Schonthal, Ruth

▪ 2007

Ruth Schönthal 

      German-born American composer and pianist (b. June 27, 1924, Hamburg, Ger.—d. July 11, 2006, Scarsdale, N.Y.), was a child prodigy who was admitted to the Stern Conservatory in Berlin at age five and was composing music from age six. A Jew, she was forced to leave her conservatory studies at the time of the Nazi rise to power, and she and her family left Germany for Sweden in 1938, moving again in 1941 to Mexico. Schönthal continued her musical studies and performances, and in Mexico City she gained the notice of composer Paul Hindemith, himself a refugee from Nazism, who invited her to study with him at Yale University. She graduated (1948) with honours. In the U.S., Schonthal (she had dropped the umlaut) gradually established her reputation as a composer while supporting herself by tutoring, writing music for commercials, and playing piano. She wrote in an orderly style on eclectic, often contemporary topics that made use of European classicism and romanticism, Latin folk melodies, Jewish themes, and American aleatory and minimalist techniques. Her works included operas, cantatas, and song cycles and works for solo instruments.

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