Beatrice Witkin papers

Composer Beatrice Witkin (1917-1990) was born in New York City. She attended Hunter College in New York and did her graduate work at New York University. She studied composition with Mark Brunswick, Roger Sessions, and Stefan Wolpe, and piano with Edward Steuerman. She was also the recipient of the ASCAP Standard Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Witkin was one of the first women to work in the electronic music idiom. In 1968, she was invited to work at the Electronic Music Studio at the New York University School of the Arts. Two years later, her electronic composition Glissines was a winner in High Fidelity Magazine's Electronic Music Contest.

In 1963, she helped establish the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, a performing group that commissioned new works. She was a guest composer of the McDowell Colony as well as a longtime member of the Women's Composers Forum and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. Chronology of Major Works Works with an asterisk (*) have corresponding recordings in Scores and Recordings, Wesleyan University. 1960 Duo for Violin and Piano* 1960 Interludes for Solo Flute and Piccolo* 1963 Prose Poem 1964 Contour for Piano* 1964 Parameter for Eight Instruments 1965 Combinations for Thirteen Instruments 1967 Twelve-tone Variations on Quotes by the Beatles for Young People's Orchestra 1968 Fanfare in B and E Flat 1968 Chiaroscuro for Cello and Piano 1968-1969 Triads and Things for Brass Quintet* 1970 Breath and Sounds for Tuba and Stereophonic Tape* 1972-1973 Echologie for Flute and Tape 1977-1978 Report from the Planet Mars 1981 Stephen Foster Revisited Variations for Concert Band 1985 Cantillations of the Bible for String Quartet