Sarah, Anna and Louise–What No Thelma? Discovering Louise Talma and Her Shorter Piano Works

Abstract

This is an adaptation of a presentation given at the SEMLA meeting in Columbus, GA, in October of 2006. After a brief description of her six-month sabbatical at the Library of Congress, Music Librarian Sarah Dorsey (UNC Greensboro) outlines the life of Louise Talma. A short description of her style is followed by some quotes from Louise and a discussion and performance of specific piano pieces1 performed by Anna Neal, Music Librarian at the University of Memphis. KEYWORDS. 20th-century piano music, Library of Congress Music Division, Louise Talma Article: WHY LOUISE? While struggling with exactly how to approach this opportunity to talk about Louise, I realized that she was adamant about being a composer, not a female composer. There is nothing about composing that really has anything to do with gender. I think that her insistence on this emphasis was her way of nudging the world to be more enlightened. But thirty years later (I"m sorry to say, Louise), we are still living in a society that has difficulty supporting and encouraging young female composers. In September of 2006, Professor Eileen Strempel of Syracuse University published an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education-"How Colleges Can Encourage Female Composers." The article begins: "If classical music during the 20th and 21st centuries has become increasingly invisible as reflected in such depressing tomes as Joseph Horowitz"s Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall (Norton, 2005), then surely the contributions of female composers are so puny as to be nearly undetectable." The article then goes on to discuss Professor Strempel"s findings that the only way to really make an impression on those engaged in the study of music (not to mention the general public) is to present live performances, and universities are in a good position to do that through commissions. One of the reasons I am compelled to tell Louise"s story is that she was a composer in the 20th century who, over the course of her life, wrote in all genres, received commissions and awards and, in short, "made it" as a composer and she has, for all intents and purposes, disappeared.