Finé, Oronce,
Sieur de Champrouet (b Briançon, 1494; d Paris, 6 Oct 1555). French mathematician and music theorist. He studied at the Collège de Navarre, Paris, and was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Paris by François I. His theoretical works Protomathesis (Paris, 1532), Epistre exhortatoire touchant la perfection … des arts liberaulx mathématiques (1532) and De rebus mathematicis (1556) do not deal with music, as is generally thought. His passion for music encouraged him to persuade his friend Attaingnant to publish a short treatise dealing with practice and theory: Epithoma musice instrumentalis ad omni modam hemispherii (Paris, 1530). The Tres breve et familiere introduction pour entendre et apprendre par soy mesmes a jouer toutes chansons reduictes en la tabulature de lutz (Paris, 1529) has also been attributed to Finé, but there is no evidence to support the attribution.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
D. Heartz: Pierre Attaingnant, Royal Printer of Music (Berkeley, 1969)
P. Vendrix: ‘On the Theoretical Expression of Music in France during the Renaissance’, EMH, xiii (1994), 249–73
PHILIPPE VENDRIX
Fine, Vivian
(b Chicago, 29 Sept 1913; d Bennington, VT, 20 March 2000). American composer and pianist. At the age of five she was a scholarship piano student at the Chicago Musical College. She later studied the piano with Djane Lavoie-Herz (1924–6) and Abby Whiteside (1937–45), composition with Ruth Crawford (1926–8) and Roger Sessions (1934–42), and orchestration with George Szell (1943). Henry Cowell, Dane Rhudyar and Imrie Weisshaus were also supportive of her talent. She made her compositional début at the age of 16 when her compositions were performed in Chicago, New York (at a Pan-American Association of Composers’ concert) and Dessau (at an International Society of Contemporary Composers’ concert). After moving to New York in 1931, she acted as accompanist and composer for dance companies led by Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman and Hanya Holm. A member of the Young Composers’ Group, she participated in the first Yaddo Festival of Contemporary American Music (1932). She was one of the founding members of the ACA, musical director of the Rothschild Foundation (1953–60) and a faculty member at Bennington College, Vermont (1964–87). Her awards included a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the Ford, Rockefeller and Koussevitzky foundations. In 1980 she was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
Fine’s early compositional style is characterized by rhythmically flexible modernist counterpoint. While in New York, her musical language changed to a tempered tonality, exemplified by The Race of Life (1937) and Concertante (1944). She later returned to a freely dissonant style in works such as The Great Wall of China (1947–8) and A Guide to the Life Expectancy of a Rose (1956). Her compositional approach continued to be marked by a diversity of techniques: Paean (1969), Missa brevis (1972) and Teishō (1975), experiment with kaleidoscopic layering. Momenti (1978) and Lieder (1980) transform the musical gestures of Schubert and Wolf. Double Variations (1982) and Toccatas and Arias (1986) explore the contrapuntal procedures of retrograde and inversion. She set texts on women’s issues in an oratorio (Meeting for Equal Rights 1866, 1976) and two operas (The Women in the Garden, 1977; The Memoirs of Uliana Rooney, 1993).
WORKS
(selective list)
stage -
The Race of Life (ballet, choreog. D. Humphrey, after drawings by J. Thurber), pf, perc, 1937, New York, 23 Jan 1938; arr. orch
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Alcestis (ballet, choreog. M. Graham), orch, 1960, New York, 29 April 1960, cond. R. Irving
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The Women in the Garden (chbr op, Fine), 5 solo vv, chbr ens, 1977, San Francisco, 12 Feb 1978
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Memoirs of Uliana Rooney (chbr op, S. Friedmann), S, 2 Bar, 2 female vv, fl, cl, vn, va, vc, db, pf, perc, 1994, New York, 1994
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4 other stage works
| orchestral -
Concertante, pf, orch, 1944; Alcestis, suite, 1960 [see stage]; Drama, 1982; Poetic Fires, pf, orch, 1984; 4 other works
| chamber -
4 or more insts: Capriccio, ob, str trio, 1946; Str Qt, 1957; Concertino, pf, perc ens, 1965; Chbr Conc., solo vc, ob, vn, va, vc, db, pf, 1966; Qnt, tpt, str trio, hp, 1967; Brass Qt, (2 tpt, hn, b trbn)/(2 pt, 2 trbn), 1978; Qnt, ob, cl, vn, vc, pf, 1984 [from Drama, orch]; Dancing Winds, ww qnt, 1987; Madrigali spirituali, tpt, str qt, 1989; Hymns, hn, vc, 2 pf, 1991; 8 other works
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2–3 insts: 4 Pieces, 2 fl, 1930; Sonata, vn, pf, 1952; Duo, fl, va, 1961; Fantasy, vc, pf, 1962; Lieder, va, pf, 1979; Music for Fl, Ob, Vc, 1980; Pf Trio, 1980; Sonata, vc, pf, 1986; Emily’s Images, fl, pf, 1987; Portal, vn, pf, 1990; Songs and Arias, hn, vn, vc, 1990; 5 other works
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Kbd (pf, unless otherwise stated): 5 Preludes, 1939–41; Sinfonia and Fugato, 1952; 4 Pieces, 1966; Momenti, 1978; Double Variations, 1982; Toccatas and Arias, hpd, 1986; Toccatas and Arias, 1987; 6 other works
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Other solo inst: Variations, hp, 1953; Melos, db, 1964; The Song of Persephone, va, 1964; The Flicker, fl/pf right hand, 1973; 3 other works
| vocal -
Choral: Paean (cant., J. Keats), nar, women’s chorus, brass ens, 1969; Sounds of the Nightingale (Keats, R. Barnefield, and others), S, women’s chorus, 9 insts, 1971; Meeting for Equal Rights 1866 (cant., 19th-century Amer.), S, Bar, nar, mixed chorus, orch, 1975; Teishō (trad. Zen), small chorus/8 solo vv, str qt, 1975 [parts arr. vn, pf]; Oda a las ranas (P. Neruda), women’s chorus, fl, ob, vc, perc, 1980; 6 other works
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Solo vv and insts: The Great Wall of China (F. Kafka), medium v, fl, vc, pf, 1947; A Guide to the Life Expectancy of a Rose (S.R. Tilley), S, T, fl, cl, vn, vc, hp, 1956; Missa brevis, 1 taped v, 4 vc, 1972; Ode to Pucell (G.M. Hopkins), medium v, str qt, 1984; 5 Victorian Songs (C. Rossetti, Hopkins, E.B. Browning), S, fl, cl, vn, va, vc, 1988; Asphodel (Williams), S, fl, cl, vn, va, vc, pf, perc, 1988; 5 other works
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Solo vv, pf (1v, pf, unless otherwise stated): 4 Elizabethan Songs (Donne, J. Lyly, W. Shakespeare, P. Sidney), 1937–41; 2 Neruda Poems (Neruda), 1971; Canticles for Jerusalem, 1983; Inscriptions (Whitman), 2vv, pf, 1986; The Garden of Live Flowers (L. Carroll), S, T, Bar, pf, 1988; 4 other works
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Recorded interviews in US-NHoh
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Principal publishers: Catamount Facsimile Editions, Margun
| BIBLIOGRAPHY
EwenD
Baker 5
W.T. Upton: ‘Aspects of the Modern Art Song’, MQ, xxiv (1938), 11–30
D. Humphrey: ‘Music for an American Dance’, American Composers Alliance Bulletin, viii/1 (1958), 4–5
W. Riegger: ‘The Music of Vivian Fine’, American Composers Alliance Bulletin, viii/1 (1958), 2–4
J. Frasier: Women Composers: a Discography (Detroit, 1983)
J.W. Le Page: Women Composers, Conductors and Musicians of the Twentieth Century, ii (Metuchen, NJ, 1983)
E. Armer: ‘A Conversation with Vivian Fine’, Strings, v/5 (1991), 73–8
H. von Gunden: The Music of Vivian Fine (Lanham, MD, 1999)
HEIDI VON GUNDEN
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