Barbara Pentland

Barbara Pentland (1912-2000) was one of the pre-eminent members of the generation of Canadian composers who came to artistic maturity in the years following World War Two. Her early ventures in composition were strongly discouraged by her relatively wealthy and conservative Winnipeg family. Despite their objections, she pursued training as a composer and pianist in Winnipeg, Montreal, Paris, and at the Juilliard Graduate School in New York. Prior to the 1950s, her compositional language was primarily neoclassical, showing the influence of Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, and her teacher Aaron Copland. In 1955, however, she visited Darmstadt, where she encountered the work of Anton Webern for the first time. Although Pentland was never to become a strict serial composer, in Webern's manner, she did adapt elements of his style and technique into her new "free atonal" musical language. It is the work of this period which is regarded as her finest, being described by musicologist David Gordon Duke as music that "drew on the textures and organizational principles of the Webern school but was suffused with a lyricism that was expressly individual". [Duke, David Gordon. "Barbara Pentland". At http://www.musiccentre.ca/apps/index.cfm?fuseaction=composer.FA_dsp_biography&authpeopleid=1016&by=P, accessed 19 July 2007]

Although Pentland's position at the forefront of the Canadian musical avant-garde was recognized during her lifetime, her career was also marked by substantial struggle. As a woman composer of 'difficult' music, she met with resistance from male performers, and was often treated dismissively by fellow composers. Her academic career was relatively brief; she left her post at the University of British Columbia because of conflict with the department chair on the issue of academic standards. [Cornfield, Eitan (producer). "Canadian Composer Portraits: Barbara Pentland". CMCCD 9203, 2003.] Following the end of her career (forced by ill health more than a decade before her death), Pentland fell into relative obscurity, being overshadowed in discussions of Canadian music by her male contemporaries. Though her works are performed relatively infrequently, a number of her pieces have been recorded by such performers as Angela Hewitt ("Studies in Line", Glenn Gould ("Ombres/Shadows"), and Robert Rogers (numerous works).

Pentland was a founding member of the Canadian Music Centre, which provides public access to a large number of her scores and recordings. The National Library of Canada also hold a significant Pentland collection.

References

External links

* [http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=U1ARTU0002763] "Barbara Pentland", "The Canadian Encyclopedia".
* [http://www.collectionscanada.ca/4/7/m15-456-e.html] "Music Archives at the National Library of Canada: Barbara Pentland"
* [http://www.musiccentre.ca/apps/index.cfm?fuseaction=composer.FA_dsp_biography&authpeopleid=1016&by=P] "Barbara Pentland", Canadian Music Centre website.