Louise Talma

Louise Talma (1906-1996) was the first female winner of two back-to-back Guggenheim Awards, the first American woman to have an opera premiered in Europe, the first female winner of the Sibelius Award for Composition, and the first woman composer elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. This book analyses Talma’s works in the context of her life, focusing on the effects on her work of two major changes she made during her adult life: her conversion to Catholicism, and her adoption of serial compositional techniques. Employing approaches from traditional musical analysis, feminist and queer musicology, and women’s autobiographical theory, this is the first full-length study of this pioneering composer.