Uploaded January 2011 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
"Barbara Pentland (2 January 1912 to 5 February 2000) is perhaps the best-known of a large and extremely diverse group of Canadian twelve-tone composers. Two important experiences shaped the compositional path she walked from the late 1940s until her death in 2000. The first was a summer spent at the MacDowell Colony in 1947. There, Pentland met Dika Newlin, a former student of Schoenberg's who was at the colony to work on her translation of René Leibowitz's 'Schoenberg et son école.' Newlin was ideally situated to explain Schoenberg's method, and Pentland began almost immediately to write twelvetone pieces, beginning with the Octet for Winds (1948). The second influential experience was Pentland's attendance in the summer of 1955 at the Darmstadt Summer Course for New Music—Pentland imagined her own compositional style as divided into two periods: P. D. (pre-Darmstadt) and A. D. (after-Darmstadt). There, she not only heard some of the most recent European music, but became particularly interested in the music of Webern, the central figure for so many of the European serialists. I really got into it when I went to the MacDowell Colony and met Dika Newlin, who was a pupil of Schoenberg. And the ideas of the Schoenberg method interested me, but more as Webern used them. Schoenberg himself—I didn't find his music interested me. It seemed it stemmed too much from the nineteenth century, and I had a horror of the nineteenth century....But Webern was a kind of fresh way of looking at the relationship of tones and the use of simple material in a more sophisticated and very strong way, and I began to think in that direction. So my music took on more of the controls of the twelve-tone, serial technique. I rarely used it very strictly, because I am fairly intuitive in composing and I couldn't put a strait jacket on things that wanted to emerge on their own so to speak. So I allowed it a free rein; I used it as a kind of governing principle. And I have very rarely written works that could be called in any way in strict serial technique....I used to be more interested in the bones of music, the structure, and the emotional impact of line against line and note against note, in a sense of very great strength and clarity. In other words, not wanting to cover up with any color. It's a way of thinking that appeals to me because I was always trying to escape from the nineteenth century. There, everything was overstuffed and heavy. Beginning in the late 1960s, Pentland began to incorporate aleatoric passages within her twelve-tone music. In such passages, which she calls "zones," performers are required to improvise in specified ways on chosen musical materials, themselves derived from the twelve-tone music outside the zones.'". Joseph Straus, "Twelve-Tone Music in America"
Born in Winnipeg, Pentland suffered from a heart disorder which significantly limited both her physical and social activities during her childhood. As a result, she devoted much of her time from an early age to academic pursuits and other intellectual activities. At the age of 9 she began studying the piano in her native city at the Rupert's Land Girls' School. She soon developed an interest in music composition, but her early ventures into this area were strongly discouraged by both her teacher and her relatively wealthy and conservative family who viewed the pursuit as an eccentric hobby that was "too exciting for a delicate child".
Despite her family's objections, Pentland continued to compose privately as a young teenager. She finally was encouraged in this pursuit by one of her teachers, the organist and conductor Frederick H. Blair, who taught her piano and music theory while she attended boarding school in Montreal from 1927-1929. She then studied composition with family approval in Paris in 1929 with Cécile Gauthiez while attending a finishing school in that city. She then returned to her native city where she studied under Hugh Bancroft (organ) and Eva Clare (piano) from 1930--1936 and embarked on a career as a concert pianist.
Dorothy Kathleen May Livesay, OC, OBC, FRSC (October 12, 1909 -- December 29, 1996) was a Canadian poet.The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize is a category of the BC Book Prizes that is awarded to authors of the best work of poetry in a given year, where those authors are British Columbia or Yukon residents, or have been for three of the last five years. Originally known as the B.C. Prize for Poetry, in 1989 it was named after Livesay.
"Barbara Pentland (2 January 1912 to 5 February 2000) is perhaps the best-known of a large and extremely diverse group of Canadian twelve-tone composers. Two important experiences shaped the compositional path she walked from the late 1940s until her death in 2000. The first was a summer spent at the MacDowell Colony in 1947. There, Pentland met Dika Newlin, a former student of Schoenberg's who was at the colony to work on her translation of René Leibowitz's 'Schoenberg et son école.' Newlin was ideally situated to explain Schoenberg's method, and Pentland began almost immediately to write twelvetone pieces, beginning with the Octet for Winds (1948). The second influential experience was Pentland's attendance in the summer of 1955 at the Darmstadt Summer Course for New Music—Pentland imagined her own compositional style as divided into two periods: P. D. (pre-Darmstadt) and A. D. (after-Darmstadt). There, she not only heard some of the most recent European music, but became particularly interested in the music of Webern, the central figure for so many of the European serialists. I really got into it when I went to the MacDowell Colony and met Dika Newlin, who was a pupil of Schoenberg. And the ideas of the Schoenberg method interested me, but more as Webern used them. Schoenberg himself—I didn't find his music interested me. It seemed it stemmed too much from the nineteenth century, and I had a horror of the nineteenth century....But Webern was a kind of fresh way of looking at the relationship of tones and the use of simple material in a more sophisticated and very strong way, and I began to think in that direction. So my music took on more of the controls of the twelve-tone, serial technique. I rarely used it very strictly, because I am fairly intuitive in composing and I couldn't put a strait jacket on things that wanted to emerge on their own so to speak. So I allowed it a free rein; I used it as a kind of governing principle. And I have very rarely written works that could be called in any way in strict serial technique....I used to be more interested in the bones of music, the structure, and the emotional impact of line against line and note against note, in a sense of very great strength and clarity. In other words, not wanting to cover up with any color. It's a way of thinking that appeals to me because I was always trying to escape from the nineteenth century. There, everything was overstuffed and heavy. Beginning in the late 1960s, Pentland began to incorporate aleatoric passages within her twelve-tone music. In such passages, which she calls "zones," performers are required to improvise in specified ways on chosen musical materials, themselves derived from the twelve-tone music outside the zones.'". Joseph Straus, "Twelve-Tone Music in America"
Born in Winnipeg, Pentland suffered from a heart disorder which significantly limited both her physical and social activities during her childhood. As a result, she devoted much of her time from an early age to academic pursuits and other intellectual activities. At the age of 9 she began studying the piano in her native city at the Rupert's Land Girls' School. She soon developed an interest in music composition, but her early ventures into this area were strongly discouraged by both her teacher and her relatively wealthy and conservative family who viewed the pursuit as an eccentric hobby that was "too exciting for a delicate child".
Despite her family's objections, Pentland continued to compose privately as a young teenager. She finally was encouraged in this pursuit by one of her teachers, the organist and conductor Frederick H. Blair, who taught her piano and music theory while she attended boarding school in Montreal from 1927-1929. She then studied composition with family approval in Paris in 1929 with Cécile Gauthiez while attending a finishing school in that city. She then returned to her native city where she studied under Hugh Bancroft (organ) and Eva Clare (piano) from 1930--1936 and embarked on a career as a concert pianist.
Dorothy Kathleen May Livesay, OC, OBC, FRSC (October 12, 1909 -- December 29, 1996) was a Canadian poet.The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize is a category of the BC Book Prizes that is awarded to authors of the best work of poetry in a given year, where those authors are British Columbia or Yukon residents, or have been for three of the last five years. Originally known as the B.C. Prize for Poetry, in 1989 it was named after Livesay.
