JAVS Spring 2022

Figure 6: Miriam Gideon, Sonata for Viola and Piano, III. Allegro furioso, mm. 1-8. Score courtesy of American Composers Edition (BMI), New York, NY.

to New York in 1931. To support herself, she found a job as a dance accompanist. She eventually became one of the best-known performers of contemporary piano music in New York, premiering works of Ives, Copland, Brant, Cowell, and Rudhyar, among others. She also eventually composed music for dance, working with the choreographers Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. 28 Vivian Fine became a member of Aaron Copland’s Young Composers Group, which met periodically at Copland’s apartment to share recordings and manuscripts of music. The focus of his Composers Group was the promotion of modern music and the American composer, and discussions of members’ works were not always friendly. 29 At the age of twenty-one, Fine married sculptor Benjamin Karp. Seven years later, in 1942, she had the first of her two daughters. The family moved briefly to Montclaire, New Jersey. There, Karp became the head of the Art Department at the State Teacher’s College and then to New Paltz, New York while Vivian taught private piano lessons and after-school classes in theory and composition. In 1964, Fine was invited to teach part

Vivian Fine Vivian Fine was born in Chicago on September 28, 1913. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. Vivian saw a piano for the first time as a young child and was fascinated by the sound of the instrument. 25 At age five, she demanded piano lessons. Soon after, she was accepted at the Chicago Musical College and became the youngest student ever to receive a scholarship. 26 At age eleven, Fine continued her piano studies privately with Djane Lavoie-Herz, who had been a disciple of Scriabin and often hosted prominent musicians in her home. After about a year, Herz suggested that an older pupil, Ruth Crawford, begin giving her composition lessons. 27 Crawford was at that time studying composition with Adolf Weidig at the American Conservatory of Music and became an important contact and influence for Fine. When Crawford moved to New York to continue her studies in composition, she kept in touch with Fine and introduced her music to prominent New York composers.

Wishing to pursue her passion for modern music at its epicenter, an eighteen-year-old Vivian Fine moved

28

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring 2022