Background
Ziffrin, Marilyn Jane was born on August 7, 1926 in Moline, Illinois, United States. Daughter of Harry Benjamin and Betty (Shifrin) Ziffrin.
(Carl Ruggles was a multitalented man, determined to write...)
Carl Ruggles was a multitalented man, determined to write modern music. He also had an important second career as a painter. Ruggles was dependent through much of his life on patrons, friends, and his wife, Charlotte, and devoted to telling raucous, off-color stories. In this biography of the late American composer-artist, Marilyn Ziffrin draws on interviews with those who knew him, on letters and other papers from Ruggles's collection, and on her extensive interviews and developing friendship with him in his final years. She creates a picture of a man who was proud, stubborn, insecure, irascible, prejudiced - and deeply human and lovable. Ziffrin follows Ruggles's career in music from his early childhood in Massachusetts through his 1907 move to Winona, Minnesota, and the founding and abrupt cessation of the Winona Symphony Orchestra. In Winona, Ruggles began a long and influential friendship with the artist Rockwell Kent. Ziffrin also details Ruggles's move in 1917 to New York, where he fell in with Henry Cowell, Charles Seeger, Edgar Varese, Carlos Salzedo, and others in the International Composers Guild. Her book discusses Ruggles's friendships with Charles Ives, Robert Frost, and others, as well as the Florida years when he taught at the University of Miami. One of Ruggles's compositions from the 1920s, The Sun Treader, provided the title of a 1957 portrait of him by his close friend Thomas Hart Benton. Ziffrin scrutinizes this and other musical compositions by Ruggles, along with some of his major paintings. The final chapter of Ziffrin's book is an eloquent portrait of Ruggles in his later years, living in a nursing home and in failing health but still outspoken, unpredictable,and planning his next works.
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Ziffrin, Marilyn Jane was born on August 7, 1926 in Moline, Illinois, United States. Daughter of Harry Benjamin and Betty (Shifrin) Ziffrin.
Bachelor of Music, University of Wisconsin, 1948; Master of Arts, Columbia University, 1949.
Head music department Northwest Mississippi Agricultural High School and Junior College, Senatobia, 1949-1950. Assistant head transcription department Station World's Greatest Newspaper-television and Radio, Chicago, 1950-1952. Office manager W.M. Simeral & Company, 1952-1956.
Teacher elementary schools, 1956-1961. Assistant professor music Northeastern Illinois University, 1961-1967. Associate professor New England College, 1967-1982.
Composition teacher St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire, 1977-1991. Music consultant In Human Terms program Station WEVO, Concord, 1984-1985. Composer-in-residence New Hampshire Music Festival, 1986, Yellow Barn Music Festival, Putney, Vermont, 1986, Virginia Center for Performing Arts, Sweet Briar, 1987.
Member 1st Annual Dartmouth, New Hampshire Music Festival Composers Conference, 1986. Guest composer Plymouth State College, 1990, New Hampshire Music Festival, 1990, Bowdoin College, 1990, Keene State College, 1990, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, 1991, Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, Tennessee, 1994, Hope College, Holland, Michigan, 1994, Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, Illinois, 1997.
(Carl Ruggles was a multitalented man, determined to write...)
Composer: Sono for Cello and Piano, Piano Trio (Bradley University Arts Festival Chamber Music award, 2d prize 1985), Symphony for Voice & Orchestra "Letters" 50th Anniversary Commission by the American Music Center (trio for clarinet, bassoon and piano) The Music Fix Prize, 1996. Author: Carl Ruggles, Composer, Painter, and Storyteller, 1994. Contributor articles to professional journals.
President Sutton, N.H. History Society, 1987. Member American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (grantee 1983-1988, 89, 90, 91, awards 1992, 93, 94, 95, 96,97), American Society University Composers, Intrenat. Alliance for Women in Music.