Description
Book SynopsisBarbara Pentland and her music have long been the centre of controversy. As a woman in what many saw as a man's field, her role as composer provoked negative reactions into the 1950s, and her music receives a wide range of responses to this day. Yet even her severest critics acknowledge the highly personal and impassioned quality of her compositions.
This book looks at Pentland's life and career as she moves from her native Winnipeg to study in Montreal, Paris, and New York and at Tanglewood with Aaron Copland, intermittently returning to her home town and gradually becoming known as a performer and composer. The authors discuss various works including Studies in Line (19410, which was composed in a highly linear idiom and epitomized her early works; Sonata for Violin and Piano (1946), which was based on French-Canadian folk tunes and reflected Copland's abstractness and use of rhythm; and the highly tonal Symphony No. 2 (1950). Her visit to Europe i
