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2 Modern Dance and the MGM Recordings 1951–1960 The greatest satisfaction—it sounds kind of dumb to say this— is writing the music. There is nothing as exciting as knowing that you’ve written something that you really love. Marga Richter, interview by André Bernard, 1985 after her graduation from Juilliard, Richter moved to 308 West 107th Street, where she enjoyed having her first apartment all to herself. Living in New York City with its myriad of artistic opportunities was a great advantage for a composer, and she was able to attend fine traditional and new music concerts, visit museums, and partake in the cultural life of the city. However, earning a living was a significant concern for Richter, and she reflected on her own initial uncertainty after graduation. I suddenly said, “Well here I am, I have my master’s degree. I don’t know what to do with myself. What do I do now?” You know, I have a feeling that if you were a male composer, somebody told you what to do, “go to Tanglewood, do this, do that, do something.” But they expected women composers were just going to go off and get married, do nothing, and they didn’t have to bother with us.1 Perhaps Richter was not groomed for success to the same degree as her male counterparts. Among Richter’s good friends at Juilliard were composers Jacob Druckman (1928–1996), Hall Overton (1920–1972), and Hugh Aitken (b. 1924). Like Richter, all three studied composition with Vincent Persichetti. They each went on to achieve significant public success as composers, and all three taught for some time at Juilliard. Druckman was able to continue his studies with a Fulbright 25 Fellowship at the École Normale de Musique in Paris and won the Pulitzer Prize for composition in 1972. Richter, on the other hand, was “on her own.” Modern Dance Fortunately, Richter’s music had drawn the attention of choreographer James Waring, who had attended her Composers Forum concert. Upon her return from Orcas Island in September, she received a postcard from him saying he liked her music very much and asking if she would like to compose a score for him. She readily agreed, without so much as meeting him first. Because the best time for him was 10 p.m., after his shift in the Time Inc. mail room, and his apartment was in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, where he lived with the dancer and choreographer Alec Rubin, he arranged to meet her in a church in the area and escort her to his home. Richter recalled: I wasn’t at all afraid of going to his apartment with him. I was too innocent to think that something would . . . I mean you just don’t think in those terms, not then, and maybe never; if somebody wants to workwith you, you go to their house, you don’t thinkabout it.2 Richter’s reflection on this meeting shows that she was independent, trusting, and focused on her work. A short time after she agreed to work with Waring, Gerd Stern invited her to visit him in New Paltz, New York, where he was living in a small farmhouse as an all-purpose handyman for the owner, Thorberg Ellison. Stern was interested in persuading creative people to come to live there in a communal atmosphere. Ellison was interested in generating income by renting rooms in her house or in the spacious three-unit chicken house. Richter recalls: I went there for a weekend, was captivated by the idea and immediately agreed to rent one ofthe units, for an astonishing $60 a year! I also enthusiastically agreed to devote two weekends , prior to moving in, to sweeping out the chicken detritus (from a 30-by-15-foot main room) and pouring insulation between inner and outer walls, wearing a mask. Sometime after I moved in I was also assigned the taskof tarring the roof. Being afraid of heights, this required more courage than I knew I had, which delighted me. But negotiating getting back onto the ladder to descend was too scary and I had to call, loudly and repeatedly, for help.3 After Richter moved, she arranged to spend three days each week in New York to teach her piano students and meet with Waring as she worked on her dance score, The Wanderers (1952). Since he did not have a piano, they met at the apartment of his friends, Edward...

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