Gloria Coates

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Albums

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Biography Wikipedia

Wikipedia:

Gloria Coates (October 10, 1938 in Wausau, Wisconsin) is an American composer who has moved to, and has subsequently been living in Munich, Germany since 1969. She studied with Alexander Tcherepnin, Otto Luening, and Jack Beeson.

Music

Her music features canonic structures and prominent, sometimes exclusive, glissandos, being "characterized by extremely strict, even rigid technical procedures (canonic structures), which are often worked out with unusual musical materials (glissandi)". Her music is postminimalist, marked by the tension "not only between material and technique (...an attempt to give structure to chaos), but even more so between what would have to be termed 'sober-technical' compositional principles and the genuine direct expressive power and emotionality of the music".

As one interview describes:

For Gloria Coates, artistic expression is a spiritual necessity. She has great interest and significant participation in painting, architecture, theater, poetry, and singing—but it is through composing that she taps into a wellspring of abstracted emotionality that the others cannot reach. Whatever the veiled expressions of her work may be, there is an undoubted emotional richness present, which if not concretely knowable is at least viscerally felt by the audience. Canons constructed of quartertones and glissandos evoke gloomy instability, but also unearthly beauty.

As is described by Kyle Gann' liner notes to one of her albums:

Behind the variety of such techniques, behind even the varying deployment of similar structures, one hears Coates's constant aesthetic: her sense of each movement as a unified gesture, her almost post-minimalist unidirectionality. Above all, while sadness, anger and mysticism appear in her work with stylized clarity, they are subsumed to an overarching tranquility that often has the last word, and always the most important one.

In Kyle Gann's article "A Symphonist Stakes Her Claim", Gloria Coates was crowned, "the greatest woman symphonist", for her passionate pursuit and persistence in a domain that is dominated by men. However, this ambitious pursuit to be a woman symphonist has not been a conscious effort to set herself apart from the other female composers, instead in an interview she commented that it came through a natural manifestation trying to convey something deep within her. "When I did, I thought, 'That's really gutsy of me to call it a symphony,'" she said from her home in Munich, "I always had an idea of symphonies being in the 19th century, somehow. I never set out to write a symphony as such. It has to do with the intensity of what I'm trying to say and the fact that it took 48 different instrumental lines to say it, and that the structures I was using had evolved over many years. I couldn't call it a little name."

Painting

Besides composing, Gloria Coates also paints abstract expressionistic paintings which are often used as the cover image for her albums. Her paintings, just like her music, are often full of imagination, colour, and rigour. One is often struck by the richness in colours in her paintings such as in her Sounding Rounds (Oil on canvas, 1991) where different colours of circles intersect and overlay one another. Complementary colours such as red and green, yellow and blue, interact and mix with one another in the small strokes. The painterly manner, with layers of swirls of colours, is reminiscent of the style of Vincent Van Gogh.

Works

The following is a chronological list of Coates' musical compositions:

1950

The Sighing Wind

1961

SylkenTe DeumDies SanctificatusThieves' CarnivalThe Rainy DayTwilight

1962

SonatinaTrio for Piano, Flute and OboeGlissando String QuartetEveryman. Morality PlayFive Abstractions

1963

Rondo for Flute, Oboe, Bassoon, Tambourine and Field DrumO Sing Unto the Lord a New Song

1964

Interlude for OrganMathematical EquationsMissa BrevisOverture to Saint JoanSaint JoanString Quartet with Provincial Drum

1964/65

HamletOphelias Lieder

1962/66

Fall of the House of Usher

1966

String Quartet No. 1Trio for Three Flutes

1971

We Have Ears and Hear Not Point Counterpoint

1972

Mobile for String QuartetString Quartet No. 2Eine Stimme ruft elektronische Klänge aufNaturstimme und elektronische Klangbänder for Vocal Multiphonics and Modulator

1972/73

Natural Voice and Electronic ModulatorCantata da Requiem WW II Poems for PeaceTones in OvertonesFragment from Leonardo's Notebooks "Anima della Terra" Vita

1973

Symphony No. 1 Music on open Strings

1974

PlanetsHalley's CometMay the Morning Star Rise

1975

Five Abstractions of the Poems by Emily Dickinson for Woodwind Quartet Five Pieces for four WoodwindsFragment from Leonardo's Notebooks "The Elements"Neptune OdysseyString Quartet No. 3Variations on "Lo! How a Rose"Memories of ChildhoodMy Country Tis of TheeTextures and Shades of E.D.The Tune without the Words

1976

From a Poetry Album

1976/77

String Quartet No. 4

1978

Symphony No. 3 Symphony NocturneSix Movements for String QuartetEcology 1Ecology 2BetweenThe Beatitudes

1980

Valse triste

1974/82

Sinfonietta della Notte

1976/82

Fragment from Leonardo's Notebooks "Fonte di Rimini" Sinfonia BrevisSpring Morning in Grobholz' Garden

1982

Go the Great WayColony Air

1984

Transitions

1985

Choral Symphony No. 5 Three Mystical SongsMeteor March

1986

Music in Microtones

1987

ResistancesAuto-Madic MusicMissed

1974/88

Symphony No. 2 Illuminatio in Tenebris, also: 'Music in Abstract Lines'The Force for Peace in War

1987/88

Lunar Loops

1988

Breaking ThroughFiori alto recorder and tapeFiori and the Princess alto recorder and tapeSeven Songs with Poems by Emily DickinsonString Quartet No. 5Fiori flute and tapeFiori and the Princess flute and tapeBreaking Through IILichtsplitter for Flute, Harp and ViolaLichtsplitter for Flute, Harp, Viola and 1 PercussionistTo Be Free of ItDramatic Scene The SwanReaching for the Moon

1974/89

Star Tracks Through Darkness

1978/89

Five Songs on Poems by Emily Dickinson

1984/90

Symphony No. 4 Chiaroscuro

1988/91

Transfer 482

1990/91

Symphony No. 7 (Dedicated to those who brought down the Wall in PEACE)

1991

Indian SoundsSymphony No. 8 Indian SoundsRainbow Across the Night SkyBlue Steel BentBlue FlowersIn the Glacier for 10 flutists and percussionWir Tönen AlleinCette Blanche Agonie

1992

Royal Anthem KönigshymneUngeziefer InsectsIn the Mt. Tremper Zen Monastery

1992/93

Night Music

1993

Castles in the AirIm Finstern sei des Geistes Licht und SonneOlympic Roller Blading

1988/94

Time FrozenSymphony No. 6 Time FrozenBlue MondaySperriges Morgen

1993/94

The Quinces' Quandery: Homage to Van GoghSymphony No. 9 The Quinces QuandarySymphony No. 10 Drones of Druids on Celtic Ruins

1995

Turning to

1996

Lyric SuiteHeinrich von Ofterdingen. Hommage a Novalis

1997

Fairytale Suite Märchen SuiteFloating Down the Mississippi

1965-98

15 Songs on Poems by Emily Dickinson

1998

Ode to the Moon

1998/99

Symphony No. 11

1999

EinsamkeitKomplementär

2000

String Quartet No. 6Im Ausland

2000/01

Symphony No. 12Symphony No. 13Sonata for Violin Solo

2001

String Quartet No. 7

2001/02

String Quartet No. 8Sonata for Piano No. 2

2002

Prayers without Words

2003

Lyric Suite No. 2MirageSymphony No. 14

2004/05

Symphony No. 15

Albums (incomplete)

Kreutzer Quartet (2002) - Gloria Coates: String Quartets Nos. 1, 5, 6Kreutzer Quartet (2003) - Gloria Coates: String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8 (2003)(2006) - Gloria Coates: Symphonies Nos. 1, 7 & 14 (Naxos 8559289)Symphony No. 15(2004–2005), Catata da Requiem(1972), Transitions(1984)

Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Boder Talisker Players, Ars Nova Nuremberg, Heider

Sources
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