Verdi’s Rigoletto (Giovanna) and La Traviata (Annina), as well as Handel’s Messiah with the Ft. Myers Mastersingers (FL) and concerts with the SW Florida Symphonic Chorale.

Tintes is a recognized master voice teacher, who has taught at important conservatories and universities, including the Music and Arts Private University of Vienna (MUK), Northwestern University, the University of South Carolina (Columbia) and Ave Maria University. Through the prestigious Erasmus (European Union) program, she has performed and given masterclasses throughout Europe (Austria, Spain, Hungary, Estonia, Finland, Greece) and has also performed and taught in China. She currently serves as adjunct voice faculty at Florida Gulf Coast University (Ft. Myers, FL) and maintains residences in SW Florida and Vienna. She also is Director of the ISMCenter (International Music Research and Concert Center) and recently founded her “Vienna Voce” Studio. She has given numerous lecture-recitals and masterclasses for NATS and the College Music Society in the USA and in Spain. Tintes received her Doctor of Music from Northwestern University (Evanston, Il., USA) and a Magister in Lied/Oratorio from the Hochschule Mozarteum in Salzburg.

The Voice teacher*s role visibilizing 19th Centura Art Song by Women Composers

Voice teachers play a crucial role in guiding the repertoire choices of tertiary level voice students. For students in search of new, varied repertoire choices which reflect modern values of gender parity and cultural diversity, the teacher is a crucial resource. This musicological - artistic presentation first outlines various resources which are useful to teacher and student alike (editions, digital resources, databases, archives) for accessing art song scores by a variety of nineteenth century female composers and contextualizing information, both of which could feed into student recitals and related projects. The artistic presentation to follow includes performances of songs by four different mid-19th century female composers, showcasing diverse aesthetic tendencies and underscoring the rich variety of composition styles found in female compositions in both Europe and the Americas at that time. The composers highlighted in the artistic presentation include Pauline Viardot, Marie Franz (née Hindrichs), Angel Peralta, Teresa Carreño and Ernestine de Bauduin. Presenters include Dr. Helen Tintes-Schuermann, Anna Tonna and Dr. Chanda VanderHart.