Barbara Pentland, Quintet for Piano & Strings (1983) - Part 1 of 2

Pentland, Barbara. Composer, pianist, teacher, b Winnipeg 2 Jan 1912 (Capricorn), d Vancouver 5 Feb 2000; ATCM 1931, composition diploma (Juilliard) 1939, honorary LLD (Manitoba) 1976; honorary LL D (Simon Fraser) 1985. A heart disorder curtailed her physical and social activities in childhood and forced her to develop a life of the mind. Composition provided a natural exercise for this, but Pentland's first written attempts, shown to the piano teacher with whom, at nine, she had begun lessons at Rupert's Land Girls' School in Winnipeg, only prompted disapproval. Teacher and parents regarded her desire to compose as eccentric and, probably, too 'exciting' for a delicate child. She continued to compose, though she kept to her efforts private. Her teenage works were informed by a study of the French Revolution and by the heroic music of Beethoven.

Sensing a need to develop her skills as a composer, she won a fellowship to the Juilliard Graduate School in 1936 where, for the next two years, she submitted to a course in 16th-century counterpoint under Frederick Jacobi. At the same time, steady encounters with the new music of the day - of which so much more could be heard in New York than in Winnipeg - incited her to fresh rebellion. Leaving Jacobi, she spent her third year at Juilliard searching for freer and more individual means of expression under the encouraging guidance of Bernard Wagenaar. The works of Hindemith and Stravinsky became a significant influence at this time, combining, as they did, the strong counterpoint which her studies with Gauthiez and Jacobi had taught her to respect and the harmonic resilience and freedom she had come to crave.

Though her style was growing closer to a break with tonality, Pentland's first serious consideration of serialism came during her visits (1947, 1948) to the Edward MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire where Dika Newlin, a disciple of Schoenberg, interested her in that master's development and application of strict 12-tone principles. The Octet for Winds, her first deliberately serial work, was the result. The Concerto for Organ, the Symphony No. 2, the Sonata for Solo Violin, the orchestral piece Ave atque vale, the String Quartet No. 2 (chosen to represent Canada at the 1956 ISCM festival in Stockholm, but not performed), and the other works composed between 1949 and 1954 all show the influence of the Schoenberg technique.

Pentland's mature style - exploiting serial possibilities in a free but uncluttered way, and sound combinations in a sensitive but unsensual and, certainly, unsentimental way - became established in all essentials in 1955. In Darmstadt, Pentland had come into contact with a further major influence on her style: the music of Anton Webern. The delicate sonorities, the concision of the structures, and the pellucid qualities of thought and texture in this music appealed to Pentland's intelligence as the Schoenberg ethic could not. The Webern influence was noticeable immediately in the glacial and elegant Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra and the cogent, agile Symphony for Ten Parts; indeed, it pervades virtually all her works of the succeeding decade.

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