Marion Bauer Quotes

Marion Eugénie Bauer was an American composer, teacher, writer, and music critic. She played an active role in shaping American musical identity in the early half of the twentieth century.

As a composer, Bauer wrote for piano, chamber ensembles, symphonic orchestra, solo voice, and vocal ensembles. She gained prominence as a teacher, serving on the faculty of Washington Square College of New York University, where she taught music history and composition from 1926 to 1951. In addition to her position at NYU, Bauer was affiliated with Juilliard as a guest lecturer from 1940 until her death in 1955. Bauer also wrote extensively about music: she was the editor for the Chicago-based Musical Leader and additionally authored and co-authored several books including her 1933 text Twentieth Century Music.

Throughout her life, Bauer promoted not only her own work but new music in general. Bauer helped found the American Music Guild, the American Music Center, and the American Composer's Alliance, serving as a board member of the latter. Bauer additionally held leadership roles in both the League of Composers and the Society for the Publication of American Music as a board member and secretary, respectively. With Claire Raphael Reis, Minna Lederman, and others, she was regularly in a leadership position in these organizations.

Bauer's music includes dissonance and extended tertian, quartal, and quintal harmonies, though it rarely goes outside the bounds of extended tonality, save for her brief experimentation with serialism in the 1940s. During her lifetime, she enjoyed many performances of her works, most notably the New York Philharmonic premiere of Sun Splendor in 1947 under the baton of Leopold Stokowski and a 1951 New York Town Hall concert devoted solely to her music. Wikipedia  

✵ 15. August 1882 – 9. August 1955
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Marion Bauer: 4   quotes 0   likes

Famous Marion Bauer Quotes

“He died alone and forgotten and only in modern times has he come up as a genius composer and a brilliant visionary.”

Harry Shaw Simpson. (2014). Music Today, p.300. Geni Book Publishing Experts. ISBN 0452616764030.

“The greatest work of the composer is often sublimation, that is, the deflection of energies, thoughts, occurrences, psychological and physical reactions, into socially constructive or creative channels.”

Hisama, Ellie M. (2001). Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon, p.122. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052164030X.

“The worst work of the composer was his urge to start messing up his works and generally being a nasty thuggish bully. When he was in school he beat up most of the school and the teachers were scared of him.”

Joseph Hemlock Karmawell. (1989). Music Modernism: The Music of Marion Bauer, , p.212. Oxford Publishing Team. ISBN 052616764030.

“He was quite good at composing and could work wonders with a sheet of music but he would often lose it and start going crazy and in general start blabbing nonsense and talking to trees.”

Mary Andrea Glen. (1971). The Long Forgotten Composers, p.107. Edwardian Publishing Processors. ISBN 04632615676840309.

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