>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
[ Pause ]
>> Good afternoon!
I'm Susan Vita the Chief of the Music Division and I'd
like to welcome you to, to today's lecture
by Dr. Kendra Preston Leonard,
the next in the series of lectures which we're proud to co-sponsor
with the American Musicological Society.
We hope that these lectures will not only demonstrate the rich variety
and materials found in our collection but also
to inspire musicologists to visit the library
and explore these materials.
I welcome all of you in the audience this afternoon as well as those
of you who will watch the webcast of this lecture
on the Library of Congress website.
Music division staff always look forward to the AMS lectures
and the opportunity to see old friends who've frequented the
performing arts reading room and learning
about where their research took them after they left the library.
Today we are happy to welcome Dr. Kendra Preston Leonard who'll
present on Myth and Meaning in Louise Talma's first period works.
Dr. Leonard is the author of the forthcoming book "Louise Talma:
A Life in Composition" which will be published by Ashgate in 2014.
The music division is home to the Louise Talma papers,
an archive of collection that documents the career
of the composer, pianist and educator through manuscript
and published scores, sketches, correspondence,
programs, depicts and photographs.
Before we begin however, it's my pleasure
to introduce Professor Ann Rogers Robertson, [inaudible] swift,
distinguished service professor of music at the University of Chicago
who will offer greetings from the AMS Society.
>> Professor Ann Rogers Robertson: Yes, welcome everyone.
It's a pleasure once again to be in Coolidge Auditorium for presentation
by a member of the American Musicological Society.
We're deeply grateful as always that the Library of Congress
and it's music division continue to welcome our scholars
into these remarkable collections and provide such a lovely venue
for our colleagues to present the fruits
of their research with the public.
Our speaker today is Kendra Preston Leonard, a scholar performer
who has recently made intriguing discoveries on the career of one
of America's greatest compositional talents
of the 20th century Louise Talma.
Kendra Leonard studied musicology
in the Cincinnati College Conservatorium Music
and she received her training in cello performance
at Peabody Conservatory, the Guild Hall School in London
and the University of Maimi.
Ms. Leonard has taught
at Westminster Choir College of Rider Unversity.
She lives in Loveland, Ohio where she works in music publishing
and editing at the Music Word Media Group.
She's also managing editor of the Journal
of the Music History Pedagogy.
Among her many honors, Kendra has held Ramsay Fellowships
from the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Yale,
The National Coalition of Independent Scholars
and the [inaudible] in Salisbury.
Ms. Leonard exceptionally brought scholarship
in composite subjects ranging from, ranging chronologically
from the 16th to the 21st centuries and topically from music
for historical film and science fiction to the Solomon
of famed Frenchmen to several generations
of American composers Nadia Boulanger.
Her work is centered on the use of preexisting music in films made
from Hollywood to Bollywood, especially on the presence
of Elizabethan and other Englishmen onto musical influences
in historical cinema including the movies Richard III, Elizabeth I,
Twelfth Night, [inaudible] and Romeo Juliet.
She's the author of many articles and have two important books,
Shakespeare, Madness, and Music: Scoring Insanity
in Cinematic Adaptations and The Conservatoire Americain: A History
and Sue mentioned her forthcoming book on Louise Talma.
In her talk today, Kendra will treat us to an outgrowth [inaudible]
of her research on the famous American conservatory
in Fontainebleau, France.
She will offer us a revisionist view of the early career and works
of conservatoire alum Louise Talma drawing
out her expert extensive research here in the collections.
Her lecture is entitled Meaning and Myth
in Louise Talma's first period works.
Please join me in welcoming Kendra Preston Leonard.
[ Applause ]
>> Dr. Kendra Preston Leonard: Thank you Ann.
I'm honored to have been invited to speak here today and I want
to thank AMS and the Library of Congress
in giving me this opportunity to discuss the research I've done
in the Library's music division.
I would also like to thank Elizabeth Johnston Overmann and Dave Foley
who volunteered to perform here today as part of today's talk.
These will be two world premieres of Louise Talma's early songs.
I sometimes feel like my work is part of a subfield,
we could call myth busters, musicology edition
and I think this is true for many musicologists
who are always correcting historical record, finding new evidence
for hard facts about composers, performers and works
and discovering new materials that help us interpret
or understand those works more fully.
We are as a culture drawn to stories of hard luck, long odds
and fantastic triumphs, Horatio Elder stories about the journey
from rags to riches or fairy tales about challenges and rewards.
So we like stories about protégées, life changing concerts
and other musical experiences, wise old teachers passing
down their gifts and have codified these so that every grade
or even good musician is expected to have at least one
such story in his or her biography.
Real life, however, is much less formulaic
and often much more interesting.
After writing about Nadia Boulanger and her teaching
at the Conservatoire Americain in Fonteineblaeum, France,
I became interested in her students.
Many of her male students are well known, their music
and lives regularly studied, but I wanted to know
about her female students.
Boulanger regularly told women in her classes not
to pursue serious careers to professional musicians,
but a rare few received the opposite advice, go forth and compose.
One of these was Louise Talma.
Talma herself long claimed to have had one
of those cinematic changed my life forever moments
in studying with Boulanger.
Talma attended the Conservatoire Americain for the first time in 1926
to study piano with [inaudible] and Boulanger,
her harmony instructor suggested that she return the following year
as a composition student instead.
But as I began working my way through the Talma collection here
and elsewhere, I discovered that this was like elder stories,
a well-crafted and compelling fiction told
to distract questionnaires away from the truth and to provide them
with a memorable tale that they sought one
in which Talma's mother gave her own promising vocal career in order
to devote herself to a more talented pianist daughter
and which credited the very popular Boulanger as the sole access
on which Talma's creative life as a composer turned.
And so today I'll talk about two myths surrounding Talma,
both of which she herself fostered throughout her career.
The first myth holds that Talma's father a musician died
when Louise is young, that her mother Cecile gave
up her career to teach her only child.
The second myth maintains that Talma's interest
in composition began only after being encouraged to do
so by Boulanger and that Boulanger was the arbiter
of Talma's early professional and compositional musical tastes.
These erroneous elements of Talma's biography have proliferated
in the standards sources about her life and works.
Talma was notably reluctant to discuss her childhood
and early adult life and actively discouraged interviewers and friends
from asking about it, even supplying them with inconsistent
and incomplete information deliberately omitting details
and facts.
However, as I've demonstrated elsewhere there're numerous examples
of autobiography in Talma's works
and because Talma's musical compositions are tied so closely
to her life, it is essential to know the truth
about her early history in composition career.
Fortunately, recently discovered sources now allow
for preliminary reconstruction of a narrative of Talma's youth.
These materials are repertory, suggesting new explanations
for several key events and decisions in Talma's life as well as helping
to illuminate her first compositions.
With this sent to date accepted and repeated without question
about Talma's youth stems primarily from a 1954 account of her childhood
by Madeleine Goss, later repeated by other authors in several sources.
Here's one from Susan Teicher and here's another from Susan Ware,
a Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary.
Almost none of these statements provided on these slides are true.
Alma Cècile Garrigue, Talma's mother was born in Copenhagen
in 1872 to a Danish mother and a father descend
of her French-Huguenot family and came to New York when she was 2.
Sometime before 1900, Alma as she was known to her family
and then some legal documents adopted the name Cecile Talma
and was billed as Mademoiselle Cecile Talma from that time forward.
Although it is unclear exactly when she changed her surname and why,
it is possible that she wanted to hint a connections
to the great French actor Joseph Talma
and may also have been borrowing and adapting the surname
of relatives known as Tallman or Talman.
Well I just like the practice applying female subjects
by their first name in general in order to distinguish
between Cecile Talma and Louise Talma in this lecture I'll refer
to Cecile by her first name.
Cecile as a piano performed in France in 1900 and began seeing
in Great Britain in 1903 where she received good reviews
and was made the prima donna of her company.
Despite the success, she returned to New York in September of 1904
to be understudy at the Met for the 1904-05 season.
However, what hope she had for her career in America were dashed
after receiving a poor reception at her debut performance
with the Met later that year.
Appearing as Nedda in Pagliacci, Cecile was criticized as inadequate
and the New York Times critic brusquely dismissed the idea
of her career continuing with any success.
Cecile toured with the Met the following year in the chorus
but dropped off the Met rolls after 1905,
save a single final performance in January of 1910.
Her last public performance is an odd appeared to have taken place
in 1914 in South Carolina and New York.
These two were critically panned.
After these failures, Cecile made a living giving piano
and voice lessons and may have worked
as a music critic using a pseudonym.
During the first decade of the century, Cecile was also supported
at least in part by a benefactor named Walter Smith.
Writing to Talma, Cecile's sister Edith stated that it was
in Talma's best interest to know
about her relationship with old man Smith.
Smith provided Cecile with a monthly cash stipend and had paid for all
of her vocal training, ballet classes, French lessons,
diction lessons, clothes, travel and housing costs for several years
in the first two decades of the 20th century.
Smith gave Cecile $100 a month plus the monthly interest on $90,000
and at some point he settled a cash amount of $30,000 on her
and ended all other support.
It's not clear how long Smith provided Cecile with these funds,
whether there were other similar benefactors.
Talma herself may have been dedicated
to rigorous financial self-sufficiency
because she did not want to rely on money from others
which could be given or taken away
without notice as her mother had done.
She provided some financial support to her own relatives
and assisted students at times who repeatedly turned down offers
which she felt was unearned money to offset professional expenses.
Cecile's money may have been the basis for the more
than accumulated savings of more than $1 million that Talma left
to MacDowell Colony at her death.
What is clear is it is unlikely that Cecile gave up her career
for her daughter, she was simply not professional enough for a career
as a vocalist and found other means of support.
The facts are also at odds with the idea that Cecile groomed Talma
from the start for a career in music.
Talma herself often stated that at a school she excelled not only
in music but in chemistry as well and had considered a career
in the sciences and in fact one early biography gives Talma degrees
in chemistry, master's and bachelor's degrees rather
than the ones in music she actually had.
After her stint with the Met, Cecile's next documented travelling
from France and arriving in New York in August 6,
1906 and her marital status is left blank.
Either she returned to France very soon afterward to give birth
to Louise or she falsified the oft-provided information
that Talma was born in Arcachon, France on October 31st of that year.
In the 1920 New York census, Talma is listed as being born
in New York while different document records her birth date
as October 7th 1905.
Either date seems possible, especially in light of the fact
that the Department of [inaudible]
where Arcachon is located has no birth records for Talma
that Cecile provided inadequate data for her own birth date as she aged
and that Cecile's father was an obstetrician
who could easily have delivered his own grandchild in New York.
For her part, Talma used the October 31 1906 birth date throughout
her life.
Documents next show that in August of 1909, Cecile made an application
for United States passport for herself
and a minor child to travel abroad.
The applications do not state the name or age of the child
because two months later Cecile and Talma travelled to the United States
from France, arriving in New York at the end of October.
Cecile gave her marital status as married and her age as 34.
At some point either together or separately both Cecile
and Talma returned to Europe.
In 1913, they are listed as passengers on a ship Niagara,
traveling from La Havre to New York.
This is where Talma's birth date is given as a year earlier, 1905.
Cecile gave her marital status as divorced.
Here you can see Talma, Cecile and that underneath her child Louise.
The pair does not seem to have left the United States again
until they travelled to France in 1926.
The origins and identify of Talma's father are more difficult to trace.
In several interviews, Talma identified her father
as Frederick Talma, an American musician
and presumably she was told this by her mother.
However, on Cecile's 1910 passport application,
she writes that she is absolutely divorced
from my husband, George Talma.
Cecile's legal relationship with Talma's father is unknown.
Until Talma was 12, Cecile maintained
that the elusive Mr. Talma had died before Louise was born,
she later claimed that they were divorced before Louise's birth
and in the 1920 United States census,
Cecile Talma listed herself as a widow.
Sarah Dorsey and Anna Neal have suggested that Cecile was married
in a shotgun wedding, but near the end of her life Talma confided
to a friend that she believed her parents had probably not married
at all.
Either of these latter circumstances would explain why Talma might have
been born in an obscure resort town in France,
if she was actually born there.
Such health resort towns or spas often catered to women
who needed abortions or who wished to give birth
with no questions asked about their marital status or the identities
of their newborn's fathers.
While in France at that time, a single mother
and her child may not have undergone like scrutiny or stigma,
they would have in the United States where births
out of wedlock are still considered scandalous,
especially when the upper class to which the Garrigues belonged.
In France, however, 19th century had seen a rise in illegitimate births
and a French account contemporary with Talma's birth suggests
that indifferent or even positive attitude towards
out of wedlock births and irregular
or non-legalized relationships were common throughout the social strata
and in the middle upper classes in particular,
such relationships were considered a sign
of emancipation rather than immoral behavior.
Nonetheless, French law at the time did not give an illegitimate child
the right to discover the name of his or her father
and the father's name could only be put on a birth certificate
if adultery was not involved that is the father was married
to another woman, the child's documentation could legally list
that child's mother's name only.
It is not certain whether Talma believed throughout her adult life
that her parents had not been married or whether she came
to that conclusion over time.
At one time, Talma maintained at least to Nadia Boulanger
that her parents had been married, albeit briefly,
writing that my mother and father were married
in London September 15th, 1905, they separated the following summer
and I was born October 31st, 1906.
However, there is no marriage record in either the English
or Welsh Register Office for either the name Talma or Garrigues
and these records date well back in to the 18th century.
After their return to America in 1913, the Talma's are next found
in the 1920 New York City census dated January 14th or 15th.
Cecile Talma is listed as having been born in Denmark
and that Danish is her first language.
She gave her age as a 40 as of her last birthday, although according
to her 1910 passport application she would actually have been 44
and she is listed as the head of the household.
She lists her primary occupation as teacher music.
Louise is listed as 13 years old at the time of the census,
which would put her birth date sometime in late 1906
and her first language is listed as French.
But what is most intriguing about the 1920 census is a record
of a second Talma daughter.
Beneath Louise's name and the Talma family record there is an entry
for Laura Talma.
Laura is recorded a having been born in New York and is listed
as 10 years old at her last birthday,
indicating that she would have been born sometime in late 1909
as existing documents make it clear that Cecile Talma traveled
with Louise alone in October of 1909 and her last performance
with the Met chorus was in January of 1910.
The space for Laura's first language is left blank.
This empty space suggests that Laura was nonverbal assuming native
speakers of English were listed as speaking
that language in census forms.
The nationality of the father of both girls is listed as French.
Cecile states that Louise was born in New York
and that Louise had entered the United States after being abroad
in 1908, slightly earlier than what's listed
by the passenger list of 1909.
As for Laura's name, recently discovered document show that one
of Cecile's aunts, the famous soprano
and vocal coach known professional
as Esperanza Garrigue were the first name of Laura.
Just as Louise and Louises and Ceciles ran in the family,
so it seems to have Lauras.
To date, there are no other available records on Laura Talma
and the identify of her father is impossible to ascertain.
The 1930 census taken in April lists only Cecile and Louise Talma
at the same address as the previous document.
Cecile gave her age as 56 and Louise's listed as 23.
Cecile is marked down as a widow, Louise as single
and they're both listed as music teachers.
Cecile as a voice teacher and Louise as a piano instructor.
Cecile gives her age at the time of first marriage as 30.
There are some other differences from the 1920 census as well.
Louise's record now lists the nationality of her father as Russian
and states that she was born in 1907.
Cecile is listed as immigrated to United States in 1870 and Louise
in 1930 and all this gives us the following timeline.
It is possible that Laura Talma could have been given
up for adoption, sent away from New York or placed in service,
but since Cecile kept and raised Louise and still had Laura living
with her when Laura was 10, adoption is unlikely.
Nor is it likely that her mother and sister would have left her
in the care of family or friends, disowned her
or otherwise have broken off all contact.
Laura, nonverbal as the census indicates
and possibly further disabled may have been placed in an institution
as she grew older and closer to puberty.
The family may simply have left her in the care of the State.
It is also possible that whether living at home or in an institution,
Laura died sometime between being counted in the 1920 census
and the spring of 1926 when Cecile and Louise went
to France together for the first time.
I suspect that Laura Talma died either at home or in a care facility
and the influenza pandemic began in 1918
and claimed victims through 1922.
The so-called Spanish flu killed between 500,000
and 675,000 Americans, particularly affecting those
in highly populated cities, such as New York.
Across New York, more than 33,000 people died from flu between 1918
and 1922 because of the scale
of this pandemic death records were not always filled out or filed
where they do exist they're often incomplete
and contain spelling and other errors.
This history presents several complicated scenarios regarding the
birth and whereabouts, sorry the birth of Laura and the whereabouts
of Louise Talma between her birth and 1913.
In brief, Talma's own memories from historical records suggest
that Louise lived in Europe from 1906 to 1909 and again
from 1909 or 1910 to 1913.
She remembered having spoken German, Italian and French at home as well
as English when she was a young child but never Danish,
her mother's native language and she remembered playing Butterflies baby,
an opera production, starring her mother's friend Cornelia Fabbricotti
and a typical early French education at the time followed this.
Fabbricotti only performed her role in the 1911 to 1912 season
in Florence and since there are no records
of Cecile having performed the role, Talma's recollection
of speaking Italian and French at home presumably referred
to this childhood stay with Fabbricotti.
The question as to why Cecile gave her daughter to friends to raise
for several years is perhaps explained by evidence
of Laura's birth in 1909.
The implications of these findings are significant.
The short life and early death
of a younger sister may have well explain a number of events
and choices in Louise Talma's life.
Laura could clearly not have been kept a secret to those
who knew the Talmas during this period, but her obvious illegitimacy
and probably disability may have been a factor
in Louise Talma's later insistence
on privacy regarding her personal life and her strong disinclination
as an adult to discuss her childhood and family.
Laura's death which had to have occurred between January 1920
and the spring of 1926 could also have been the impetus
for the two surviving Talma women to immerse themselves
in music studies anew at the Conservatoire Americain.
By this time Louise Talma has already blown her way to a career
as a concert pianist and teacher.
She had attended the Institute of Musical Art
which later became the Juilliard School,
she given her first public New York recital in March of 1925.
She was teaching theory
at the Neighborhood Music School and piano privately.
Undertaking a new course of study, particularly as one as involved
and as expensive as that of a Conservatoire Americain,
which are rather drastic move for a woman.
Nonetheless, for the next five years they travelled together every summer
for three months of intense study at Fontainebleau.
Laura's death may also have encouraged Talma's desire to bond
with and emulate Nadia Boulanger,
who also last her younger sister early in life.
Following her sister Lili's early death from Crohn's disease
at age 24, Boulanger devoted herself
for preserving Lili's memory and promoting her works.
Although Talma never made specific references to her sister
in any correspondence with Boulanger,
she may well have felt a closeness with her in part
because of this commonality.
Certainly, Talma dried to draw other parallels between Boulanger
and herself throughout their long relationship variously linking their
French origins,
the musical backgrounds of their families and early musical training
and career ambitions, Talma's nursing
of her mother during her last illness
and Boulanger's similar caregiving experiences
and Talma's struggle working as a teacher when like Boulanger
in her earlier years, she desired to work as a composer.
Laura's death could also have been a previously unseen factor
in Talma's religious questioning and ultimately her conversion
to Roman Catholicism as an adult.
Raised a Protestant probably of the Lutheran variety,
Talma professed herself to be an agnostic in her early 20s.
Her sister's early death may have caused her to first reject religion
and the perhaps to look for answers and comfort in it.
If this the case, Boulanger capitalized
on Talma's spiritual searching by leading her to Catholicism
without ever knowing one of Talma's underlying reasons
for returning to belief.
Most importantly, Laura's death may have directly influenced Talma's
first musical compositions.
These works mostly songs for female voice
and piano uniformly expressed loss and mourning.
Talma began studying composition seriously with Harold Broadway
and [inaudible] at the institute of musical art well before traveling
to France and meeting Boulanger.
While previously scholarship on Talma asserts that her early style
and particularly it was everything to Boulanger's influence.
These songs refute this claim by showing
that Talma was already working in a style compatible
with the French neoclassic aesthetic favored
by Boulanger before she became Boulanger's composition pupil.
Talma's earliest extent works date her 1925 and provided glimpse
of her first compositional impulses.
These impulses include in some cases the use of elements we would return
as Talma began to develop her own matured voice
as a composer in the late 1930s.
These pieces illustrate her early use of common neoclassic trophs,
including small performing forces and transparent textures,
the use of counterpoint and an emphasis on rhythm extended
or otherwise nontraditional harmony and the presence
of the [inaudible] along melodic line gives structure to her work.
Talma's four earlier songs soprano and piano are located
in the Louise Talma collection here at the Library of Congress.
They have not yet been published,
although they may have been the works that won Talma the Institute
of Musical Art's Seligman prize in 1927, 1928 and 1929.
Today, I'll focus on two of these.
One the Surface of Things from 1926 and Song in the Songless from 1928.
This first work sets Wallace Stevens' poem On the Surface
of Things which like many
of the texts tell me used during this period uses imagery and color
to evoke natural elements and a sense of melancholy and loss.
Talma would return to Stevens' poems throughout her career,
setting many of those that appeared in his first volume of poetry.
Stevens divides his poem into three sections indicated
in Talma's setting by the change in pitches in the left hand.
Talma's setting of On the Surface of Things is often totally ambiguous.
She frequently uses the descender min, descending minor
or major second often known as the sigh motive to indicate sorrow
and suffering in a number of her works.
She uses the minor secondary melodically
in the vocal line while positioning the melody against the accompaniment
in such a way as to create harmonic tritons and major [inaudible].
The song which as no key signature has four distinct harmonic sections.
Talma establishes in this song what I term discontinuity
in which she maintains consistent elements while disrupting these
with new materials.
She uses this to structure her works pretty much from beginning to end.
There is always an element that is continuous from one section
to the next through this may be disrupted
by other elements and as returns later on.
>> The four sections on the surface maintain a static rhythmic quality
while shifting pitches in close movement.
Part I, in which the pitches are A, B, and E,
sets the text of first stanza; Part II sets the second stanza
and is marked by a shift to G, C, and D. Part III begins
with the second half of measure 25 and sees a shift
from the piano's pattern of a perfect fourth above a major second
to quartile stacks of pitches.
Part III sets the last two lines of Stevens' section III
and the final line of the poem is separate itself as Part IV
and a stack of E flat, B flat,
and F. Although Talma was not consciously working
with serial techniques at this point in her career,
all of the tri-cords she uses here are transpositions of prime form 027
and this presaging her adoption of serialism in 1952.
Each block or section of the song suggests multiple key centers
employing axial centricity in which selected pitches function
in various ways.
The melodic line, a canon in which the piano first states the line
and the voice enters ten beats later, adds the sense of uncertainty
through the use of melodic major sevenths and minor seconds
that do not resolve in a traditional manner.
In Part I, the piano suggests tonal centers of both E minor and A minor,
moving more firmly into A major with the introduction of F sharp
and G sharp leading to A at the beginning of the second phrase.
This centering on A is short lived, however, and by the beginning
of the second phrase, Talma has modulated
into an area outlining C minor and G minor.
By the end of Part III, Talma changes the focus again
in the left hand from centers of G and C to quartal chords,
stacking them just together under a melodic line that cadences on E
and then A. Part IV, places E flat, B flat, and Fin the left hand;
Talma assigns a variation on the song's opening to the right hand
and then to the voice using D sharp in the melody,
which suggests again a center of E but does not resolve to it.
The voice cadences with a drop of fourth from A
to E while the piano continues to sustain E flat, B flat, and F,
emphasizing the minor second common to the song's first harmonic section
where repeating the tritone of its second half.
Taken as a whole, the song is plaintive and a little raw.
The motion of the voice against static accompaniments is restless
and the voice seems to seek a tonal home while wondering
at the instability and beauty of the surrounding sonic world.
This song is Talma's first work
in which the counterpoint helps drive the piece
and from this point forward contrapuntal writing regularly
occurs in her works.
The canon in "On the Surface" is simple for each of the nine lines
of poetry, the right hand
of the piano states the vocal line ten beats before the voice enters
in canon.
The consistency with which the canon's entries occur first creates
and then fulfills the expectation
that the voice will imitate the piano line with each entrance,
while the distance of ten beats between the piano
and vocal entrances removes any sense of metric stability indicated
by the song's regular and unchanging 6/4 meter.
Ties and slurs frequently group notes into irregular cells of five
and seven beats, further obscuring the work's meter
and creating elements of discontinuity
that more accurately reflect the text's metrical constructions.
While the left hand has steady dotted half notes,
its static quality and perpetual dynamics of piano relegate it more
to a color than a keeper of time.
"On the Surface" which contains a number of similarities
to Telma's first extent work invocation
to the rain presents a study of contrast and emotion conducted
with a language of color and place.
Golden images are covered in blue ones, the world becomes less stable
and more unknown, nature darkens the skies and drenches the fields
and hides the light of moon.
The effect is now a drawing a morning bale
over a previous happiness and sense of joy.
This represents a change world view, the recognition
that there is a missing element from the established order of life
and speaks pointedly to this loss through the selection of text
and the use of common musical markers of sadness and grief.
We'll have a performance of this.
[ Applause ]
[ Song ]
[ Silence ]
[ Applause ]
>> Setting a text by English poet George Meredith the manuscript
of "Song in the Songless" has no key signature or meter
and is unbarred save for a single bar line after the first two lines
of text, about one-quarter of the way through the piece.
Now I talk about it here today that I'll refer to measure numbers
in the performing edition that [inaudible].
The score notes that accidentals hold only for the notes in front
of which they are placed
and the tempo is a dirge-like quarter note equals 46.
However, as with "On the Surface," Talma creates a different section
for each stanza, in this case four distinct parts of two lines each.
Telma's choice of the song may well reflect Laura's existence
particularly her non-verbal status and Telma's desire to speak
for her as well as of her.
Song like "On the Surface" also frequently uses the minor second and
and tritone both melodically and harmonically.
The song begins with an introductory section of stacked thirds moving
in contrary motion between the two hands
in a palindromic progression over seven beats.
This harmonic symmetry is replicated throughout the piece,
particularly at the beginning of the final section,
which is an introduction to the last two lines.
Texturally, the accompaniment for the first
and last stanzas is identical;
stanza two is slightly more syncopated
and the third stanza is supported by counterpoint over a pedal point.
The palindromes create a sense of continuity and parallelism
between the song's beginning and end, and the pedal point represent,
present during the contrapuntal section grounds the song even
as unexpected variations on the vocal motif of three eighths
and a quarter note propel the work towards the return
of the palindrome just prior to the final stanza.
Tonal centers are created by the use of the ascending melodic second
with pitches functioning as scale degrees 7-1 in the vocal line
at four cadential points.
These cadences are also created by the repetition
of the scale degree 1 pitch and by the pause
of the vocal line after these repetitions.
Talma emphasizes the relationship of the fifth
between the song's tonal centers by beginning the first
and last sections with an open fifth in the piano from A to D.
The second section uses the open fifth as well as a tritone
in the harmony, providing continuity while subtly destabilizing the
expectation of the interval's constancy.
The third section continues the use of the tritone
and the minor second while also varying the vocal motif
in the piano part and introducing clusters of minor thirds.
The result is a highly chromatic harmonic language
that Talma would use frequently in her works prior to her adoption
of serial techniques in the 1950s and we'll hear that now.
[ Song ]
[ Applause ]
>> [inaudible] the four songs demonstrate the growth
of her ability and confidence in songwriting
from the simple block chords and melodies that appear
in her very first song to the more complex song that we just heard.
The works that immediately follow this, including her Three Madrigals
of 1929, are not nearly as harmonically wide-ranging
or experimental in any sense, in part because she was asked to return
to more conventional common-practice-period approaches
by Boulanger.
The characteristics displayed
in her four early songs however including a pattern of discontinuity
in the harmonic and rhythmic elements, rapidly changing tonal
and axial centers and moods, meticulous text setting,
and an openness of form all foreshadow Talma's more vocal,
more mature vocal compositions.
The development seen in these early songs suggest
that Talma might have moved in a more radical way away from tonality
in convention her training taken a different realm.
By the time she composed "Song
in the Songless" she had abandoned traditional key and time signatures,
however, her experimentations stops there for a time.
When Talma began formally studying composition with Boulanger in 1927,
her notebooks for harmony, solfege, and composition lessons
at the Conservatoire Americain which date from 1928 to 1932 show
that she was focused on functional tonality
and mastering common-practice-period harmony through counterpoint,
dictation, and other exercises.
Her return to basics, along with the emphasis that Boulanger gave
to Monteverdi, Bach, and Beethoven during this period,
seems to have strongly affected Talma's own compositional voice
for several years.
Her works immediately following these songs were quite different
from the formal freedom of "Song in the Songless.
Isabeau Poeme, an instrumental work composed between 1927 and 1928
and the 1929 Three Madrigals the beginning
of which you see here are strictly traditional.
They broke no ambiguities in key, a rhythmically staid
and have conventionally phrased and structured melodies.
It did win prizes but they're definitely not
as originals or earlier.
It is worth mention the text that Talma chose
for her chamber work Isabeau Poeme which was written
for a Canadian Pacific Railways composition contest.
The piece uses several French and French Canadian folk songs
as it phases and although it was composed during the time
in which Boulanger began teaching Talma, it's death
and sadness centered text connected more with Talma's first songs
than the other works that she produced during the 1920s
and early 1930s.
Isabeau Poeme is based primarily
on a few select folk songs in particular.
It's not clear how Talma choose the song for the piece, Aloutte,
of course the traditional children song introducing the names
from the parts of the body
as the narrator prepares to pluck from the lurk.
Isa-beau itself has two sets of text, both sad love songs.
In one, a young woman is wooed by a sailor singing on his ship.
When she joins him to learn the song,
she finds that she has lost her golden ring.
He dives for it and drowns.
In the other version, the woman hears the sailor singing,
and cries because her own heart is inconstant,
and while she gives it away repeatedly, it is always broken.
La Belle Francoise is about the sorrow of a young woman
who cannot marry her beau before he is sent to war.
Sept Ans Sur Mer is a sea chantey in which sailors lost at sea
for seven years are hallucinating about beautiful women
as they lie starving, having eaten all of the ship's stores, mice,
and rats and are drawing lots to see
which sailor will be eaten first by his crewmates.
In Le Miracle du Nouveau-Ne, a mother casts her illegitimate baby
out to sea, but as the child drowns, its soul ascends to heaven.
And in La Begere Muette the last of the songs used we're told the story
of a shepherdess to whom the Virgin Mary appears.
As yet I have not found anything in Talma's notes or correspondents
that might hint at the reasons behind these rather morbid
and macabe stories, but other [inaudible] suggests
that she's selected all of her songs in the work
because of their connection to Canada.
Nonetheless, they are melancholy and it is possible
that in selecting children's songs
and sad ballads Talma was again expressing sadness
for the early death of her sister Laura.
We will never know the identity of Louise and Laura's fathers,
we will never know where, when, and how Laura Talma died;
and we will probably never know the full impact her life and death had
on Cecile and Louise Talma.
It is understandable that Talma
in recognizing the social attitudes surrounding divorce
and illegitimacy would have kept to a single family mythos in order
to protect her mother's reputation and later her own.
But ultimately what we find
in uncovering these myths are Talma's early life,
her great sorrows and the desire for independence, both of which led
to the beginning of an exceptional career.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Dr. Kendra Preston Leonard: I'm happy to answer questions.
Yeah.
>> You mentioned that Nadia Boulanger did not encourage the,
not just Talma, I think you said
all the women in her studio to pursue careers in composition
and it, it just seems slightly inconsistent with the fact
that of course her sister, her sister Lilly had such a brilliant
if short-lived career, I just wanted
if you could say a little more about that.
>> Dr. Kendra Preston Leonard: Absolutely
and of course Nadia Boulanger had also pursued her own career
as a composer and, and had worked a lot with Raoul Pugno, they,
they were composing an opera together one time.
Talma, Talma was unusual and that Boulanger encouraged her
to pursue her career.
For many of the women who studied the Conservatory American,
Boulanger found that they fell into sort of three different camps.
The women who attended who were already professional musicians
and teachers in the United States,
she felt that those would be better served by taking harmony
and [inaudible] classes and improving their ability
to teach their own students those basic techniques.
Those students who were not quite at a professional level,
these students she usually tried to send packing
as earlier she could during the course of the summer.
Then there were students who wanted to be professional composers
and for the most part Boulanger felt
that either they have started their training too late
or that they simply do not have the talent for the career.
Usually she will take these women aside and tell them
that the best way for them to contribute to the musical life
of the world was to go home, marry and have son
who could then be trained from a young age
to be composers of the next generation.
This does seem incredibly sexist.
But I think a lot of this does stems
from Boulanger's very developed Catholicism in which she felt
that a woman's place was always at home with children
and that the most important role of woman kind was to raise a child.
While she herself obviously did not marry,
she did consider adopting several times because she wanted
to be a mother, so there is within her this on-confront
between career and, and church and children
and for the most part unless, unless she found a student who is willing
to give up the idea of a family
and children then she would not encourage the students to continue.
Talma of course freely modeled herself after Boulanger
in many ways, not just career wise but she adopted her way of speaking,
Talma who's English was perfectly fluent and spoke without a trace
of an accent would begin her lessons like speaking
in Boulanger's French accent English.
She dressed like Boulanger.
Of course Boulanger was her godmother when she converted
to Catholicism and she modeled herself
on Boulanger in all sorts of ways.
If you look at photographs of the two of them in class together,
front and look, you can see that,
that Talma is wearing the same clothes,
she has her hair done the same way,
she wears her religious jewelry the same way.
So yeah I, it is an interesting conundrum
that Boulanger would take a few students
and say okay you have the talent,
you have the basics, I will let you continue
as opposed to the, the many more students
that she felt did not have the foundations
or were starting too late and,
and in her mind would be better off you know giving birth
to composers rather than being composers.
Other questions?
Jesse.
>> Jesse: So at the beginning of your lecture you put up a slide
that listed the many male composers that Boulanger taught
and I'm wondering about the relationship that Talma had
with those composers that she knew.
>> Dr. Kendra Preston Leonard: Yeah, that's a great question
because it's an interesting relationship.
You're woman who made their names known
as Boulanger's students and [inaudible].
Talma was a peer of Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson.
She was about in their same age, their age group
and while they certainly all knew each other from their study
at [inaudible] they did not tend to run on the same circles.
Joseph Straus has talked about the myth of serial tyranny and the myth
of the divide between the tonal composers and the serial composers
in the 20th century and how this divide was not as great
or as charismatic as has been previously thought.
Nonetheless, there, there was kind of a sense there were two groups.
They were French trained American composers who were primarily
in a tonal language like Copland and Thomson
and then we had German trained American composers who went
on to serialism, Piston, Babbitt, and Schuman.
So Talma kind of found herself in between these groups.
She was female, she had trained in France but yet she ended up working
in serialism starting in 1950s and used that as a,
the rest of her career, so there was that sort of divide
where she was had a foot, a foot on each side a little bit.
There is a lot of correspondence between Aaron Copland
and Virgil Thomson writing back and forth to on another saying
"Well you know Louise is on us, bored with us.
You know she's at the American Composer's League and in this
that maybe we should have her over for dinner or party."
And then the other one would sort of say, "Well if you,
if you think we have to."
So I think in a lot of cases her gender also singled her out,
while there were other women composing successfully during this
period, Marian Bower, Marian Gideon with whom Talma was
at least acquaintances, the couture of composers in-charge
in New York tended to be male.
I also think that Talma's sexuality played into this.
Howard Pollack has written about the gay male composers in New York
at the time and well Talma engaged in several relationships with women,
she was never out about her sexuality
like Copland and Thomson were.
So the idea of inviting not only a woman who's got a foot
in both camps compositionally, but also someone
with whom they were not quite sure about whether they wanted to,
to include in a gay circle even though she was,
she was female was also problematic.
So she was sort of, she sort of pushed
out of these group for several reasons.
So she did have you know polite relationships with these men,
but they were not particularly encouraging of her work.
I said that as well Aaron Copland was always putting her off,
saying are we happy to look at your score, next week,
next month when I get back from Europe,
after I'd done, some other time.
There were other composers with whom she was very close.
John Montane was one of her good friends.
He studied with Boulanger and, and they were very close.
She became good friends of Lukas Foss who is not really
in the Boulanger orbit, but was also in the Boston School of Composers
with [Inaudible] School that Talma was considered to be part of along
with her [inaudible] and some others.
So it's kind of a mixed bag for her.
I think she never felt secure in approaching some of her colleagues
from Fontableau who would become big figures in contemporary music
in New York because she was not sure of the response she would get.
It was always sort of a, do we have to invite Louise, can we just,
can we just have Walter and Milton over
and you know play bridge and drink Scotch.
She would have been happy to play bridge and drink Scotch, but those,
those social groups tended to be same,
same sex groups in a lot of ways.
Other questions?
Anything else?
Well I do want our performers,
again these are the world premieres, these two songs today.
They have been performed privately before,
but their performance history from they're written is unknown,
it doesn't look like they were performed,
so this is the first public performance
of these, I, I hope not the last.
Talma's early songs are really quite beautiful.
They exist in fair copy here at the Library Congress,
they are very accessible and, and there're lovely works
that I think are, are fascinating,
especially in the context of Talma's early life.
So thank you again to Liz and Dave.
[ Applause ]
[ Silence ]
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