Howe: Songs & Duets

Featuring

Courtney Maina
Christopher A. Leach
Mary Dibbern
Mary Howe

Did you know?

1/7

Composer's Artistic Vision

Mary Howe disavowed allegiance to specific compositional schools, stating, "If I want to use dissonance, I use dissonance. If I want to express feeling, I express feeling. I write what I want to write."

Critical Reception

Mary Howe's songs were highly praised by critics, with Paul Hume of The Washington Post calling her writing for voice "one of her finest accomplishments" and Musical America describing her as "a sensitive and imaginative lyricist."

Composer Biography

Mary Howe (1882-1964) was a renowned American concert pianist and composer whose family wealth allowed her to receive composition training in both the United States and Europe.

Cultural Impact

Mary Howe was a co-founder of several significant musical organizations, including the National Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Washington, and the Society of American Women Composers.

Composer Biography

Despite societal restrictions for women in public performance during her youth, Mary Howe was a frequent guest pianist at the White House under the Theodore Roosevelt and Taft administrations.

Compositional Technique

Mary Howe's compositions reflect a blend of influences, incorporating Richard Strauss's sweeping orchestral figurations and large vocal lines, and Debussy's harmonic boldness and whole-tone scales.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Mary Howe absorbed modern harmonic language and style from composers like Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, while also participating in the developing Neo-Classicism of contemporaries such as Marion Bauer, Sergei Prokofiev, and Igor Stravinsky.