July 01, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

A patriotic overture

by Chuan-Mei Lee

On any given morning, Palo Alto composer Nancy Bloomer Deussen can be found sitting in her pink-upholstered easy chair, working on her next classical composition.

"I sit in this chair with a blank piece of paper and a pencil and think for awhile," she said. "Then, I'll start writing down little ideas."

It isn't before long that Bloomer Deussen's "little" ideas develop into full-length works. Her most recent piece -- a five-minute, patriotic overture entitled "American Hymn" -- took her about a month to complete. It will be debuting this Fourth of July weekend as part of Independence Day festivities at the John Muir Amphitheater in Martinez.

"American Hymn" features the grand gesture of a slow march as well as playful folk rhythms and full melodies. As an ardent advocate for the return of melodic classical music, Bloomer Deussen wrote the overture with accessibility in mind.

"One of the reasons that audiences got turned off to a lot of contemporary music was because it was lacking in melody," she said.

For decades, atonal, dissonant avant-garde movements dominated the contemporary classical music scene, especially in academic settings. Melodic music was out of style and largely ignored.

"I was the only one writing melodic music, and people would sort of scoff at me and say, 'Why don't you go to Hollywood,'" Bloomer Deussen said. "It was practically the only place, during those decades, that melodic music prevailed. I mean [melodic composers] wrote for film scores, so people would associate a melodic piece with Hollywood because of that."

However, Bloomer Deussen gradually found other composers of melodic music who felt similarly.

"Little by little I began to discover something amazing," she said. "There was an underground network of tonal, melodic composers all over the country. Some of them were older like me; had gone into hiding. Some of them were young people just coming up in universities who felt like they were discriminated against because they wrote melodic music. And so we began to organize, and now there's a whole network of us. It's called the Derriere Guard, which is a reaction to the avant-garde."

Certainly, Bloomer Deussen has overcome her fair share of challenges. When she attended Julliard and then The Manhattan School of Music in the 1950s, she was the only female student studying music composition.

"In all my years that I was in undergraduate school and graduate school, I never saw another female composer in the composition department -- not one," she said. "The reason I was encouraged was that my father really encouraged me, and he gave me a lot of support, so I thought it was OK. And I went ahead and studied even though there weren't any other female composers."

Gaining recognition as a female composer was another hurdle.

"I sent out an orchestra piece that I had completed -- which turned out years later to be accepted and performed widely," Bloomer Deussen said. "I sent that out in the '50s, and I would never lie about my name; I don't believe in putting a man's name on it. I would always put my name on the outside of the envelope. And many times it would come back unopened."

For a period between 1965 and 1985, Bloomer Deussen had stopped writing music all together. During this time, she raised three children and paid the bills by playing nightclubs and tuning pianos.

However, the urge to compose eventually returned.

"One day, I was lying underneath a Steinway grand [piano], taking out the big screws," she said. "And a voice inside me said, 'Nancy, what are you doing here? You don't belong here. You're a musician.' And that was it. And I started writing music again. That was when I decided I'm a composer. That's what I do."

Bloomer Deussen admitted that sometimes things still get in the way of her creative endeavors.

"The phone rings, or you have to pay the bills, or your husband, in my case, is starving, and he wants something to eat," she said. "It's life, and life gets in the way. And you just have to say, 'I'm closing my door, I'm going in here, and don't call me in the morning, I'm doing some work.'"

Despite these challenges, Bloomer Deussen has been working steadily. She said that she's making up for lost time. Recently, she's been commissioned to write a piece for the United States Army Continental Band. She's also working on a suite based on her travels through the Nevada desert.

And she's hopeful for the future.

"I think we're on the right track," she said. "I think now we're approaching the time when women's music is being accepted. I think we're approaching the time when all different kinds of music aesthetics are being accepted."

For information about the July 1-3 festivities in Martinez, please call (925) 798-1300 or visit http://www.willowstheatre.org/Summer_Festival.htm.

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