Claire Polin, composer, flutist, musicologist, and lover of birds and birdsong, was born in Philadelphia in 1926 to parents who had emigrated from the Ukraine prior to the Russian Revolution. Her compositions often drew from antiquity and elements of nature, and have been described as unorthodox, original and fresh.
We came to know Polin’s work through her son, violinist and author Gabriel Schaff, who thought her Tower Sonata might be a good fit for us. The title is a reference to the historical practice, dating from the European Middle Ages, of placing musicians atop watchtowers to mark the passage of time or sound an alarm. This work is full of references to Baroque and Classical period forms. It is regal, playful and beautiful, with a more contemporary approach to harmony. Although initially specified for “any combination of three winds,” Polin’s annotations indicate that it can be played by any combination of three instruments, whether woodwind, brass, or strings. Working from several manuscripts Gabriel had provided us with, we adapted the score and began performing Tower Sonata early in our 2023-24 season.
Curious to learn more about Polin’s work and life, I listened to a delightful interview she gave for Rutgers University in 1985. In this interview Polin gives us an understanding of how she hears, listens to and interprets sound, with remarkable clarity. She describes sounds in nature and believes that “everything can be beautiful.” She talks about musicians creating techniques that will allow them to create the sounds we hear in nature. She also describes birdsong and how she uses it in her work. She draws attention to sounds one might normally take for granted or not notice in a manner that enables a listener to hear them as musical and beautiful. Her advocacy for new and experimental music is compelling and charming.
Claire Polin passed away in 1995. I know I would have loved meeting her and learning about her life and work. I am excited to include her among our Featured Composers and am grateful to her sons Gabriel and Josef Schaff for taking the time to answer my questions about her. I hope you enjoy their insights and stories as much as I have!
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SG: I generally start these interviews off with asking composers who their composer heroes are and what influences their work. In the radio interview for Rutgers I mentioned earlier, your mother mentions Beethoven for form and structure, and Stravinksy and Bartok for rhythm, as well as experimental music. In terms of her own work, she says she seeks to blend a combination of things in nature and antiquity. Did your mother ever talk to you about sounds in nature in a musical context or create a musical context in which you could hear/listen to the birds around your home?
Gabriel Schaff: Generally, it was not explained to me this way. I was always aware of her fascination with birdsong, and when you listen carefully, there are fixed elements and endless improvisation in them, unlike the simple mewling of cats and barking of dogs. Depending on the time of year, she would often rise before dawn and sit by her open bedroom window to record local bird song, later slowing it down to our mid-range hearing. Their control of pitches was impressive, but nothing could compare with the rhythmic variations birds are capable of.
Josef Schaff: Not exactly this way – I think the bird songs were something that happened from nature “outings” like Tanglewood and McDowell. Another influence was a set of 78RPM Audubon Society records which when slowed down would enhance the details of the bird songs. Also, some encounters with electronic pioneers Edgar Varese at Bennington, VT (Composers Conference early 1960s) and Otto Leuning and Vladimir Ussachevsky may have influenced her use of electronic devices like tape recorders to slow down the bird songs.
SG: Do you know why she decided to become a composer? Was there a defining moment?
GS: She didn’t share that specifically, but her tastes were rather clear-cut. She did talk about the music she heard overplayed as a young person, as she developed an aversion to the hyper-romanticism of Brahms and Tchaikovsky, and especially Liszt.
JS: I remember her saying that the first piece she wrote was at age 12, although she said that she thought it wasn’t very good.
SG: Was music a big part of your life as a family when you were growing up? Do you remember which composers or pieces your mother listened to? Did she ever discuss her favorite composers with you?
GS: Music in some form was a constant. My daughter remembers her always humming something beautiful, even when her spirits were down. She listened to other composers mostly at live concerts, and whenever possible, would seek them out for conversation or by mail. There was also some exposure to liturgical Jewish music as she was raised in an Ashkenazic family, and switched to a Sephardic congregation when she was a teen (the Hebrew pronunciation was better). Quite a few of her earlier works were liturgically based.
I remember that Schoenberg, Varese and late Stravinsky were a presence, although less pretty to my ears than Mozart and Beethoven. I got the sense that for her, music came to a halt after Beethoven, then reappeared with Debussy and the Modernists. In our household, Pop music (from Big Bands to Folk and Rock and Musicals) was nonexistent except on TV commercials. The only notable exceptions I can recall were being taken to see the movies The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins and a stage production of Fiddler on the Roof.
JS: There are two more exceptions, one of which was most prominent: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. My mom was an avid James Bond fan, and she was expecting the 1967 Casino Royale movie to be more than a spoof of James Bond films. The theme music for that movie was done by Herb Alpert and his band. She immediately fell in love with it, and I recall her buying the records of that music and playing it at home and encouraging us to join her in dancing to it. The impact this had was noticeable over the next half decade or so, when she wrote her brass ensemble compositions.
Another popular musician that she felt emotionally tied to was Nat King Cole. When I asked her about his popular style, tears welled up in her eyes and she was unable to finish the sentence describing his death.
SG: What do you remember about your mother’s process? Did she devote time to composing regularly?
GS: She worked hard and had long days. She turned down being the head of Rutgers Camden music department twice as she did not want to be a weekend composer-musicologist. She would teach in Camden about four days a week, sometimes have a few flute students come to the house after school, then nearly always compose after dinner until bedtime. Often, practicing flute was added in if she had chamber concerts, either of contemporary composers or with the Pan Orphic Duo with harpist Phyllis Schlomovitz.
I imagine that her compositional process was shaped by the many musical influences available to her. Her study of ethnomusicology exposed her to infinite material from 6 continents, so she utilized (and credited) music from many timelines and locations as diverse as Central Asia, Central America, Indigenous American chant, Protestant hymns, West African instrumentation, Korean and Japanese folk song…and birdsong, lots of birdsong!
SG: How active was your mother as a flutist when you were growing up? Did she consider herself a composer first, and a flutist second? Or vice versa? How did she balance these two? In thinking about her interest in antiquity, I also wonder how teaching Art History may have influenced her work as a composer as well.
GS: She was quite active as a flutist and flute teacher until the 1980s when Parkinson’s Disease robbed her of the ability to hold the flute for long. She was proud of her work on the Kincaid Flute Method and the 2 volumes of The Advanced Flutist. When I was quite small, there seemed to be no distinction between her work as a flutist or a composer. My earliest musical memory was sitting on a wooden floor in a tangle of extension cords as she and friends rehearsed Bach’s Musical Offering. She was equally versed in discussing the visual arts as music, but was a practitioner of music. Her DMA was in a subject impossible in today’s micromanaged academia: Allied Arts, a synthesis of music and visual art through the lens of history, with more than a smattering of literature and philosophy.
JS: She was an active flutist in our early years, but her performances tapered off significantly after our father died (in 1971.). In fact, the first memory in my life was of a flute performance of Bach. This memory was associated with swimming: we would swim frequently at a YMHA (the Jewish equivalent to YMCA), and I qualified for a junior lifeguard around age 10, partially because I would frequently stay under water holding my breath for a significant time. When I was under water, occasionally I would hear an eerie flute playing something baroque, which I later identified as Bach. I was able to identify the specific composition when I was around age 17 or 18, but cannot recall specifically which one it is today. At some point when I was about to leave for college, my mother told me that she had played concerts up to the middle of her eighth month of pregnancy with me. At that point I asked her if she had played the specific Bach composition that I had identified as the flute music I heard when under water. She said she needed to look it up, and a few days later confirmed that it was that exact piece. I then told her of my experiences while swimming underwater.
SG: I read a few articles your mother wrote about her trips to the Soviet Union for the Citizen Exchange Council in the 1980s and her interaction with Soviet composers while she was there. She was responsible for introducing many of them to the US, but among the many scores she brought to the USSR was George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children. It’s incredible to think she is responsible for introducing Russians to this work! What do you remember about these trips to the USSR?
GS: I was on two of the eleven to thirteen trips she undertook, 1984 and 1988. My first memory of Russia was the customs official making us unpack everything from our luggage onto the floor, when going through every piece of paper. Judaica at that time was prohibited, but they didn’t care about sheet music! Over the years she exchanged hundreds of scores with Soviet composers from many different SSRs.
SG: Your mother did an interview with Martin Bookspan for WNYC that was broadcast in 1973. I have not been able to get hold of it, but the summary states that in addition to discussing some of her works, and her career both as a flutist and composer, she also talks about the current status of women composers, and about sexism in music. Did she ever talk to you about these things?
GS: I remember that interview! She brought me to New York, and I was in the studio. His voice was even more incredible in person. Regarding sexism, she didn’t have to tell me anything. My brother Joe and I saw it first hand many times. In academic circles, she often had to wait to be invited into the conversation. Her fight to get tenure was grueling, especially as it happened shortly after our dad died when we were both adolescents. She told us that the head of the department did not want a woman on the faculty, especially a single mother with two youngish children.
SG: As the recipient of the Leverhulme Fellowship, your mother spent a year abroad teaching at the University College of Wales, mentoring a class that included a 21-year-old King Charles. Of course I have to ask, what did she have to say about the Prince ?
GS: Prince Charles was my mom’s student during the academic year 1968-69 when he was a senior at the University College of Wales. His investiture to become the Prince of Wales occurred at the close of that academic year, and the whole family was invited to Carnarvon castle as guests. Yes, there were carriages with the queen and the whole royal family…She wrote a piece for him of Welsh songs for voice and cello, his instrument. I met him only once, and could barely understand him as his “proper” accent was so different from the American or the English speaking Welsh I was used to.
JS: I found him to be quite entertaining, and he gave me some advice which I chose not to follow.
SG: And lastly, for all of us flute geeks, did you ever meet Kincaid? Please do tell!
GS: I knew Bill Kincaid, and saw him the day before he died. He was a big barrel chested man with a constant smile for me. I still remember his rosy cheeks and how his mouth looked when he spoke.
JS: I met Kincaid a couple of times, but sadly my primary recollection was when we visited him while he was semi-comatose. My mom was finishing up one of the last Kincaid-Polin flute method books, and would ask him some book-related yes/no questions. He would blink his eyelids once or twice to indicate his answer to her.
SG: Do you remember anything about her thoughts on the state of contemporary music during her lifetime?
GS: Regarding her thoughts on contemporary music, she often appreciated tonality only when written by (long) dead composers. I remember one 1980s performance by the NY Philharmonic of a new piece. She turned to me and said “yuck, it sounds like Brahms.” Her last decade of composing, roughly 1984 to 1994 was marked by a relaxation of texture and more than a hint of melody, unlike the unrelenting major 7ths and minor 9ths from my childhood that drove me into the arms of Vivaldi.
To hear Claire Polin’s music and her 1985 interview for Rutgers, please click here.
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Claire Polin (1926-1995) was born in Philadelphia on New Year’s Day 1926 to parents who had emigrated from the Ukraine prior to the Russian Revolution. She began her piano studies at age five. When she was 17, she was stricken with double pneumonia, and a doctor suggested that learning the flute would give her lungs a better chance to recover. Thus began her voyage into the world of the flute, first as a pupil of Burnett Atkinson and later with the so-called grandfather of American flutists, William Kincaid, with whom she later collaborated on The Art and Practice of Modern Flute Technique and The Advanced Flutist.
Polin earned degrees from Temple University, Dropsie College, Gratz College, as well as a Master of Music degree in Composition from Juilliard and a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the Philadelphia Conservatory (where her thesis was on Comparative Aesthetics, then classified as Allied Arts). She studied composition with Otto Luening, Roger Sessions, Peter Mennin, and William Schuman at Juilliard; Vincent Persichetti at the Philadelphia Conservatory; and Lukas Foss at Tanglewood.
From the 1960s on, Polin juggled responsibilities as professor of both Art History and General Music at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. As the recipient of the Leverhulme Fellowship, she spent a year abroad teaching at the University College of Wales, mentoring a class that included a 21-year-old King Charles. In addition to helping create the Kincaid Flute Method, she completed and annotated Kincaid’s edition of the flute sonatas of J.S. Bach.
Beginning in the 1980s, due to the cultural embargo between the U.S. and Soviet Union, Polin traveled to Russia 13 times to interface with avant-garde composers, bringing American compositions in exchange for Soviet scores and presenting a series of “unofficial” exchange concerts in Philadelphia and New York. She was personally responsible for countless Soviet and American premieres by such luminaries as Edison Denisov, Elena Firsova, Sofia Gubaidulina, Giya Kancheli, Alfred Schnittke, Valentin Silvestrov, and Dmitri Smirnov, among many others.
Despite the pervasive limitations faced by women composers in her time, Polin was the winner of several awards and fellowships, including the Vercelli International, Georgia State University, twice from Delta Omicron, the MacDowell Colony, Leverhulme Foundation, and numerous ASCAP awards. Her works were commissioned and performed by the Seoul National Symphony Orchestra, London Gabrieli Brass Ensemble, New York Philharmonia, Israel Bach Society, London Pro Musica Antiqua, Huntingdon Chamber Players, the City of Philadelphia, as well as by William Kincaid, Gordon Gottlieb, Juris Piano Duo, and Gregg Smith Singers. Her scholarly publications cover a range of topics including 17th-century harp tablature, ethnomusicology, Soviet composers and performers, and the iconic 1989 article “Why Minimalism Now?”. Her music shows a similar diversity of influences: Greek myth, the legend of Gilgamesh, Welsh epic poetry, the metaphysical writings of John Donne and T.S. Eliot, Native American chants, Trans-Ural folk melodies, and birdsong, to name but a few.
Polin’s music is published by Hal Leonard, Theodore Presser, Subito Music, Dorn Music, and Arsis Press. Since her passing in 1995, most of her recordings are still available only on vinyl.
Gabriel Schaff and Emilie-Anne Gendron
