Johanna Beyer - Untitled (Sep. 1936), from the Piano Book (1930s)
Johanna Beyer (188-1944) was a German-American pianist and composer. Little is known about her life prior to her arrival in 1923; after that she earned two degrees from Mannes School of Music and got friendly with the New York Ultra-Modernists. In the late 1920s and early '30s he studied with Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger, Dane Rudhyar and Henry Cowell and began composing music of her own. Her works are highly experimental, singular even among her progressive colleagues, and almost none of it was published or widely heard in her lifetime. It's only been in recent decades that her works have been distributed and recorded, and she has gotten her well-deserved reputation as one of America's most important female modernist composers. The manuscript for her Piano Book is undated, though presumably it was created in the 1930s. Mixing easy teaching pieces and peculiar drawings with a few modernist selections, the collection is an enigmatic snapshot of Beyer's mind and life. This untitled piece is dated September 1936, and is the most interesting of the "concert" pieces in the collection. Wholly atonal, the piece builds cluster chords offset between the two hands, and finely develops its motives without exhausting the central concept. Its snaking counterpoint and arm clusters put it firmly in the lineage of the Ultra-Modernists, and pianists looking for a well-written experimental piece by an American female composer could do well by adding it to their repertoire.
Johanna Beyer (188-1944) was a German-American pianist and composer. Little is known about her life prior to her arrival in 1923; after that she earned two degrees from Mannes School of Music and got friendly with the New York Ultra-Modernists. In the late 1920s and early '30s he studied with Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger, Dane Rudhyar and Henry Cowell and began composing music of her own. Her works are highly experimental, singular even among her progressive colleagues, and almost none of it was published or widely heard in her lifetime. It's only been in recent decades that her works have been distributed and recorded, and she has gotten her well-deserved reputation as one of America's most important female modernist composers. The manuscript for her Piano Book is undated, though presumably it was created in the 1930s. Mixing easy teaching pieces and peculiar drawings with a few modernist selections, the collection is an enigmatic snapshot of Beyer's mind and life. This untitled piece is dated September 1936, and is the most interesting of the "concert" pieces in the collection. Wholly atonal, the piece builds cluster chords offset between the two hands, and finely develops its motives without exhausting the central concept. Its snaking counterpoint and arm clusters put it firmly in the lineage of the Ultra-Modernists, and pianists looking for a well-written experimental piece by an American female composer could do well by adding it to their repertoire.