Beyer, Johanna
Biography
Born: July 11, 1888
Died: January 9, 1944
Country: Born in Leipzig, Germany; USA (1923)
Studies: Mannes College of Music,
Teachers: Ruth Crawford, Charles Seeger, and Dane Rudhyar
Website:
Johanna Beyer was born in Leipzig, Germany, but very little is known about her life prior to her move to the United States in 1923. She sang for three years at the Leipziger Singakademie and graduated from the Deutscher Konservatorien and Musikseminare, having studied piano, harmony, theory, counterpoint, singing, and dancing. Colleagues in New York recalled that her pianism and musicianship were excellent and that her musical training seemed traditional and solid. She spent 1911–1914 in America, though nothing is known of her activities during those years. Returning to the U.S. in 1923 (according to the biographical notes she provided in a Composers' Forum concert program), she studied at the Mannes College of Music, receiving two degrees by 1928. She taught piano to support herself, and may have taught at Greenwich House Music School, but struggled to make ends meet, resorting at times to WPA work and Ladies Home Aid. In the late 1920s or early thirties she began studying with Ruth Crawford, Charles Seeger, and Dane Rudhyar and in 1934 took Henry Cowell's percussion class at the New School for Social Research. Her musical life during these years was intertwined with Seeger, Crawford, Cowell, John Cage, and others in this modernist circle such as Jessie Baetz, a now-forgotten composer and painter who studied with Beyer. Her most intimate friendship was with Cowell; surviving correspondence reveals a tumultuous, and possibly romantic, relationship between the two composers. Beyer acted as Cowell's informal agent and secretary from 1936 to 1941 on a voluntary basis (only receiving partial compensation in 1941).
Though she was largely ignored as a composer, she did have a number of important performances. The first was at the New School for Social Research in 1933, where her Three Songs for Soprano, Piano, and Percussion were performed. A year later, the second movement from her Suite for Clarinet and Bassoon, performed in one of Henry Cowell's New Music Society of California concerts in San Francisco, was perceived as a "doleful dull duet." Aaron Copland reviewed a New Music Quarterly Recording of the movement. John Cage performed two movements of her "Three Movements for Percussion" in his northwestern percussion tours during the late 1930s. In 1936 her skills in multiple media came to the fore in her play, The Modern Composer, for which she wrote the lyrics, composed the incidental music, choreographed the modern ballet, designed and created the costumes, slides, and advertisements, directed the production, and performed the piano part. The play was performed under the auspices of the Federal Music Project at the Central Manhattan Music Center, but manuscript sources for it have not yet been found. Her music was performed twice in the New York Composers' Forum, in 1936 and 1937.
Beyer battled with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, during the final years of her life. She died in New York, New York, in 1944.
Some of her scores are available in recopied, annotated editions through the Frog Peak/Johanna Beyer Project. The editing and recopying work has been contributed on a voluntary basis by composers interested in the project.[1]
Johanna Magdalena Beyer (1888-1944) was born in Leipzig. She moved to the United States sometime around 1924, at the age of 35. After studying at various schools in New York, and with composers including Dane Rudhyar, Charles Seeger, Henry Cowell and Ruth Crawford, she began a highly productive and interesting period of composition which lasted from around 1932 to almost 1940. She died of ALS in 1944, in New York City, at the age of 56. She had no heirs or family, and is buried in a public cemetery north of the city. During her life, Beyer's music received very few performances, one recording (an excerpt), and one publication (as part of Henry Cowell's New Music Editions). Her work was almost completely overlooked during her life, and for about fifty years after her death. She was a close associate of Cowell's (acting as a kind of administrative assistant for him during his San Quentin years), but she seems to have been an extremely shy, awkward, or perhaps introverted person. For some reason, she was even ignored for the most part by even the experimental music scene in NY during the 1930's. Even with the tremendous renaissance of interest in the works of historical women composers in the U.S., Beyer's work has, until now, been (in her own words) in "total eclipse."
Beyer's music is an astonishing and rich treasure of mid-century American experimentalism. Several of her works from the early 1930's are important examples of Crawford/Seeger dissonant counterpoint, but in their own unique style. She was one of the first composers to focus on percussion music, and her several works for percussion ensemble are unusual (and quite beautiful) in a number of ways. Her two string quartets are small masterpieces of formalism combined with a quirky sense of humour. Her two major piano pieces are singular studies in the 'American dissonant' style, but quite distinct from those of her contemporaries Ruggles and Crawford. Her known works number about 50, and include several works for orchestra, concert band, a large number of chamber works, and works for choir, solo piano, and theatre. Many of her pieces still await their world premieres.
Charles Amirkhanian is largely responsible for "discovering" her work in the 1970's, and Essential Music performed a series of concerts of Beyer's music (working from facsimile manuscripts) in 1988 on the 100th anniversary year of her birth. About three years ago, Frog Peak Music began a "community" project to publish her scores in new annotated editions (10 so far) with the editing and copying done by various composers interested in her work. A biographical article and a detailed annotated catalog of her work is forthcoming in the Musical Quarterly by Larry Polansky and John Kennedy. A double CD of her music is also planned for release by Essential Music and Non Sequitur recordings.
(Larry Polansky and John Kennedy)[2]
Works for Percussion
IV - Percussion Ensemble
March - Percussion Sextet
Percussion Suite - Percussion Quintet
Percussion, op.14 - Percussion Sextet
Three Movements for Percussion - Percussion Ensemble
Waltz for Percussion - Percussion Ensemble
References