Ruth Anderson (March 21, 1928 – November 29, 2019) was an American composer, orchestrator, teacher, and flutist.

Biography

Evelyn Ruth Anderson was born March 21, 1928, in Kalispell,

Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columb ...

. She was a composer of orchestral and

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroa ...

. Her extensive education spanned two decades, and was spent at eight different institutions. Throughout this time, Anderson was the recipient of a multitude of awards and grants, including two Fulbright awards (1958–60) to study composition with

Darius Milhaud Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions ...

and

Nadia Boulanger Juliette Nadia Boulanger (; 16 September 188722 October 1979) was a French music teacher and conductor. She taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century, and also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist. From a ...

in Paris. After completing her education, Anderson spent time as a freelance composer, orchestrator, and choral arranger for NBC-TV, and later for

Lincoln Center Theater The Vivian Beaumont Theater is a Broadway theater in the Lincoln Center complex at 150 West 65th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Operated by the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), the Beaumont is the only Broad ...

Post-secondary education

* 1949 — Bachelor of Arts, ''magna cum laude,''

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

* 1951 — Master of Arts,

* 1958–60 — studied with Darius Milhaud and with Nadia Boulanger at The American School at Fontainebleau * 1962–63 — Princeton University Graduate School (one of the first four women admitted) * 1965, 1966, 1969 — Columbia–Princeton Electronic Music Center (today, the

Computer Music Center The Computer Music Center (CMC) at Columbia University is the oldest center for electronic and computer music research in the United States. It was founded in the 1950s as the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Location The CMC is hou ...

) She was a "respected electronic composer" whose works have been released on the Opus One label,

Charles Amirkhanian Charles Benjamin Amirkhanian (born January 19, 1945; Fresno, California) is an American composer. He is a percussionist, sound poet, and radio producer of Armenian origin. He is mostly known for his electroacoustic and text-sound music. Perfor ...

's "pioneering" LP anthology ''New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media'' (1977), New World/CRI, Arch Records, and Experimental Intermedia (XI). Further work was released on Arc Light in 2020.

Compositions

Anderson composed for a wealth of instruments and ensembles, including orchestra and electronic music. Her

sound poem Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literacy and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound p ...

''I Come Out of Your Sleep'' (revised and recorded on ''Sinopah'' 1997 XI) is constructed from whispered phonemes extracted from

Louise Bogan Louise Bogan (August 11, 1897 – February 4, 1970) was an American poet. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945, and was the first woman to hold this title. Throughout her life she wrote poetry, fiction, ...

's poem "Little Lobelia." According to the composer "a very soft

dynamic Dynamics (from Greek δυναμικός ''dynamikos'' "powerful", from δύναμις ''dynamis'' "power") or dynamic may refer to: Physics and engineering * Dynamics (mechanics) ** Aerodynamics, the study of the motion of air ** Analytical dyna ...

level is an integral component of this piece. It is important to listen to it in the way it was composed, near the threshold of hearing." Her collage piece ''SUM (State of the Union Message)'' is included on the ''Lesbian American Composers'' collection (1973 Opus One, reissued 1998 CRI: 780). ''SUM'' and ''DUMP'' (1970), also a sonic collage, are her best known pieces.Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner. ''Women Composers and Music Technology in the United States'', p.29. Published 2006. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. 301 pages. . She called her study of Zen, begun in 1990, "a natural extension of my music," and cited as influential, especially on her interest in music and

healing With physical trauma or disease suffered by an organism, healing involves the repairing of damaged tissue(s), organs and the biological system as a whole and resumption of (normal) functioning. Medicine includes the process by which the cells ...

, composers

Pauline Oliveros Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Cente ...

and

Annea Lockwood Annea Lockwood (born July 29, 1939, in Christchurch, New Zealand) is a New Zealand-born American composer and academic musician. She taught electronic music at Vassar College. Her work often involves recordings of natural found sounds. She has a ...

. Anderson received degrees in flute and composition at the

and later studied with

and

in the 1950s and with

Vladimir Ussachevsky Vladimir Alexeevich Ussachevsky (November 3, 1911 in Hailar, China – January 2, 1990 in New York, New York) was a composer, particularly known for his work in electronic music. Biography Vladimir Ussachevsky was born in the Hailar District ...

and Pril Smiley in the 1960s at the

Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center The Computer Music Center (CMC) at Columbia University is the oldest center for electronic and computer music research in the United States. It was founded in the 1950s as the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Location The CMC is hou ...

. She wrote that after her exposure to tape manipulation she became open to the potential of, "all sounds...as material for music". She joined the staff at Hunter College ( CUNY) in 1966 and created the Electronic Music Studio there, retiring in 1988. Just before her death in November 2019, Anderson approved the test pressings for an LP of her work, entitled ''Here'' and released by Arc Light Editions in February 2020. Included are: ‘I Come Out Of Your Sleep’; ‘SUM’ (which uses TV advertisement samples to mimic a speech by President Richard Nixon); 'Pregnant Dream' (a collaboration with poet

May Swenson Anna Thilda May "May" Swenson (May 28, 1913 – December 4, 1989) was an American poet and playwright. Harold Bloom considered her one of the most important and original poets of the 20th century. The first child of Margaret and Dan Arthur Sw ...

); ‘Points’ (constructed entirely from sine-waves); and the electro-acoustic 'So What'. Anderson composed dozens of pieces for a variety of groups; below are some selections of her works.

References

External links

*Andreu, Montse
"Innovative Women Composers"
* Gann, Kyle
"List of Women Composers"
* Lockwood, Annea
Hearing a Person—Remembering Ruth Anderson (1928–2019)
"NewMusicBox". * Tyranny, "Blue" Gene. "I come out of your sleep" ''All Music''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Anderson, Ruth 1928 births 2019 deaths University of Washington alumni Columbia University alumni Princeton University alumni Hunter College faculty American lesbian musicians American LGBT composers Lesbian composers LGBT people from Montana American women composers 21st-century American composers Pupils of Darius Milhaud American women in electronic music 21st-century American women musicians 21st-century women composers 20th-century American LGBT people 21st-century American LGBT people