Hey!, It's the Nancy Van de Vate Thread!!

Started by snyprrr, July 08, 2009, 09:47:34 PM

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torut

Thanks for the interesting info, pjme. English wikipedia does not contain much info about her. I like the piano sonata. It seems that her strength lies in orchestral works, but they sound too heavy to me.

Is she an American composer, or Austrian composer, as categorized in the composer index thread? It is difficult to me to grasp her music. She was born in 1930 in NJ, and before moving to Vienna in 1982, she lived in Hawaii (1975-1982) and in Indonesia (1982-1985), where she got interested in Asian music, especially Indonesian gamelan. The influence is not apparent in the works composed during or after the period. However, some pieces, for example, Music in Five, Three and Seven (2001) for saxophone quartet, have rather straightforward resemblance to Asian music.

https://www.youtube.com/v/myMztN61wNQ

torut

Quote from: CRCulver on September 02, 2014, 09:59:04 PM
Agreed. I have a massive library of 20th-century and contemporary composers, and this thread is the first I've ever heard of Van de Vate.
I found her name in American Music in the Twentieth Century by Gann, in which she was treated as one of the important New Tonality/Romanticism composers, among Crumb, John Coolidge Adams, Rzewski, and Druckman.

pjme

#22
Nancy is an interesting figure. Any (wo)man helping/promoting female composers deserves attention.
As a composer, in my humble opinion, I find her almost...nondescript...if I may say so.
propably her music is well made. But "frissons"... ? no, it leaves me cold.

Peter

Scion7

When, a few months before his death, Rachmaninov lamented that he no longer had the "strength and fire" to compose, friends reminded him of the Symphonic Dances, so charged with fire and strength. "Yes," he admitted. "I don't know how that happened. That was probably my last flicker."