Vivian Fine

Composer Vivian Fine Dies at 86

Vivian Fine, a composer who wrote music for ballets by Martha Graham and José Limón as well as works for orchestra and chamber ensembles, died on March 20 after an automobile accident in Bennington, VT. She was 86.

Born in Chicago in 1913, Fine was a piano prodigy, winning a scholarship to the Chicago Musical College when she was five. Later, she studied composition with Ruth Crawford Seeger and followed her teacher to New York in 1931, where she continued her piano studies with Abby Whiteside and composition with Roger Sessions.

Her involvement with dance companies began in the mid-1930's when she began to work as a rehearsal pianist. She began to compose for these companies as well. Her early dance scores include "The Race of Life" (1937) for Doris Humphrey, "Opus 51" (1938) for Charles Weidman and "Tragic Exodus" and "They are too Exiles" (both 1939) for Hanya Holm. Later she wrote "Alcestis (1960) for Graham and "My Son, My Enemy" (1965) for Limón.

Fine was also an advocate for American music as well as for women composers. She helped found the American Composers Alliance in 1938 and served as the organization's vice president from 1961 to 1965. Her opera "The Women in the Garden" (1978) integrates texts from Virginia Woolf, Isadora Duncan, Emily Dickinson, and Gertrude Stein. "The Memoirs of Uliana Rooney"(1994), Fine's last major work, is a multimedia opera about a female composer in the 20th century.

Fine told The New York Times in a 1989 interview: "I hope the term 'woman composer' will be dropped soon. I think we are in a better place than we were 20 years ago. Women are accepted in literature, painting and sculpture. We don't talk of 'poetesses' anymore. And women performers as soloists - singers, pianists, violinists - have been accepted for a long time."

Fine received a Guggenheim Fellowship, grants from the NEA and the Rockefeller Foundation, and her many commissions include those from the Koussevitsky Foundation, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Mirecourt Trio. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1980. She taught composition at the Juilliard School, New York University, the State University of New York at Potsdam and Bennington College in Vermont.

Fine lived in Hoosick Falls, NY and is survived by a sister, Adelaide Fine of Shaftsbury, VT, and two daughters, Peggy Karp of Berkeley, CA and Nina Karp of North Bennington, VT.

from Vivian Fine: Canzones y Dances (Adios Bilbadito) 31 seconds