February
8, 2002
Glass
Panels Are Capstone to Renovation of Pratt Hall
Music and dance students
seeking inspiration to face spring semester's courseload need
look no further than the Eleanor Pierce Stevens Library of Music
and Dance in Mount Holyoke's newly renovated Pratt Hall. There,
suspended over the library's two rows of computer terminals and
listening stations, twelve glass panels bearing the names and
portraits of women artists remind MHC's musicians and dancers
of the extraordinary accomplishments of the pioneering women who
preceded them in their fields. The panels honoring great women
of music and dance were installed in October—the capstone
to extensive renovations that joined and upgraded Pratt and Hammond
halls to give Mount Holyoke a state-of-the-art music facility.
"For me these
dreamy, translucent images give a palpable, spectral presence
to the artistic legacies of these great women artists," said
Jim Coleman, arts coordinator and professor and chair of dance.
"I would imagine they provide visible inspiration for students
passing through and working in the library. Certainly in the case
of modern dance, whose founders were mostly women, these images
are a telling reminder of a unique twentieth-century artistic
legacy. I also like the way the setting and translucency of the
images allows you to see a number of figures at once, in depth,
capturing the rich heritage of music and dance collaborations."
Rachel Rapperport
of the architectural firm Miller Dyer Spears found inspiration
for the panels at Williston Memorial Library, where she saw wall-mounted
plaques about notable MHC women of many different disciplines.
"This simple act of publicly celebrating achievements of
specific women is important and uplifting," said Rapperport,
who hoped that panels in Pratt Hall would be another visible testimony
to women's important contributions, both celebrating women in
the past and encouraging creativity in the future.
Whether they come
to the library to check email, search the Internet, type papers,
listen to an assignment or leisure recording, or read periodicals
like Ballet Alert! and Journal of Music Theory, students can't
help but notice the panels, especially when they are illumined
by the morning light streaming through the library's east windows.
Many will no doubt draw closer to decipher signatures and admire
portraits, even to read the corresponding biographies that were
researched, written, and compiled during the fall semester by
students of Larry Schipull, College organist and associate professor
of music.
"The panels have
turned a beautiful place into an intellectually stimulating and
aesthetically interesting space," said Associate Professor
of Music Linda Laderach, who led Coleman, Schipull, and other
faculty members in selecting the twelve artists depicted.
Panel
Subjects
Agnes DeMille,
1909—1993
An American dancer
and choreographer, DeMille incorporated American folk idiom in
popular narrative fusions of ballet and modern dance, as in Rodeo
(1942) and Fall River Legend (1948). Her choreography in
Broadway musicals was preeminent in the integration of dance,
song, and action, as in Oklahoma (1943), and Carousel (1945).
Adapted from Oxford Paperback Encyclopedia;
image by Maurice Seymour
Clara Schumann,
1819—1896
A German pianist,
composer, and teacher, Schumann was one of the foremost European
pianists of the nineteenth century, the wife and champion of the
music of Robert Schumann, and a respected composer and influential
teacher.
Adapted from The New Grove Dictionary
Isabella d'Este,
1474—1539
Known as the "First
Lady of the Renaissance," d'Este patronized and promoted
the arts as Duchess of Mantua after the death of her husband,
Francesco Gonzaga. She was herself a keen musician, and her support
of stringed instruments may have contributed to the development
of the viol ensemble in accompanying the frottola, a type of song
that evolved as a written counterpart to the Italian improvisatory
tradition.
Amy Beach, 1867—1944
American composer
and pianist, Beach was celebrated during her lifetime as the foremost
woman composer of the United States. A member of the Second New
England School of composers, she wrote and published more than
300 works in a wide variety of genres.
Adapted from The New Grove Dictionary
Hildegard of Bingen,
1098—1179
A German Benedictine
abbess, visionary, writer, and composer, she is known for her
literary, musical, and scientific works, and for her religious
and diplomatic activities. Her oeuvre includes recorded visions,
medical and scientific works, hagiography, letters, and lyrical
and dramatic poetry.
Adapted from The New Grove Dictionary
Pearl Primus, 1919–1994
Primus was born in
Trinidad and raised in New York, where she made her professional
debut as a dancer in 1943. She later founded her own dance company.
Her work as a choreographer and teacher brought to the stage and
studio the reality of life in black America and the richness of
Caribbean and African dance forms. Her work grew out of the early
modern dance ethos in its search for American dance forms not
based on borrowed European models. It developed to embrace dance
forms of African people as she sought to discover her own artistic
and spiritual heritage. Primus's work had a profound impact on
many black artists including, Alvin Ailey, Donald McKayle, Judith
Jamison, and countless others.
Marian Anderson,
1899–1993
Contralto Marian Anderson
made musical history as the first African American to perform
(in 1955) with the Metropolitian Opera Company. Her voice was
large and striking, and she was above all admired for her artistic
integrity.
Adapted from The New Grove Dictionary
Fanny Mendelssohn
Hensel, 1805–1847
A German composer,
pianist, conductor, and sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn,
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel learned the piano from her mother, who
is reputed to have noted her daughter's "Bach fingers"
at birth. Beginning in the early 1830s, she became the central
figure in a flourishing salon, favoring composers who were then
unfashionable, including Mozart, Handel, and Bach. She also produced
her own lieder and piano pieces, an output of about 500 compositions.
Adapted
from The New Grove Dictionary
Nadia Boulanger,
1887–1979
A French teacher,
conductor, and composer, Boulanger first came to public attention
in 1908, when she created a scandal by writing an instrumental
fugue in the preliminary round of the Prix de Rome, rather than
the vocal fugue required. Promoted as a concert pianist and organist
by the virtuoso pianist Raoul Pugno, she also composed more than
thirty songs, chamber music, and a Fantaisie variee (1912) for
piano and orchestra. Boulanger is remembered as one of the foremost
composition teachers of the twentieth century and one of the first
professional female conductors.
Adapted from The New Grove Dictionary
Martha Graham,
1894–1991
Dancer Martha Graham
is known for revolutionizing dance, lighting, stage designing,
costuming, and music. Her pieces often dealt with social and political
problems, such as imperialism and civil war. In 1938, Eleanor
Roosevelt invited Graham to the White House, where she performed
American Document. Graham would dance at the White House for seven
other presidents.
Ruth Crawford Seeger,
1901–1953
An American pianist
and composer, Seeger was an outstanding figure among early American
modernists in the 1920s and early 1930s and a specialist in American
traditional music. She transcribed, edited, and arranged important
anthologies in the 1940s and early 1950s and contributed folk-song
arrangements to Chicago poet Carl Sandburg's landmark anthology
The American Songbag.
Bessie Smith, 1894–1937
An American blues,
jazz, and vaudeville singer, Smith began her professional career
in 1912 by singing in the same show as Ma Rainey. After performing
in various touring shows and cabarets, as well as at the 81 Theatre
in Atlanta, she was sought out by the jazz pianist Clarence Williams
to record in New York. Her first recording, "Downhearted
Blues" (1923), established her as the most successful black
performing artist of her time; she recorded regularly until 1928,
performed throughout the South and North, and in 1929 appeared
in the film St. Louis Blues. Her death after a car accident was
the subject of Edward Albee's play The Death of Bessie Smith (1959).
Adapted from The New Grove Dictionary
The
cThe
Counter is
1,349
|
