MUSGRAVE, THEA

born May 27, 1928, Barnton, Edinburgh, Scot. British composer, best known for her concertos, operas, and choral and other vocal works. Musgrave studied for three years at the University of Edinburgh, taking premedical courses in preparation for a career in medicine; at the same time, however, she took basic courses in music at the university and eventually received a bachelor of music degree (1950). From 1950 to 1954 she studied in Paris, chiefly under Nadia Boulanger. In 1953 her first commission, Suite o' Bairnsangs (for voice and piano), was performed in Braemar, Scot., followed the next year by a Scottish BBC performance of Cantata for a Summer's Day. These and other early works were chiefly diatonic and suggestive of Scottish or medieval themes. Soon she turned to chromaticism and, later, serialism, producing a Piano Sonata (1956), a String Quartet (1958), and other chamber works. In the 1960s she continued to compose chamber works and vocal pieces but also turned to larger works, culminating in the three-act opera The Decision (first performed 1967), a drama on the ordeal of an entrapped miner, told in abstract instrumental terms. From then on, she wrote mainly on commission, staging a variety of operas, among them The Voice of Ariadne (1974), Mary, Queen of Scots (1977), Harriet, the Woman Called Moses (1984), and Simn Bolvar (1955). Her ballets include Beauty and the Beast (1969) and Orfeo (1975). Much of her music in the 1970s added electronic sounds to her texts, especially using prerecorded electronic tapes. During the 1970s she also began conducting many of her works with orchestras in Scotland and the United States.