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Marion Bauer: White Birches, Op.12 No.1

761 views · Published 8 April 2016 · 2:42 · Indexed 28 October 2026

Channel: PSearPianist · 2016 · Music

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Phillip Sear plays a fine piece of American impressionism by Marion Bauer (1882–1955).
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#1 of 'From the New Hampshire Woods'—suite of three
pieces for piano, Op.12 (1922)
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Marion Bauer (1882-1955) was an American composer, who, following early befriending by the French pianist Raoul Pugno,  studied music in Paris and became the first American student of Nadia Boulanger in the early 1900s.  Having returned to the US to escape World War 1, she returned in the 1920s to study at the Paris Conservatoire.  She later became an influential teacher of composition at New York University, and also lectured at the Juilliard School.  This beautiful piece is inspired my Bauer's natural surroundings near the Edward MacDowell Colony, in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where she had a cottage.  It is dedicated to the controversial white-supremacist pianist and composer John Powell (1882-1963). The piece is prefaced by lines from the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet William Rose Benét (1886-1950):

"What is the meaning of their secret gleaming, 
What language is in their leaves, that glitter and whisper 
Where the ghostly birches glimmer under the moon?"

You can read much more about the piece, and Bauer here: http://bit.ly/1Ve7HAP (for this I am indebted to Denise von Glahn's book: 'Music and the Skilful Listener' (Indiana University Press, 2013)

Thumbnail image created with Adobe Firefly ( t.ly/jCDn ).
#americanmusic #birchtree #newhampshire 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------- Played by Phillip Sear
http://www.psear.co.uk (Email:  [email protected]  
WhatsApp: http://wa.me/441444483794 ) TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pianogems

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