Ruth Anderson

Anderson composed for a wealth of instruments and ensembles, including orchestra and electronic music. Her sound poem I Come Out of Your Sleep (revised and recorded on Sinopah 1997 XI) is constructed from whispered phonemes extracted from Louise Bogan's poem "Little Lobelia." According to the composer "a very soft dynamic level is an integral component of this piece. It is important to listen to it in the way it was composed, near the threshold of hearing." Her collage piece SUM (State of the Union Message) is included on the Lesbian American Composers collection (1973 Opus One, reissued 1998 CRI: 780). SUM and DUMP (1970), also a sonic collage, are her best known pieces. She called her study of Zen, begun in 1990, "a natural extension of my music," and cited as influential, especially on her interest in music and healing, composers Pauline Oliveros and Annea Lockwood. Anderson received degrees in flute and composition at the University of Washington and later studied with Darius Milhaud and Nadia Boulanger in the 1950s and with Vladimir Ussachevsky and Pril Smiley in the 1960s at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. She wrote that after her exposure to tape manipulation she became open to the potential of, "all sounds...as material for music". She joined the staff at Hunter College (CUNY) in 1966 and created the Electronic Music Studio there, retiring in 1988. Just before her death in November 2019, Anderson approved the test pressings for an LP of her work, entitled Here and released by Arc Light Editions in February 2020. Included are: "I Come Out of Your Sleep"; "SUM" (which uses TV advertisement samples to mimic a speech by President Richard Nixon); "Pregnant Dream" (a collaboration with poet May Swenson); "Points" (constructed entirely from sine-waves); and the electro-acoustic "So What". Anderson composed dozens of pieces for a variety of groups; below are some selections of her works. • Title — Composition Date — Instrumentation • Impression IV — 1950 — Soprano, flute, and string quartet • Sonata — 1951 — Flute and piano • Sonatina — 1951 — Flute and piano • Motet, Psalm XIII — 1952 — Mixed choir • Prelude and Allegro — 1952 — Woodwind quintet • Symphony for Small Orchestra — 1952 — Orchestra • Three Children's Songs — 1952 — Soprano and piano • Prelude and Rondo (dance score) — 1956 — Flute and strings • Song to My Father — 1959 — Women's voices and piano • Richard Cory — 1960 — Women's voices and piano • Wheel on the Chimney — 1965 — Slide film score and orchestra • The Pregnant Dream — 1968 — Tape • DUMP — 1970 — Tape • So What — 1971 — Tape • SUM (State of the Union Message) — 1973 — Tape • Conversations — 1974 — Tape • Points — 1974 — Tape • Sappho — 1975 — Tape • Tunable Hopscotch — 1975 — Installation/Game • I Come Out of Your Sleep — 1979, revised 1997 — Tape • Centering — 1979 — Interactive biofeedback: four "observers" with galvanic skin resistance oscillators, and dancer • Time and Tempo — 1984 — Biofeedback installation