Vivian Fine (28 September 1913 – 20 March 2000) was an American

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Def ...

Life

Vivian Fine was born in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

to David and Rose Fine. A piano prodigy, she became at age five the youngest student ever to be awarded a scholarship at the

Chicago Musical College Chicago Musical College is a division of the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. History Founding Dr. Florenz Ziegfeld Sr (1841–1923), founded the college in 1867 as the Chicago Academy of Music. The institution ...

. At age eleven she became a student of Scriabin disciple Djane Lavoie-Herz. Fine composed her first piece at thirteen while studying harmony with Ruth Crawford, who considered Fine her protégée. Through Madame Herz and Crawford, Fine met

Henry Cowell Henry Dixon Cowell (; March 11, 1897 – December 10, 1965) was an American composer, writer, pianist, publisher and teacher. Marchioni, Tonimarie (2012)"Henry Cowell: A Life Stranger Than Fiction" ''The Juilliard Journal''. Retrieved 19 June 202 ...

, Imre Weisshaus, and

Dane Rudhyar Dane Rudhyar (March 23, 1895 – September 13, 1985), born Daniel Chennevière, was a American author, modernist composer and humanistic astrologer. He was a pioneer of modern transpersonal astrology. Biography Dane Rudhyar was born in Paris on ...

, who were supporters of her talent .

Professional career

Fine made her professional debut as a composer at age sixteen with performances in Chicago, New York (''Solo for Oboe'', at a Pan-American Association of Composers' concert) and Dessau (''Four Pieces for Two Flutes'', at an International Society of Contemporary composers' concert). In 1931, the 18-year-old Fine moved to New York to further her studies. She was a member of

Aaron Copland Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...

's Young Composers Group, and a participant at the first

Yaddo Yaddo is an artists' community located on a estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.". On March&nbs ...

Festival in 1932 . In 1937 she helped found the American Composers Alliance and served as its vice-president from 1961 to 1965 . In addition to her career as a composer, Fine continued to perform. In the 1930s she was perhaps the best-known performer of contemporary piano music in New York. She premiered works of

Charles Ives Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed ...

, Brant,

, Rudhyar, and others, and studied piano with

Abby Whiteside Abby Whiteside (Aug 27, 1881 Vermillion, South Dakota – Dec 10, 1956 Menlo Park, California) was an American piano teacher. She challenged the finger-centric approach of much classical piano teaching and instead advocated a holistic attitude ...

from 1937 to 1945 .

Compositional style and themes

Fine's early compositional style was highly dissonant and contrapuntal. In 1934 she began a nine-year course of composition studies with Roger Sessions, and her work became for a time more tonal, as exemplified by ''Suite in E Flat'' (1940) and ''Concertante for Piano and Orchestra'' (1944). In 1946, with ''Capriccio for Oboe and String Trio'' and ''The Great Wall of China'', she returned to a freer mode of expression, to which she adhered for the remainder of her career, steadily expanding her expressive and generic range. She employed diverse techniques corresponding to a wide range of musical subjects. Henry Brant noted that "No two Fine pieces are alike either in subject matter or instrumentation; each new work appears to generate its own style appropriate to the subject, and there are no mannerisms which persist from work to work." Notable in Fine's work is a sense of fun, either as a major element in the piece (''The Race of Life'', ''Memoirs of Uliana Rooney'') or as a humorous section or reference inserted into a more serious piece (''The Women in the Garden'', ''Songs and Arias''). Fine wrote extensively for voice, employing the poetry of Shakespeare, Racine, Dryden, Keats, Whitman, Dickinson, Kafka, Neruda, and others in a wide variety of settings. She composed two chamber operas, ''The Women in the Garden'' (1978) and ''Memoirs of Uliana Rooney'' (1994). In ''The Women in the Garden'', Fine used the writings of

Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born ...

Isadora Duncan Angela Isadora Duncan (May 26, 1877 or May 27, 1878 – September 14, 1927) was an American dancer and choreographer, who was a pioneer of modern contemporary dance, who performed to great acclaim throughout Europe and the US. Born and raised in ...

and

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...

to fashion conversations among the four women and a tenor representing the various men in their lives. ''Memoirs of Uliana Rooney'' (1994), Fine's last major composition, is a contemporary

opera buffa ''Opera buffa'' (; "comic opera", plural: ''opere buffe'') is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ''commedia in musica'', ''commedia per musica'', ''dram ...

, with

libretto A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major li ...

and

videography Videography is the process of capturing moving images on electronic media (e.g., videotape, direct to disk recording, or solid state storage) and even streaming media. The term includes methods of video production and post-production. It used ...

Sonya Friedman Sonia is a feminine given name in many areas of the world including the West, Russia, Iran, and South Asia. Sonia and its variant spellings Sonja and Sonya are derived from the Russian hypocoristic ''Sonya'', an abbreviation of '' Sofiya'' (Greek ' ...

. The work,

autobiographical An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

in spirit if not in factual detail, follows American composer Uliana Rooney as she journeys through the 20th century, surviving changing political climates and several husbands to ultimately triumph.

Awards, accolades, and legacy

Among Fine's many awards were a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...

, grants from the Ford, Rockefeller, Ditson, Woolley, Koussevitsky,

Reader's Digest ''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wif ...

and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge foundations, several grants from the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

, and the Dollard and Yaddo Awards. In 1980, she was elected to the

American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headq ...

. For many years, Fine was a beloved member of the faculty of

Bennington College Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont. Founded in 1932 as a women's college, it became co-educational in 1969. It claims to be the first college to include visual and performing arts as an equal partner in ...

Vermont Vermont () is a U.S. state, state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York (state), New York to the west, and the Provin ...

. Her 1982 orchestral suite '' Drama for Orchestra'' was a finalist for the 1983

Pulitzer Prize for Music The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted ...

''.'' Fine's manuscripts are housed at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

Death

She died in Bennington, at the age of 86, following an automobile accident.''''

References

External links

Her website
November 8, 1986
Vivian Fine papers, 1929–1973
Music Division, The New York Public Library.
Vivian Fine music manuscripts
at th
Library of Congress
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fine, Vivian 1913 births 2000 deaths 20th-century classical composers American women classical composers American classical composers Bennington College faculty Fine, Vivian Chicago Musical College alumni Road incident deaths in Vermont 20th-century American composers 20th-century American women musicians 20th-century women composers