Vivian Fine
(born 1913)

VIVIAN FINE

Vivian Fine was born in Chicago, Illinois, and began to study the piano at the age of five with her mother. In later years her principal piano teachers were Djane Lavoie-Herz and Abby Whiteside. At age twelve Fine began studies of theory and harmony with Ruth Crawford Seeger, and she began to compose at thirteen. Upon moving to New York in 1931, she studied composition with Roger Sessions and orchestration with George Szell. Henry Co well arranged for her debut as a composer when Fine was sixteen, presenting Solo for Oboe, and he saw through her first publication, Four Songs, in the New Music Edition in 1933.

Fine was one of the founders of the American Composers Alliance and was its vice-president from 1961 to 1965. She has served as composer and piano accompanist for modern dance groups led by Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and Hanya Holm and has held teaching posts at New York University, the Juilliard School of Music, and the New York State University at Potsdam. Since 1964 she has been a member of the faculty of Bennington College. She was musical director of the Rothschild Foundation from 1953 to 1960, and she received the Dollard Award in 1966 and a Ford Foundation Award in 1970. In 1980 Vivian Fine received a Guggenheim Fellowship and was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Particularly representative of Fine’s works are her 1937 composition for the stage, The Race for Life; the ballet Alcestis, of 1960; and the instrumental works Concer- tante, for piano and orchestra (1944); Concertino, for piano and percussion (1972); and Romantic Ode, for string trio and string orchestra (1976). Her vocal works include The Great Wall of China (1947), on a text by Franz Kafka; Valedictions (1959), on a text by John Donne; Morning (1962), on a text of Henry David Thoreau; and Paean (1969), for narrator, female chorus, and brass. Prominent among her more recent vocal works are Missa brevis (1972), for taped voices and four violoncellos; 3 Sonnets (1976), on poems of John Keats; and Meeting for Equal Rights 1866 (1976), for soloists, narrator, chorus, and orchestra.

Recent compositions written on commission include Drama for Orchestra, by the San Francisco Symphony and premiered in 1983; Ode to Purcell, by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation and performed at the Library of Congress in 1985; Poetic Fires, by the Koussevitsky Music Foundation and performed in 1985 by the American Composers Orchestra, with the composer as piano soloist and Gunther Schuller as conductor; and A Song for Saint Cecelia’s Day, by Trinity College and performed in 1985.

“Dance of Triumph: The Rescue of Alcestis” is the fourth and final section of the ballet suite Alcestis. It was commissioned by Martha Graham and performed by her and her dance company in 1960. The Alcestis myth concerns the sacrifice of Alcestis’s life for her husband, Admetus, so that he may thereby attain immortality. As the household of Admetus mourns for Alcestis, Hercules arrives. The news of Alcestis’s death is kept from him, and he feasts and drinks in heroic fashion. When he learns from a servant of her death, he seeks out Thanatos (Death) and battles with him for her life. Victorious, Hercules rescues Alcestis and returns her to Admetus.

The movement is marked alia breve, allegro energico, and is scored for woodwinds, brass, timpani, xylophone, piano, harp, and strings. The “Dance of Triumph” involves a rush of energy that subsides only momentarily. It ends with an emphatic punctuation by timpani and piano. The writing is primarily contrapuntal, and the piece attains its expressive purpose largely through the choice of intervals in the separate parts and by the gestural tension between the top and bass lines.

Dance of Triumph: The Rescue of Alcestis

Vivian Fine

© 1960 by Vivian Fine. Reprinted with the composer’s permission. Published by Catamount Facsimile Edition, Box 245, Shaftsbury, VT 05262.