By Ellen Grolman Schlegel
A graduate of Yale University and the Eastman School of Music and a student of Paul Hindemith, Ernst Toch and Roger Sessions, Emma Lou Diemer has produced a large, diverse and sophisticated opus, which includes compositions for orchestra, symphonic band, chamber ensemble, keyboard, chorus, voices, and solo and electronic instruments. Over 250 of her compositions have been published since 1956, more than 100 of them recorded. Her organ psalm settings and hymn preludes are considered standard repertoire, as are a number of her choral compositions, including the very popular Three Madrigals.
Emma Lou Diemer is the consummate musician—at once a composer, an educator and a performer. Since retiring as Professor Emerita from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1991, Diemer’s composing activity has continued unabated, and she has kept an active performance calendar as a recitalist and, until just recently, as the organist at Santa Barbara’s First Presbyterian Church. She has made significant contributions to the IAWM; she is currently an advisor and previously served on the Board of Directors.
Diemer was born in Kansas City, Missouri, November 24, 1927, into a family that had valued music very highly for several generations. Both sets of grandparents were church musicians and were so devoted to music that Emma Lou’s maternal grandmother, Lizzie Casebolt, took in boarders to pay for her daughter Myrtle’s piano lessons. By the time Emma Lou was born, the Diemer household was steeped in music. Her siblings received instruction in piano and an additional instrument: flute for Dorothy, trumpet for George, Jr. and cello for John.
Emma Lou listened intently to the music-making around her, and at the age of five, reproduced Paderewski’s Minuet on the family Steinway after just a few hearings. Her older sister recounts that she played “not just the familiar tune at the beginning but the entire work with its complicated rhythms and runs...with an accuracy and clarity that we could hardly believe.”1 By age six, Emma Lou had begun to compose her own pieces, with her piano teacher transcribing the works onto paper as Emma Lou played. Although she aspired to become a professional performer on both the piano and organ,2 her primary focus was on composition. The decision to become a composer was a fairly easy one, for by age 15, she had already composed two piano concertos—one in C minor and one in G minor ( neither extant)—and was certain that she wanted to be a “writer of music, creating new sounds first for [herself] and then later for others.”3
There was no time in my life that I didn’t love music and playing the piano. During high school I would write music in the morning, before going to classes, because the house was quiet and I was alone. In the beginning composing was a romantic vision; I was trying to decide whether to be a concert pianist or to do something different. When I decided to be a composer, I knew there were great men composers and naturally I would become a woman composer.4
During her teens, Diemer began to receive tangible recognition for her compositions. One of the first awards acknowledged her beautiful setting of the Twenty-Third Psalm (1943) for voice and keyboard that siblings John and Dorothy sang together in church. Many other state- sponsored or Glee Club-related awards followed, some for excellence as a performer and some for skill as a composer.
After graduation from high school in 1945, Diemer enrolled at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Because her father had developed a new Bachelor of Music program at Central Missouri State Teachers’ College (in Warrensburg), Diemer transferred there in her sophomore year. She soon realized, however, that she was not receiving the kind of composition training she needed, so she completed her undergraduate studies at Yale University.
She came into contact with Paul Hindemith at Yale, but since she did not want to “be a clone…of some other composer,” she opted not to study composition with him, but to enroll in the counterpoint classes he offered.5 Although Diemer denies ever having belonged to any established school of composition, she absorbed the neoclassicist’s emphasis on formal structure, thorough exploration of melodic and rhythmic motives, free tonality and counterpoint.
After earning a bachelor’s degree (1949) and a master’s degree (1950) at Yale, she returned to Missouri, and for a year taught piano, organ and counterpoint at Northeast Missouri State Teachers’ College in Kirksville. She also served as organist at the Wornall Road Baptist Church in Kansas City. Compositions from this period include organ works: He Leadeth Me and St. Anne (1951), and piano compositions: Suite No. 1 for Children and Suite No. 2 for Children: “At the Zoo”(1952).
She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship (1952-53) to study piano in Brussels, Belgium, with André Dumortier and composition with Jean Absil at the Royal Conservatory. That year, she produced a major work for orchestra: her three-movement Symphony No. 1. Upon returning home, she taught a variety of subjects on a part-time basis at a number of regional schools. In 1954, she composed Quartet for piano, violin, viola and cello; Serenade for flute and piano; and To a Gypsy, one of many songs and song cycles for voice and piano on texts by her sister, Dorothy Diemer Hendry. Her 1954 Suite for Orchestra (1954; Seesaw, 1981) won the Louisville Symphony Orchestra Student Award (1955). Diemer was only the second woman to receive this award.
In the summers of 1954 and 1955, Diemer studied composition with Ernst Toch and Roger Sessions at the Berkshire Music Festival in Tanglewood. She composed Second Suite for Piano; Piano Sonata No. 2, which won the Missouri Federation of Music Clubs Award; and what was to be her first published work, Toccata for Marimba. In September 1957, Diemer was awarded a scholarship in the Ph.D. program at the Eastman School of Music, where she came in contact with composer/teachers Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson. Hanson, who once called Diemer “one of America’s most gifted women composers,”6 conducted and premiered her dissertation project, the Symphony on American Indian Themes, with the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra. Afterward, he wrote to her, “I was very pleased with your symphony. It came off beautifully and I was delighted with the sound of the work.”7
In September 1959, the Ford Foundation and the National Music Council established the Young Composers’ Project, a composer-in-residence program that linked 12 composers with 12 school systems nationwide. Diemer remembers thinking that it sounded wonderful, but she was concerned that heretofore she would need to temper the technical demands in her writing. Philip Glass, Arthur Frackenpohl, Peter Schickele and she were among the 12 composers chosen for the first year of the project, and her destination was Arlington, Virginia.8
She was the only female in the group, and she recalls that they “were feted graciously at a Foundation luncheon” and were addressed by composer Norman Dello Joio, who called them “you men.”9 The manual presented to the participating composers and supervisors referred to composers only with male pronouns.
She felt gratified to be able to write works that appealed to audiences and players alike:
I was able to reinforce a philosophy of mine [in Arlington], partly learned at Yale under the Hindemith influence: that writing need not take place in a vacuum. It should not be written only to satisfy the aesthetics or mental exercises of a composer and his cohorts, nor to dazzle the givers of grants and fellowships. It should also be written to be listened to and finally understood and even enjoyed. My greatest pleasure is to write music that moves people, not that moves them out of the room.10
Her Arlington compositions “avoided atonality, excessive use of accidentals and changes of meter, prolonged dissonance, complicated rhythms, extreme ranges.” Diemer grants that the self-imposed limitations were beneficial to her as a composer, since they intensified her search for originality.11 She states, “I can find no experience which taught me more or was more appropriate for what I thought my calling in life was to me.”12 “By lowering somewhat the level of difficulty and extremity of style, I was able to produce some works that are still in the repertoire 35 years later.”13
In 1965, Diemer was invited to teach theory and composition at the University of Maryland, College Park, and she also taught 18th-century counterpoint, contemporary analytical techniques and orchestration as a full-time faculty member (1967-70). Despite heavy teaching responsibilities, she composed a large number of works during those years.14 In 1971 Diemer accepted the position of Professor of Theory and Composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Just prior to that, she had attended Emerson Meyers’ electronic music workshop in Washington, D.C., and was so intrigued with the musical possibilities of the medium that she spent 15 exciting years working with electronic music. She created the electronic and computer music lab at UCSB.
In the 1970s and early 80s Diemer produced several well-received electronic works, such as Trio for Flute, Oboe, Harpsichord and Tape (1973), Pianoharpsichordorgan (1974) and Three Poems by Emily Dickinson (1984), as well as innovative compositions, some with extended techniques, for traditional instruments. Works in the latter category include Toccata for Piano (1979), Space Suite (1988) and Adventures in Sound (1989), all for piano; Declarations for organ (1973); and Suite of Homages for Orchestra (1985). Diemer’s most recent electronic works are Serenade for Woodwind Quintet and Tape (1989) and Ice Rhythm for Solo Marimba and Optional Electronics (1996); the mallet work was conceived as an electronic piece but is also playable by marimba alone. During this time, Diemer maintained a high profile regionally as a performer and nationally as a composer. By 1980 a dozen of her works (the choral and organ compositions in particular) were standard repertoire in public schools, churches and music festivals.
Concurrent with her tenure at UCSB, Diemer held positions as organist, serving at First Church of Christ Scientist from 1973 to 1984 and First Presbyterian Church from 1984 to 2000. Ironically, although most of her compositions for church use are not considered especially innovative, she was a pioneer in the introduction of MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) to the church organ, having long ago added a synthesizer interface to the Casavant organ at the First Presbyterian Church.
Diemer retired as Professor Emerita in 1991; retirement, however, did not result in a cessation of compositional activity. Her commissions were more numerous than ever. She was arguably one of the most widely published composers in America, and she embarked on one of the most enjoyable composing experiences of her life—as composer-in-residence with the Santa Barbara Symphony and its conductor, Varujan Kojian. She was named the 1995 American Guild of Organists Composer of the Year and received the Mu Phi Award of Merit in the same year.
For more than 50 years, Emma Lou Diemer has been communicating musically with performers and audiences. During this time she has developed a philosophy of composing: a set of motivating concepts and principles shaped by her intellect, training, and personality. An important tenet in Diemer’s philosophy is that a composer “should be able to write for the non-professional as well as professional, to write easy as well as difficult music, and should be able to make all of it interesting to the performer and the listener.”15 “I find it easy to be complex and difficult. It is much harder to be lucid and technically within reach. I place much greater value on the latter of the two.”16
Diemer recognizes myriad influences that have either subtly or overtly shaped the development of her style. She says, “In the beginning...I was influenced by the music of Frederic Chopin, Claude Debussy and especially the big sound of George Gershwin. Every Sunday afternoon I would listen to the broadcast of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and reflect on the compositions I heard.”17 “I have always liked jazz and ‘big band’ music, and music that derives from it—Gershwin, Bernstein, Copland, Ravel, etc.”18 In other forums she acknowledges that Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Bartók were influential as well. In a March 2000 interview with Michael Barone on the Minnesota Public Radio program “Pipedreams,” Diemer commented that she tends to include in her own compositions those elements that she greatly admires in the music of others; that is, creative use of rhythm and melody.
Stylistically speaking, Diemer feels that she has always “bounced back and forth between the neo-Classic ideal, believing it is the most durable, and the neo-Romantic, believing it is the most personal.”19 Any good composer, she opines, is inclined to both aesthetics. Although she disparages serial music in its extreme forms, finding it uncommunicative and lacking in variety of tonal emphasis, she has ventured into the realm of serial composition several times, most notably with her Declarations for Organ (1973), Variations for Piano, Four Hands: Homage to Ravel, Schoenberg and May Aufderheide (1987)20 and the “Webern” movement of the 1985 orchestral Suite of Homages.
Diemer instinctively pays careful attention to structure, energetic rhythms, melodic expression and timbral interest. She describes her composer’s voice as eclectic, but cautions that the divergence of styles should not be construed as inconsistent. She sees herself as a composer most comfortable with free tonality; one who enjoys creating an indeterminate tonal center—a center that “hovers” more than it “resides.” She strives for harmonic sonority rather than a defined tonality, likes both rhythmic and melodic motivic play, and places a priority on color. Diemer views herself as basically conservative, with periodic forays into the experimental and avant-garde.
Pianists and organists regularly praise the idiomatic character of her keyboard compositions. Although the piano was Diemer’s first love, she has also written prolifically for organ. The works number in the hundreds and include 18 collections of hymn settings, used most often in church services;21 plus virtuosic, free compositions for the instrument, including Fantasie (1958), Toccata (1967), Toccata and Fugue (February 1969), Fantasy on “O Sacred Head” (1970), Declarations (1973) and Romantic Suite (1983). Recent large-scale organ works in this category include Rendez à Dieu and Abide With Me (1999).
Diemer’s more demanding piano compositions have developed a loyal and ardent following over the past 35 years and receive numerous performances annually. Perennial solo favorites include Seven Etudes (1965), Toccata (1979), Encore (1981) and Fantasy (1993). The most recent addition to this genre is the imposing Sonata No. 3 (1999-2000). These are works that make great demands on the performer and exhibit the almost-ubiquitous characteristics of Diemer’s compositions: a motoric rhythmic element and extensive motivic development.
Diemer expands her musical vocabulary in her chamber music and imaginatively utilizes extended techniques in works such as Quartet for violin, viola, cello, and piano (1954), Quartet for flute, viola, cello, harpsichord and tape (1974), String Quartet No. 1 (1988), Trio for flute, marimba and cello (1992) and the Sextet for flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, cello and piano (1992). Homage to Paderewski for viola and piano (1997), a small-scale chamber work, offers an excellent example of her facility for creating both intricate and rhythmic musical weavings between the instruments, and rich, song-like, expressive melodies.
When Diemer began to pursue a career as a composer, she was unaware of any female composer as a role model. She recalls that as a young woman she was presented with opportunities to marry and begin a family, but she believed that her future as a serious composer was incompatible with one that included a husband and children because “composing is a difficult, isolating, complicated way to choose to spend one’s life; [it is] easier for a man...because he could spend long hours composing while someone else took care of the practicalities.”22
Several times in her career Diemer has been singled out as a woman. As the only woman in the Young Composers’ Project’s inaugural year and as only the second woman to receive the Louisville Symphony Orchestra Student Award, Diemer has had occasion to reflect on the status of women in her discipline. She believes that gender has no direct effect on the creative process of a composer, if education and artistic influences have been the same for both sexes. She states, “any successful composer uses both intuitive and analytical thought and men can be very intuitive, women very analytical.”23
Diemer has not yet written an opera, nor a composition in a rock-band medium for church use, both of which she expresses a desire to accomplish someday. She purposefully continues to improve, to stretch, to grow as a composer, expressing the myriad musical influences and styles that “affect one’s output like a stone gathering moss.”24 With each work, she questions, “Is the quality high enough so that, with changes in cultural patterns, someone will look [at my music] one hundred years from now and see something valuable?”25 Emma Lou Diemer would like to write music that endures.
1. Dorothy Diemer Hendry, personal correspondence with author, January 2000.
2. Emma Lou Diemer, “Backward and Forward Looking,” IAWM Journal (1993): 11.
3. Diemer, “Loneliness of the Long-Distance Organ Composer,” The American Organist 16/ 9 (1982): 45.
4. Jane LePage, Women Composers, Conductors, and Musicians of the Twentieth Century (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1980), 55.
5. JoAnn Rediger, “Videotaped Interviews with Emma Lou Diemer: Her Compositional and Personal Perspectives” (D.M.A. diss., Ball State University, 1994), 41.
6. Howard Hanson, ed., The New Scribner Music Library, vol. 4 of A Century of Piano Music (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972), 43.
7. Howard Hanson, Personal correspondence with Emma Lou Diemer, March 30, 1959.
8. Diemer, “A Composer in the Schools,” The Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching 1/3 (1990): 33.
9. Diemer, “My Life as a Composer,” The Piano Quarterly 12/9 (1985): 58-59.
10. Ibid., 34.
11. Diemer, “Composing for the Schools,” National Music Council Bulletin 22/2 (Winter 1961-62): 13.
12. Diemer, “A Composer in the Schools,” 34.
13. Cynthia Clark Brown, “An Interview with Emma Lou Diemer, AGO 1995 Composer of the Year,” The American Organist 29/2 (November 1995): 44.
14. Among the works she composed in Maryland are Four Chinese Love-Poems, Seven Hymn Preludes, Seven Etudes (written for University of Maryland colleague Stewart Gordon), A Service in Music and Poetry, Four on a Row, Anthem of Faith, the extraordinarily popular Fairfax Festival Overture, Fantasy on “O Sacred Head,” Verses From The Rubaiyat (written for the University Madrigal singers), Toccata and Fugue, Toccata for Flute Chorus, Celebration: Seven Hymn Settings, Three Anniversary Choruses and Three Fantasies on Advent/Christmas Hymns.
15. Jan Durant, “Five Twentieth-Century Women Composers” (Master’s thesis, University of Texas, 1998), 27.
16. Brown, 44.
17. LePage, 55.
18. Philip Todd Westgate, “Selected Organ Works of Emma Lou Diemer” (D.M.A. diss., U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1994), A-2.
19. Diemer, “Backward and Forward Looking,” 11.
20. Variations for Piano, Four Hands: Homage to Ravel, Schoenberg and May Aufderheide (1987) evokes recognizable musical atmospheres of the stated composers without any purposeful imitation. The same is true of Homage to Cowell, Cage, Crumb and Czerny for two pianos (1981).
21. Among them are Seven Hymn Preludes (1968), Preludes to the Past (1992), Communion Hymns (1996), God and Country (1997), Psalm Interpretations (1999) and Glory and Praise (2000).
21. Elaine Barkin, compiler, “In Response,” in Perspectives of New Music 20/1-2 (1982-83): 311.
22. Alexandra Pierce, “Emma Lou Diemer and ‘The Reason for Being,’” American Women Composers News/Forum 6/1 and 2 (1986): 4.
23. Diemer, “My Life as a Composer,” 59.
24. Diemer, Personal Interview, May 6, 2000.
Bender, James Francis. “Three American Composers from the Young Composers’ Project: Style Analysis of Selected Works by Emma Lou Diemer, Donald Martin Jenni and Richard Lane.” D.M.A. diss., New York University, 1988.
Brown, Cynthia Clark. “Emma Lou Diemer: Composer, Performer, Educator, Church Musician.” D.M.A. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1985.
____. “An Interview with Emma Lou Diemer, American Guild of Organists 1995 Composer of the Year.” The American Organist 29/2 (1995): 36-44.
____. “Emma Lou Diemer: Organ Works of the 1990s.” The American Organist 29/12 (1995): 62-64.
Gerbert, Tachell Zon. “Imitation, Transformation, and Variation: Emma Lou Diemer’s Variations for Piano Four Hands: Hommage to Ravel, Schoenberg, and May Aufderheide.” M.A. thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1994.
Hayes, Pamela Wellsand. “Emma Lou Diemer: Piano Compositions of the Last Decade.” D.M.A. diss., University of Kansas, Lawrence, 2000.
Hinshaw, Donald. “Contemporary Composers: Emma Lou Diemer.” Journal of Church Music 18 (1976): 13-15.
Horan, Leta. “A Performer’s Guide to Emma Lou Diemer’s Seven Etudes for Piano.” D.M.A. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, 1987.
Lawhon, Sharon Leding. “A Performer’s Guide to Selected Twentieth-Century Sacred Solo Art Songs Composed by Women from the United States of America.” D.A. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, 1993.
LePage, Jane Weiner. Women Composers, Conductors, and Musicians of the Twentieth Century: Selected Biographies. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1980.
Long, Rhetta Patrice. “Harmonic Analysis of Choral Works by Emma Lou Diemer and Gwyneth Walker.” M.M. thesis, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1992.
McDaniel, Mary Eileen. “The Choral Music of Emma Lou Diemer.” D.M.A. diss., Arizona State University, Tempe, 1987.
Naus, Thomas. “The Organ Works of Emma Lou Diemer.” D.M.A. diss., Michigan State University, Lansing, 1991.
Nevil, Mark. “A Comparative Study of Selected Women’s Choral Works of Emma Lou Diemer.” M.M. thesis, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, 1998.
Outland, Joyce. “Emma Lou Diemer: Solo and Chamber Works for Piano Through 1986.” D.M.A. diss., Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, 1986.
Pettyjohn, Emma Dean. “Emma Lou Diemer’s Pianoharpsichordorgan: An Analysis and Performance Recommendations.” D.M.A. diss., University of Georgia, Athens, 1997.
Pierce, Alexandra. “Emma Lou Diemer and the Reason for Being.” American Women Composers News/Forum 6/1-2 (1986): 4-8.
Rawlinson, Tammy Waldrop. “A Comparative Analysis of Selected Anthems by Mary Elizabeth Caldwell, Emma Lou Diemer, and Jane Manton Marshall.” D.M.A. diss., Baylor University, Waco, Texas, 1985.
Rediger, JoAnn. “Videotaped Interviews with Emma Lou Diemer: Her Compositional and Personal Perspectives.” D.M.A. diss., Ball State University, Waco, Texas, 1994.
Ripley, Colette S. “Concert Organ Music by Emma Lou Diemer.” The American Music Teacher 28/8 (1995): 43-45.
Westgate, Philip Todd. “Selected Organ Works of Emma Lou Diemer.” D.M.A. diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. 1994.
Yordy, Jonathan. “Profile: Emma Lou Diemer.” Women of Note Quarterly 1/2 (1993): 3-4.
“Backward and Forward Looking.” IAWM Journal (1993): 11-13.
“A Composer in the Schools.” Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching 1/3 (1990): 33-34.
“Composing for the Schools.” National Music Council Bulletin 22/2 (1961): 12-13.
“Fantasies and Improvisations.” Journal of Church Music 23 (1981): 14-18.
“Loneliness of the Long-Distance Organ Composer.” The American Organist 16/9 (1982): 45-47.
“MIDI and the Church Organist.” The American Organist 27/12 (1993): 45-46.
“My Life as a Composer.” The Piano Quarterly 129 (1985): 58-59.
“On Composing for the Public Schools.” The Triangle of Mu Phi Epsilon 55/4 (1961): 2-4.
“Rebel on the Organ Bench.” Journal of Church Music 23 (1981): 13-16.
“What Does a Church Do with a Composer?” The American Organist 32/11 (1998): 54-55.
“Which Way Shall It Be?” Music Clubs Magazine 45 (1965): 14-15.
“Women Composers as Professors of Composition.” In The Musical Woman: An International Perspective, vol. III. 1986-1990. Judith Lang Zaimont, ed. New York and Westport: Greenwood Press, 1991.
“Writing for Mallet Percussion.” Woodwind, Brass, Percussion 22/4 (1983): 10-13, 24.
Catch-a-Turian Toccata (flute and piano arrangement). Lisa Hansen, flute; Max Lifchitz, piano. North/South Recordings CD (recorded 1996, released 2001)
Concerto in One Movement for Piano and Orchestra, in Master Musicians Collective New Century, vol. X. Betty Oberacker, piano; Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vladamir Valek, conductor. MMC Recordings, MMC 2067, CD (1998)
Encore for Piano in “Max Lifchitz Plays American Piano Music.” Max Lifchitz, piano. Vienna Modern Masters, CD 2002 (1991)
Fantasie for Organ in “Deferred Voices: Organ Music by Women.” Christa Rakich, organ. AFKA Sk-527 CD (1993)
Fantasy for Piano in “Sunbursts: Solo Piano Works by 7 American Women.” Nanette Kaplan Solomon, piano. Leonarda LE 345 CD (1998)
Four Chinese Love Poems in “American Art Song Today-Alive!” Anne Marie Church, soprano, Linda Sweetman-Waters, piano. Josara JR001 CD (1999)
“Gloria” for mixed chorus, two pianos and percussion (from the Mass) in “Octavos Two.” San Jose State University Concert Choir, Charlene Archibeque, conductor. Santa Barbara Music Publishing, SBMP CD 4 (2000)
Homage to Cowell, Cage, Crumb, and Czerny for 2 pianos in “The Modern Americans.” Marjorie and Wendell Nelson, piano. Contemporary Record Society, CRS 8635 CD (1986)
Psalms for Organ in “The Psalms of Emma Lou Diemer,” vol. 1. Joan DeVee Dixon, organ. RBW Record Co., RBW CD014 (1999)
Quiet Lovely Piece for clarinet and piano in “Album Leaf.” John Russo, clarinet, Lydia Walton Ignacio, piano. Contemporary Record Society, CRS CD 9358 (1993)
Santa Barbara Overture. The London Symphony Orchestra, Brynmore Llewelyn Jones, conductor. Master Musicians Collective (MMC Recordings) CD (2001)
Sextet for flute, oboe, clarinet, cello, violin, and piano in “Music at the Crossroads: New American Chamber Music.” Max Lifchitz, director. North/South Recordings N/SR 1005 CD (1994).
Sonata for Flute and Piano in “Runes: American Music for Flute and Harpsichord.” Richard Soule, flute; John Metz , harpsichord. Runes - Cambria/Troppe Note Recordings CD-1432 (2000)
String Quartet no. 1 in “In Yet Longer Light’s Delay, Music from the Setting Century.” Sunrise Quartet. Living Music Recordings, vol. 1, CD (1996)
Suite of Homages in “Music for Solo Clarinet and Orchestra.” Halle State Philharmonic Orchestra, Rudolf Werthen, conductor. Contemporary Record Society, CRS 0069 CD (2000)
Toccata for Harpsichord in “20th Century Harpsichord Music,” IV. Barbara Harbach, harpsichord. Gasparo Records, GSCD-290 CD (2000)
Variations for Piano, Four Hands in “Chamber Music.” Marjorie and Wendell Nelson, piano. Contemporary Record Society, CRS 8949 CD (1990)
Variations on Rendez à Dieu for Organ in “The Psalms of Emma Lou Diemer,” vol. 3. Joan DeVee Dixon, organ. RBW Record Co., RBW CD018 (2000)
Verses from the Rubaiyat in “American Sampler.” Atlanta Singers, David Brensinger, conductor. ACA Digital CM 20046 CD (1998)
Ellen Grolman Schlegel is Chair of the Department of Music at Frostburg State University, Frostburg, Maryland, and cellist/founding member of the Chamberlain Trio, in residence at that university. She recently completed a bio-bibliography of American composer Emma Lou Diemer; it is available now through Greenwood Press, and on-line at amazon.com. Dr. Schlegel is review editor of the IAWM Journal.