- Jean Coulthard
Jean Coulthard (
February 10 ,1908 -March 9 ,2000 ) was a Canadian composer and academic.Born in
Vancouver, British Columbia , she taught theory and composition at theUniversity of British Columbia from 1947 to 1973.Her mother Jean Blake Robinson Coulthard was a prominent and influential music teacher in Vancouver. She introduced the young Jean Coulthard to the work of French composers such as
Claude Debussy andMaurice Ravel , who were life-long influences. At various points in her artistic career she studied with such great composers asRalph Vaughan Williams ,Bela Bartók ,Aaron Copland , andArnold Schoenberg .Her own work might be loosely termed "prematurely neo-Romantic," as the orthodox serialists who dominated academic musical life in North America during the 1950s and 1960s had little use for her.
Increasingly she is seen as the major figure in a trio of women composers who dominated Western Canadian music in the twentieth century: Coulhard,
Barbara Pentland , andViolet Archer . All three died within weeks of each other in 2000.Some of her well-known compositions include "Cradle Song", "Threnody", "Canadian Fantasy", "Ballade "A Winter's Tale" and her opera "Return of the Native".
In 1978, she was made an Officer of the
Order of Canada . In 1994, she was awarded theOrder of British Columbia . In 1997 her portrait was painted by noted Canadian artist Christian Cardell Corbet, Coll. Vancouver Academy of Music.Her composition students included the Canadian composers
Chan Kan Nin ,Michael Conway Baker ,Sylvia Rickard ,Ernst Schneider ,Robert Knox ,Jean Ethridge ,Joan Hansen ,David Gordon Duke ,Lloyd Burritt , andFrederick Schipizky .A short biography for students, * [http://www.ronsdalepress.com/catalogue/jean_coulthard.html=C Jean Coulthard: A Life in Music] by William Bruneau & David Gordon Duke, was published by Ronsdale Press in 2005.
External links
* [http://musiccentre.ca/apps/index.cfm?fuseaction=composer.FA_dsp_biography&authpeopleid=316&by=C Jean Coulthard] at the
Canadian Music Centre .* [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/u_arch/coulth.html=C Jean Coulthard fonds] at the University of British Columbia.
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