Philip Peters asks:

>Could you elaborate a bit on Talma (sounds like a Dutch - or, rather,
>Frisian name) & Clayton? Do they achieve the same level? Of course in this
>- I mean the last - century there have come increasingly more women to the
>fore.

Laura Clayton: born Lexington, 8 Dec 1943 (so Steve is right -- she's in
her 50s), studied with Darius Milhaud at Aspen, Charles Wuorinen at New
England Conservatory and Leslie Bassett, George Balch Wilson and Eugene
Kurtz at UMich.  Two American Academy of Arts & Letters prizes, NEA awards
and a Guggenheim Fellowship.  Her "Cree Songs for the Newborn" represented
the US at the 1980 UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris.  Her
style is rhythmically complex with mystical overtones.

Louis Talma was born in Arcachon (Bordeaux's secret haven for the world
of oyster lovers) on 31 Oct 1906.  Studied at the Institute of Musical
Art in New York 1922-30 and attended Fontainebleau summer schools 1926-39,
studying with Isidore Philips, Nadia Boulanger and others -- she became
the first American member of the Fontainebleau faculty.  Two Guggenheim
Fellowships (first woman to win two), Sibelius Medal for Composition, first
American woman to have an opera performed in a major European house (the
Alcestiad in Frankfurt, 1962), first woman elected to National Institute of
Arts and Letters, 1974.  Quite a large catalog of works and a significant
bibliography -- if anyone is interested contact me offnet.

Tim Mahon
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