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Tennessee Composers

Chattanoogans enjoyed Dorle J. Soria’s article on our Southern neighbor, Charleston, South Carolina and the Spoleto festival in the Scptember is-sue. We would like to comment that Southern composers arc not as rare as one might imagine from the article (especially Tennessee composers). Mention is madę of Tennessec-born composer Kenton Coe of Johnson City. At this time, three Tennessee composers are, in fact, at work on commissions for the Chattanooga Symphony’s fiftieth anniversary planned in the Corning seasons.

Doris Hays, Chattanooga bom and living in New York, has com-posed extensively in addition to being an outstanding pianist. Her string quartet, Tuneings was premiered by the Manhattan String Quartet last March and the National Endowment for the Arts is supporting her Southern Voices composition project which will be premiered by the Chattanooga Symphony in April.

Sam Hope, another composer commissioned, was born in Kentucky but grew up in T ennessee and re-ceived his early musie training at the Cadek Conservatory in Chattanooga beforc going to Eastman and Yale. In addition to his composing, he is the executive director of the National As-sociation of Schools of Musie.

Jan SwafTord was also born in Chattanooga and after his early musie training in Chattanooga went on to study at Harvard and Yale with John Perkins and Jacob Druckman, among others. His orchestra work Passage was premiered by the St. Ix)uis Symphony several years ago. T he fourth composer whom we have commissioned is Pulitzer Prize win-ner Robert Ward, who though not a Tennessean, is at present living in North Carolina.

We are glad to recognize these composers from the South and from Tennessee.

John C. Wendt Manager

Chattanooga Symphony Chattanooga, TN

“A Woman Alive”

The performance of Patsy Rog-ers' opera A Woman AIive at New York University was not, as you indicated, its premiere [musical america, August 1981, page 25). T he work was first presented by the Friendsof Musie at Guilford, Yermont, in 1977, with the same conductor (Rogers) and soprano (Joyce McLean) as in the NYU production and stage direc-tion by the librettist, Evc Merriam.

I agree that the libretto is less satisfying than the musie, but the lat-ter is splendid and the work as a wholemuch stronger than your re-viewersuggests. T he notion that characters w'ho dęli vcr operat ic monologues must be insane to be con-vincing seems rather limiting. Is Hans Sachscrazy? Or is insanity only for sopranos? Mad scenes are merely a convention, inherently neither morę nor less believable than the others we accept in opera, but after Lucia and Ophelia and Erwartung and Passagio and countless morę, maybc we’vc had enough. In com-parison, the lucidity of the Rogers-Merriam Woman is refreshing.

Zeke Hecker

Frustee, Friendsof Musie Guilford, VT