Radie Britain
Radie Britain (17 March 1899 – 23 May 1994) was an American pianist, writer, music educator and composer.
Life
Radie Britain was born near Silverton, Texas, the daughter of Edgar Charles and Katie (Ford) Britain.[1] She studied at Clarendon College in Texas, and at the American Conservatory in Chicago with Heniot Levy, graduating with a Bachelor of Music degree in piano in 1921.[2]
After completing her degree, Britain taught music for a year at Clarendon College and privately in Amarillo.[3] In 1922 she studied with organist Pietro Yon in Dallas, in 1923 with Marcel Dupré in Paris, and in 1924 with Adele Aus der Ohe in Berlin and Albert Noelte in Munich. She made her debut as a composer in Munich in May 1926. She returned to Texas after the death of her sister, and later taught at the Girvin Institute of Music and Allied Arts in Chicago.
Britain's Heroic Poem (1929) won the Juilliard National Publication Prize in 1930. She married Chicago businessman Leslie Edward Moeller in 1930 and had a daughter Lerae in 1932. The couple divorced in 1939, and she moved to Hollywood, California, and married Italian sculptor Edgardo Simone in 1940. After Simone died in 1949, Britain married aviation pioneer Theodore Morton in 1959. In California, Britain continued her career as a music teacher and composer. She died in Palm Desert, California, and her papers are housed at several locations.[4]
Works
Britain incorporated musical idioms from the southwestern United States into her compositions. Selected orchestral works include:
- Angel Chimes
- Brothers of the Clouds with TTBB chorus
- The Builders with SATB chorus
- Cactus Rhapsody
- Chicken in the Rough
- Chipmunks for woodwinds, harp, percussion
- Cosmic Mist Symphony
- Cowboy Rhapsody
- Drouth
- The Earth Does Not Wish for Beauty with SATB chorus
- Earth of God (String Orchestra)
- Les Fameux Douze The Famous Twelve for small orchestra
- Four Sarabandes for small orchestra
- Franciscan Sketches
- San Luis Rey
- Saint Francis of Assisi
- Heroic Poem
- Infant Suite
- In Living Ecstasy with solo voice
- Jewels of Lake Tahoe
- Kambu
- Lament with solo violin
- Little per cent
- Minha Terra
- Mother: A Melody of Love with narrator
- Nisan with SATB chorus[5]
References
- ^ Barkley, Roy R. (2003). The handbook of Texas music. Texas State Historical Association.
- ^ Claghorn, Charles Eugene (1996). Women composers and songwriters: a concise biographical dictionary.
- ^ Fuller, Sophie Fuller (1994). The Pandora guide to women composers: Britain and the United States.
- ^ "BRITAIN, RADIE". Texas State Historical Society. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
- ^ "Radie Britain Collection:Orchestral Music". William and Gayle Cook Music Library. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
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| National | |
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- 1899 births
- 1994 deaths
- 20th-century classical composers
- American Conservatory alumni
- American female classical composers
- American classical composers
- American music educators
- Clarendon College (Texas) alumni
- People from Briscoe County, Texas
- Texas classical music
- 20th-century American musicians
- Sigma Alpha Iota
- American composer, 19th-century birth stubs