Marilyn J. Ziffrin

Last updated

Marilyn Jane Ziffrin (August 7, 1926 - March 16, 2018) [1] was an American composer, music educator, author, and musician.

Contents

Biography

Early Life and Education

Marilyn Ziffrin was born in Moline, Illinois, to parents Betty S. and Harry B. Ziffrin, (both children of Russian immigrants who emigrated from Belogorodka, Ukraine due to growing anti-semitism). Harry, who grew up in the then Tri-Cities of Moline, Rock Island, IL, and Davenport, Iowa, and Betty, who grew up in St. Louis, were first cousins; their fathers were brothers. They both were first cousins of Lester Ziffren, the famous journalist, and Paul Ziffren, the Democratic Party leader from Los Angeles. Harry Ziffrin owned a liquor distributorship in Moline, but every member of the Ziffrin immediate family played a musical instrument. [1] [2]

Marilyn and her two brothers, Norman and James, were all required by their parents to take three years of piano lessons as part of their education, so Marilyn began studying piano at age four. Her first teacher was Louise Cervin, who studied with Theodor Leschetizky. After her very first piano lesson, Ziffrin knew she wanted to be a musician. [1] [2] Ziffrin also studied clarinet and saxophone, and soon began composing with a piano piece called "Ode to a Lost Pencil."

Ziffrin was educated in the Moline public school system, and organized a band while she was in middle school. She graduated as the valedictorian of her high school class, then attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison for her undergraduate degree. She double majored in instrumental music education and applied music, and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Music in 1948. Ziffrin received a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1949. It was during this time she started composing more seriously. She composed a piano concerto, her first large-scale work, which caught the attention of her music history professor, Howard Murphy. Murphy encouraged Ziffrin to keep composing and to join the National Association of Composers and Conductors. [1] [2]

After graduating from Columbia, Ziffrin took private composition lessons with Alexander Tcherepnin, who encouraged her to apply for a residency at MacDowell so she could focus on writing music. She was accepted, and spent the summer of 1961 at the prestigious artists' retreat. "It was the first time people looked at me as a composer, so I began to identify myself as a composer." [2]

Ziffrin was able to spend so much time composing because of an anonymous patron who funded her during the 1970s and 1980s. This donor allowed Ziffrin to stay for one month each year, all expenses paid, at their ranch in California, which Ziffrin called "MacDowell West." [2]

Professional Career

From 1967 to 1982, Ziffrin worked as an Associate Professor of Music at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire, where she had moved after her time at MacDowell in the hopes she would be closer to Boston and New York City. [3] She also taught private composition lessons at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire from 1972-1983. [2] [4] While at St. Paul's, one of Ziffrin's compositions students was Augusta Read Thomas, a renowned composer, who remembers Ziffrin as a role model and "an impressive teacher and musician." [2]

Gender Discrimination

Ziffrin encountered discrimination on account of her gender several times during her career. When she graduated from Columbia, a job placement agent told her, "..as long as he was alive, she or any other woman would never be placed as a conductor." [2] In another incident, Ziffrin sent several of her pieces to a music director in New York City, who remarked, "What strong music from such a little girl." [2]

Achievements

Ziffrin was a member of the National Association of Composers and Conductors. She received awards, including ASCAP Awards and Honorable Mention in the Music Teachers National Association Shepherd Competition in 1998. She was named New Hampshire Music Teachers Association Composer of the year in 1997, and has received six residencies at the MacDowell Colony. [2]

She was also the author of Carl Ruggles: Composer, Painter, and Storyteller (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994). [5]

Music and Compositional Philosophy

Ziffrin's music was influenced by the works of major European composers like Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Haydn, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, and Johann Sebastian Bach. [2] [3] She was also inspired by jazz, Jewish and synagogue music, and Broadway musicals. Ziffrin composed many pieces in a wide variety of genres, including opera, film scores, wind ensemble, orchestra, and choral music as well as chamber and solo works. [2] Most works were commissioned or written for specific performers. They are assimilated to form quite different and distinctive sounds depending on the composition. According to Ziffrin, "While my style continues to change, it is probably best described as eclectic. I choose to believe it is essentially expressive, optimistic, and adventurous." [2] [1]

Selected works

Ziffrin wrote compositions for solo instruments, chamber music, choral works, works for orchestra and band.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebecca Clarke (composer)</span> English composer and violist (1886–1979)

Rebecca Helferich Clarke was a British classical composer and violist. Internationally renowned as a viola virtuoso, she also became one of the first female professional orchestral players in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Ruggles</span> American composer (1876–1971)

Carl Ruggles was an American composer, painter and teacher. His pieces employed "dissonant counterpoint", a term coined by fellow composer and musicologist Charles Seeger to describe Ruggles' music. His method of atonal counterpoint was based on a non-serial technique of avoiding repeating a pitch class until a generally fixed number of eight pitch classes intervened. He is considered a founder of the ultramodernist movement of American composers that included Henry Cowell and Ruth Crawford Seeger, among others. He had no formal musical education, yet was an extreme perfectionist—writing music at a painstakingly slow rate and leaving behind a very small output.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward MacDowell</span> American composer (1860–1908)

Edward Alexander MacDowell was an American composer and pianist of the late Romantic period. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites Woodland Sketches, Sea Pieces and New England Idylls. Woodland Sketches includes his most popular short piece, "To a Wild Rose". In 1904 he was one of the first seven Americans honored by membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Louise Juliette Talma was an American composer, academic, and pianist. After studies in New York and in France, piano with Isidor Philipp and composition with Nadia Boulanger, she focused on composition from 1935. She taught at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, and at Hunter College. Her opera The Alcestiad was the first full-scale opera by an American woman staged in Europe. She was the first woman in the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the first woman awarded the Sibelius Medal for Composition.

Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored with several awards including Germany's Order of Merit – Officer's Cross.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quincy Porter</span> American composer

William Quincy Porter was an American composer and teacher of classical music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Kolb</span> American composer (1939–2024)

Barbara Kolb was an American composer and educator, the first woman to win the Rome Prize in musical composition. Her music features sound masses of colorful textures, impressionistic sounds and atonal vocabulary, with influences from literary and visual arts. She taught at the Third Street Music School Settlement, Rhode Island College and Eastman School of Music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Viktor Suslin</span> Russian composer

Viktor Yevseyevich Suslin was a Russian composer. An associate of Sofia Gubaidulina's, together with her and Vyacheslav Artyomov he formed the improvisatory ensemble 'Astraea' in 1975. He emigrated to Germany in 1981.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elisabetta de Gambarini</span> British musician (1731–1765)

Elisabetta de Gambarini was an English composer, singer, organist, harpsichordist, pianist, orchestral conductor and painter of the 18th century. Elisabetta's music is considered late Baroque and Classical music. She achieved distinction as an all-around musician, performing on, and composing for a variety of instruments as well as voice. Her compositions were known to reflect that of vocal work instead of instrumental patterns. She was the first female composer in Britain to publish a collection of keyboard music. Some sources describe her voice type as a singer as a soprano, and others as a mezzo-soprano.

Douglas Allanbrook was an American composer, concert pianist and harpsichordist. He was associated with a group of mid-twentieth century Boston composers who were students of Nadia Boulanger. His compositions are described by the Kennedy Center as "smooth, showing astute sense, assertiveness, and originality."

Margaret Brouwer is an American composer and composition teacher. She founded the Blue Streak Ensemble chamber music group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Barton Pine</span> American violinist (born 1974)

Rachel Barton Pine is an American violinist. She debuted with the Chicago Symphony at age 10, and was the first American and youngest ever gold medal winner of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition. The Washington Post wrote that she "displays a power and confidence that puts her in the top echelon."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boris Papandopulo</span> Croatian composer

Boris Papandopulo was a Croatian composer and conductor of Greek and Russian Jewish descent. He was the son of Greek nobleman Konstantin Papandopulo and Croatian opera singer Maja Strozzi-Pečić and one of the most distinctive Croatian musicians of the 20th century. Papandopulo also worked as music writer, journalist, reviewer, pianist and piano accompanist; however, he achieved the peaks of his career in music as a composer. His composing oeuvre is imposing : with great success he created instrumental, vocal and instrumental, stage music and film music. In all these kinds and genres he left a string of anthology-piece compositions of great artistic value.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Tobias-Duesberg</span> Estonian-American composer

Helen Tobias-Duesberg was an Estonian-American composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruth Zechlin</span> German composer (1926–2007)

Ruth Zechlin was a German composer.

Friedrich Zehm was a German classical composer.

Reinhard Pfundt is a German pianist, composer and academic teacher at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig. He wrote orchestral works, chamber music and songs, and was awarded prizes in the German Democratic Republic (DDR).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aline Reese Blondner</span> Musical artist

Aline Reese Blondner was an American musician and music educator. Widely known as pianist, organist and teacher, she trained with Asger Hamerik, Carl Reinecke, and Franz Liszt, and performed with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Patsy Rogers is an American composer and teacher who has won several awards and commissions. She is active in the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM).

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Obituary for Marilyn J. Ziffrin at Chadwick Funeral and Cremation Service". www.meaningfulfunerals.net. Retrieved May 19, 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Schantz, Malinda (Spring 1998). "Marilyn J. Ziffrin: A Lifetime of Creating Music" (PDF). Sonneck Society for American Music. Retrieved September 27, 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. 1 2 "Marilyn J. Ziffrin Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . ". www.bruceduffie.com. Retrieved October 29, 2024.
  4. Sadie, Julie Anne; Samuel, Rhian (1994). The Norton/Grove dictionary of women composers. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN   9780393034875 . Retrieved October 4, 2010.
  5. Ziffrin, Marilyn J. (1994). Carl Ruggles : composer, painter, and storyteller. University of Illinois Press. ISBN   0-252-02042-1. OCLC   868950787.
  6. Organ and Harpsichord Music by Women Composers