Marion Bauer

MARION BAUER (b. Walla Walla, WA, August 15, 1882 - d. South Hadley, MA, August 9, 1955), in additional to being one of the most successful American woman composers of the first half of the twentieth century, was an important music historian and advocate for contemporary music.

Primarily remembered today as the author of the landmark books Twentieth Century Music (1933 revised 1947), which was one of the first serious histories of modern music, and as the co-author (with Ethel Peyser) of How Music Grew (1925) and Music Through The Ages (1932), she composed a significant body of orchestral and chamber works characterized by the use coloristic extended harmonies which blur tonality without abandoning melody. Her most important works include a Symphonic Suite for Strings (1940), the American Youth Concerto for piano and orchestra (written for the internationally-renowned High School of Music and Art 1943), a string quartet (1925), a "Dance" Sonata for piano (1932), a Viola Sonata (1935), and a Symphony (1950). In May 1951, the Phi Beta Fraternity of Music sponsored an entire concert of her music at New York's Town Hall.

After studies in Portland OR, she came to New York City where she studied composition with Henry Holden Huss. In 1906, she went to Paris with French pianist Raoul Pugno and his family where she became the English tutor to and the first American student of Nadia Boulanger. She spent many summers at the MacDowell Colony, where she met Amy Beach, Ruth Crawford, Miriam Gideon and Mary Howe.

She taught music history and composition at New York University from 1926 to 1951, becoming an associate professor in 1930. She also taught at Mills College (CA), the Cincinnati Conservatory, and the Juilliard School. An influential music critic, she was a regular contributor to Modern Music and The Musical Quarterly, associate editor of the International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, the editor of Etude and the New York editor for the Musical Leader.

In addition to being a co-founder of the American Music Center, she co-founded the American Music Guild, served as Vice President of the Chautauqua Society of Greater New York, and was a member of the executive board of the League of Composers where she managed the Young Composers' Concerts for many years and was responsible for introducing audiences to the music of Aaron Copland and George Antheil, among others.

Although few of her compositions are currently available on recordings and all of her writings are currently out of print, interest has grown in Bauer in recent years and historic recordings by the Vienna Orchestra of two of her works were re-issued by CRI in 1996.

from Prelude & Fugue for Flute & Strings (1948) - Prelude The Vienna Orchestra F. Charles Adler, conductor (CRI American Masters CD 714; Order from Amazon)

from Sonata for Viola and Piano (1935) - Allegretto Arnold Steinhardt - viola Virginia Eskin - piano (Northeastern LP 222; re-issued on Alba CD 297)