Louise Talma: A Life in Composition by Kendra Preston Leonard (review)

Who was Louise Talma, and what are the means through which we can try to answer that question? The subtitle of this book, “A Life in Composition”, signifies the author’s commitment to revealing how closely Talma’s life and compositional choices were intertwined. A music historian who also holds degrees in music theory and composition, Leonard employs many musical examples and detailed analyses of passages from Talma’s works, both vocal and instrumental, to demonstrate how her artistic decisions for a particular composition reflect her frame of mind and other circumstances at the time. The subtitle also resonates in the title of the introduction: “A Woman Composing Herself”. There is ample evidence throughout this biographical study that Talma made conscious efforts to construct for herself a very particular identity that subverted the norms for a woman of her time.

Despite uncovering new information, Leonard, like other researchers wanting to provide a definitive account of Talma’s birth, parentage, and early childhood, was ultimately thwarted by her mother’s apparently deliberate attempts to obscure the facts, possibly in order to hide the illegitimacy of her daughter’s birth. Talma herself cited 31 October 1906, as her birthdate. What is clear is that Talma’s unconventional upbringing as the daughter of a modestly talented itinerant opera singer at the mercy of men for financial support encouraged her to value financial independence but may also have had consequences for how she approached personal relationships.

In 1926, after completing her studies at the Institute of Musical Arts (now Juilliard), Talma spent the first of thirty summers at Fountainebleau, beginning a long and ultimately problematic relationship with Nadia Boulanger, with whom she seems to have fallen in love, though those feelings were apparently not reciprocated. It was under Boulanger’s influence that Talma converted to Catholicism in 1934, a spiritual milestone whose impact may be seen in her subsequent choice of texts and their settings, though she had always been highly sensitive to musically underscoring the meaning of texts. After becoming resigned to the need to distance herself from Boulanger as mentor, Talma began gradually moving away from neoclassical models, developing her own distinctive style utilising block forms, increasing tonal ambiguity, and what Leonard calls dis/continuity. She retained her fondness for propulsive rhythmic elements, which continued as a striking feature of her style throughout her career.

It was in 1951 that Talma first became comfortable with adding serial techniques as another organising principle in her compositions, though, characteristically, her approach to serial composition was idiosyncratic, and she was, moreover, reluctant to have her compositions described as “12-tone”, fearing that that would automatically make audiences less receptive to them. Certainly that was a concern for her most ambitious work, The Alcestiad, an opera that required three years (1955–1958) to complete. The libretto that Thornton Wilder adapted from his play was eventually translated into German for the opera’s premiere in Frankfurt in 1962. Despite receiving positive reviews, there have been no other performances to date. Leonard states that “Talma’s sole full opera, The Alcestiad, is perhaps one of the best examples of autobiographical composition in her output” (p. 155).

Talma was, by all accounts, a prickly personality, naturally aloof and typically perceived as tough. At the same time, she could be terribly needy, requiring constant reassurance from both artistic collaborators such as Thornton Wilder and women with whom she became emotionally involved. She taught full-time at Hunter College in New York from 1928 until 1979, but disliked teaching and interacting with students and rejected the expectation that a female teacher would be nurturing. Nor did she enjoy coaching either students or professionals preparing to perform her compositions. She seems to have been reliably happy only during her many summers at the MacDowell Colony, which she made her heir.

Her personal quirks aside, Talma is...