Name Betsy Jolas Albums Ventosum vocant | Children Antoine Illouz Role Composer · betsyjolas.com | |
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Education Bennington College, Conservatoire de Paris Similar People Ivo Malec, Gilbert Amy, Andre Boucourechliev, Paul Mefano, Claude Ballif | ||
Parents Eugene Jolas, Maria Jolas | ||
Betsy jolas music to go 1995
Betsy Jolas (born 5 August 1926) is a Franco-American composer. Her parents are the American writer Eugene Jolas and the translator Maria McDonald.
Contents
- Betsy jolas music to go 1995
- Iannis xenakis betsy jolas andre boucourechliev new sounds from paris 2 2
- Biography
- Style
- Honors
- References
Iannis xenakis betsy jolas andre boucourechliev new sounds from paris 2 2
Biography
Betsy Jolas was born in Paris in 1926. Her mother, the American translator Maria Jolas, was a singer. Her father, the poet and journalist Eugene Jolas founded and edited the magazine transition, which featured over ten years most of the great names of the interwar period. Notably James Joyce, whose Finnegans Wake came out in serial form under the heading "work in progress".
Her family settled in the United States in late 1940. While completing her general studies in New York, then specializing in music at Bennington College, she joined the Dessoff Choirs, thus discovering notably Renaissance music which was to have a lasting influence on her work.
Having returned to Paris in 1946, Betsy Jolas resumed her studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de musique, notably with Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen. From 1971 to 1974 she served as Olivier Messiaen's assistant at the Conservatoire and was appointed herself to the faculty in 1975. She has since then also taught in the United States, at Yale, Harvard, Mills College (D. Milhaud chair), the University of California campuses at Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego, and at Tanglewood and the University of Michigan.
Betsy Jolas is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1983) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995).
After graduating from Bennington College, Jolas returned to Paris in 1946 to continue her studies with Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique of Paris.
Her numerous works* (she has been composing steadily since 1945) are written for a great variety of combinations and have been widely performed throughout the world by first class artists such as Kent Nagano, Anssi Karttünen, Claude Delangle, William Christie, Häkan Hardenberger, Antoine Tamestit, Sir Simon Rattle.... and leading ensembles and orchestras among which : the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the Boston Symphony Chamber players, the BBC symphony…
Style
Through her family background, Betsy Jolas was confronted at an early age with words and the singing voice and this may have protected her from some musical excesses of the after-war. An early follower of Pierre Boulez's Domaine Musical in the 1960's, she was always more a « fellow-traveler » than an unconditional disciple. Her music clearly sounds contemporary, if only for being consistently atonal. Yet, unlike most composers of her generation, Betsy Jolas never encouraged a break with the past and her keen knowledge of tradition has often been felt as secretly backing her creative drive. She has indeed openly admitted many times her ambition to write expressive and beautiful music when such considerations were deemed outdated.