Mildred Couper (December 10, 1887 in Buenos Aires, Argentina – August 9, 1974 in Santa Barbara, United States) was a prominent composer and pianist, and one of the first American musicians to experiment with

quarter-tone A quarter tone is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale or an interval about half as wide (aurally, or logarithmically) as a semitone, which itself is half a whole tone. Quarter tones divide the octave by 50 cents each, a ...

music. She was based in Santa Barbara, California.

Early life

Mildred Cooper was born in Buenos Aires, the daughter of Reginald Cooper and Harriet Hathaway Jacobs (1849-1931). Her father was born in England; her mother was born in Argentina to Wilson Jacobs III and Harriet Hathaway Moores, both American-born. She began her serious musical studies at the Williams Conservatory in Argentina, and pursued further training in Italy, Germany and France, where she studied piano with Moritz Moszkowski and composition with Nadia Boulanger.

Career

Couper taught piano for nine years at the David Mannes Music School in New York. She moved with her children to California in 1927 and established a studio in Santa Barbara, where she started her experiments with two pianos by tuning the first a quarter tone higher than the second. This increased the normal 88 pitch levels to 176, expanding so the gamut by a quarter step to emphasize the character of the harmony. Her first work in this medium was the ballet ''Xanadu'' (1930), which was performed in the production of Eugene O'Neill's ''

Marco Millions Marco may refer to: People * Marco (given name), people with the given name Marco * Marco (actor) (born 1977), South Korean model and actor * Georg Marco (1863–1923), Romanian chess player of German origin * Tomás Marco (born 1942), Spanish co ...

'' in the

Lobero Theatre The Lobero Theatre is an historic building in Santa Barbara, California. The theater was originally built as an opera house, in a refurbished adobe school building, by Italian immigrant José Lobero in 1873. Located downtown at the corner of Ana ...

. Mildred Couper also wrote incidental music for plays at the Lobero and also a dance-opera, ''And on Earth Peace'', with libretto by Scottish-Argentine artist Malcolm Thurburn.

Personal life

Mildred Cooper married American expatriate artist Richard Hamilton Couper in 1910, and they had two children, Clive (1913-2004) and Rosalind (1915-2016), both born in Rome. At the outbreak of World War I the Coupers moved to New York City. She was widowed soon after, when her husband died during the

1918 influenza pandemic The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...

. She died in Santa Barbara, California, in 1974, aged 86 years. Her papers are archived in the Department of Special Collections at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Trivia

Mildred Cooper's first cousin Harry Norman Jacobs (1877-1951) was the grandfather of Argentine-born composer Carlos Micháns(-Jacobs) (1950-), who resides in the Netherlands since 1982.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Couper, Mildred American women classical composers American classical composers American classical pianists American women classical pianists Microtonal musicians 1974 deaths 1887 births Musicians from Santa Barbara, California People from Buenos Aires Argentine emigrants to the United States Mannes College The New School for Music faculty 20th-century American women pianists Classical musicians from California 20th-century classical pianists Women music educators 20th-century American pianists American women academics