Ursula Mamlok
Ursula Mamlok ( born 1 February 1923 in Berlin ), born Meyer and Mayer, is a German - American composer and teacher.
Biography
After the father Hans Meyer died early and Ursula was just two years old, his mother married again in 1929, and Ursula received the surname of the stepfather Lewy. Beginning with the elementary school in the Pestalozzistraße visited Ursula Lewy then the Princess Bismarck School in Berlin (Today Sophie- Charlotte High School ).
As for all the Jews that began for Ursula and her family the mid-1930s, a time of deprivation and oppression. So had 1938 in the Princess Bismarck Lyceum Jewish children leave school. Short term could still get into a vocational school, where she would learn the correct bed-making and ironing before her but even there the visit was prohibited Ursula. The Nazis persecuted, left the family Lewy - with the exception of grandparents who had no affidavit and were later murdered at Auschwitz - ultimately the country and went into the 1939 Ecuadorian exile in Guayaquil.
Early on, she began with a musical education, and even received already with 12 years of professional lessons in composition by Gustav Ernest, a lecturer of the Berlin Friedrich- Wilhelm University (now Humboldt University of Berlin). In exile, there was little opportunity to go on her musical career. Although there was in their city in Guayaquil Conservatory, where she also took lessons with Señor Negri, however Ursula was not satisfied. So you took the lengthy post to Berlin in purchase to come back in contact with her former teacher Gustav Ernest. Unfortunately, this was not possible for a long time because Ernest later emigrated to the Netherlands, yet was ultimately murdered by the Nazis.
From their goal is not deviant, they sent repeatedly manuscripts of her compositions to various conservatories in the United States. Just a year after their arrival in Guayaquil, she received a scholarship at the Mannes School of Music in New York. Just 17 years old, she came alone with the sea crossing from Ecuador to New York.
Since the local composition lessons with George Szell for Ursula Lewy was too conservative, she applied successfully in the summer of 1944 for a three-month scholarship at the famous Black Mountain College, where in the following years also John Cage taught. There Ursula Lewy first encountered the works of Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School. She took piano lessons there at Edward helmsman and attended a Master Class with Ernst Krenek. But it was a short visit Roger Sessions, who had a lasting influence and caused them immediately to take composition lessons with him. Later she added with these lessons with Jerzy Fitelberg.
1947 married Ursula Lewy Dwight Mamlok and moved to San Francisco. Since they still had no college degree, but have not yet felt as a " ready- composer ", they returned to New York, where Ursula Mamlok finally using a now third scholarship at Vittorio Giannini at the Manhattan School of Music, her bachelor's degree and in 1957 a Master of Music '.
In the aftermath Mamlok also taught himself 40 years composition at the Manhattan School of Music, and the New York University and Temple University. Her most famous pupils was the composer and conductor Tania León. 2006 - after nearly 70 years in the USA - she returned to her husband's death Dwight Mamlok back to Berlin. " It is a return to the birthplace " and because " not in the 'homeland' [ ... ]. ": " My home is the music," as she says ( Tom ).
Music style
Stylistically Mamloks works moved to the end of the 50s in the vicinity of Paul Hindemith. Of them, the Woodwind Quintet is one of the few works that is being performed repeatedly until today.
In the aftermath Ursula Mamlok began to seek new musical paths. For this, she took lessons in 1960 at the well from the Nazis and emigrated to New York Stefan Wolpe. However, this came to an end, when she met his student Ralph Shapey. " With him, the composer was on target. " With his empathy was finally Ursula Mamlok possible to creatively develop and integrate new compositional techniques. It was also Shapey, who gave her first major performances, including with the ensemble " Group Of Contemporary Music", "Continuum ", "Speculum ", " Music In Our Time" and " Da Capo ".
The question of style also presented Paul Hertelendy: " they belong to the old school? For the new school? For postmodernism? I think she's just Mamlok: independent, creative, dissonant and from the inside out ".
Your present style summed up 2010 Daniel Lienhard in the Swiss music newspaper wiefolgt together: " Due to the influence of Wolpe's theory of non-linear, multi-dimensional musical space, Shapeys dissonant counterpoint and Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique Mamloks given to works from now on a modernist train, which continues to this day. "
Works
Mamloks oeuvre includes previously about 75 compositions, including orchestral works, numerous chamber works, choral works, works for solo instruments, an electronic business as well as teaching materials. They are often particularly affected by difficult and set against each other rhythms, as in the extremely complex String Quartet No.1 ( 1962), and contrasts, as reflected in the dramatic structure in Mamloks most famous work, "The Andreas garden ", a song cycle poems by Gerad Dwight Mamlok (1987) find.
Awards
- National Endowment for the Arts (1968 & 1981)
- Price of the Koussevitzky Foundation ( 1989)
- Fromm Foundation Grant ( 1994)
- John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship ( 1995)
- Price of the American Academy
- Price of the Institute of Arts and Letters
- Price of the Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation
- Merit 1st class of the Federal Republic of Germany (2013 )