Symphony Composer
She not only “marched to the beat of her own drum” (an old phrase used to describe people who are happy proceeding as they choose, without trying to conform to the customs of others), she wrote the music for the drum.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Gloria Coates (GC) was born in Wausau, Wisconsin. Her father was an elected member of the Wisconsin state legislature. Her mother worked in weapons manufacturing during World War II and later as a nurse’s assistant.
CHILDHOOD
GC showed musical inclinations early. A Wausau newspaper reported that “The children in the 5-year-old kindergarten have a rhythm band: Thomas Evenson, Jack Luedtke and Gloria Kannenberg (GC’s maiden name) brought drums from home.” By then, GC was also proficient on the toy piano.
By 12, GC was creating her own, often unconventional, music.
EDUCATION
After graduating from high school in Wausau, GC studied music and drama at a college in Illinois. She later studied at other institutions, including the Cooper Union in New York City and Louisiana State University, where she earned a Master’s degree in music composition.
During her formal academic years, GC studied voice as well as composition.
FUTURE MENTOR INSPIRES HER CAREER PATH
At age 28, GC composed music which she submitted to a national junior composer’s competition, where her music won an ‘excellent’ rating. But teachers and contest judges sometimes discouraged her more audacious departures from tradition.
As GC later recounted, a key moment in her development as a composer came when, as a teenager, she attended a question-and-answer session with the Russian composer Alexander Tcherepnin, who would later become her mentor. He told her that it was more important to follow her instincts than to follow predetermined rules.
ZIGS AND ZAGS UNTIL SETTLING ON A MAIN CAREER FOCUS
Following a divorce, GC, her daughter and their dachshund boarded a ship for Europe, settling in Munich, Germany, where she initially pursued a career singing opera, but fate intervened.
CHALLENGE – INJURY FORCES CAREER PATH ALTERATION
While skiing in Germany, GC was hit by another skier, causing GC to be paralyzed in her upper back. The accident forced her to give up singing so she changed her artistic focus to painting, another interest, along with music.
While living in Germany, GC was aware of terrorist attacks at the Olympics in Munich. The building where she was living was rumored to be a possible terrorist target, so she moved her music transcripts out of the building for their safekeeping. Soon, GC realized that by taking that precautionary step to preserve her music compositions, she was sending a sort of subliminal message to herself, “that music was so important, it was more important than my life.”
From then on, music became GC’s primary focus. For years, she curated (selected, organized and supervised the items in an exhibition) a series in Germany devoted to American contemporary music. Her compositional output covered a wide range. She also held a job giving tours of the Dachau concentration camp to members of the U.S. Army. Among the works those tours inspired was her “Voices of Women in Wartime,” a setting of writings by women under various circumstances during World War II.
GC composed 17 symphonies along with numerous works for small ensembles and voice. While working on her 11th symphony, a reviewer for the New York Times wrote that “Ms. Coates’s symphonies are dark and sensuous, and distinguished by an imaginative use of orchestral glissandos (gradual rather than stepwise changes of pitch, like slow sirens) which culminate powerfully in drawn-out crescendos. The glissando continued to be her calling card.”
The Times reviewer continued: “Gloria owned the orchestral glissando the way van Gogh said he owned the sunflower. The slow pitch slides that run across the surfaces of her symphonies and string quartets can be difficult for the performers to coordinate, which has probably made musicians less willing to present her music. But they make it absolutely distinctive and recognizable. And underneath those glissandos there is often a clear discipline of canons, palindromes and other simply music structures. The effect is often like a painting of a beautiful edifice on which rain has impressionistically smeared the surface.”
GC said her music “sometimes is melodic, but often derived from structures of microtones melted together. It is a way of thinking of music not as separate tones on a scale, as we have for centuries, but as sounds gliding through time and space which have their own laws and still have roots in the historical musical tradition.”
A review of her Sixth String Quartet noted: “Bleak and ascetic, strange, and disturbing as her music may be, it’s also got a purity that makes it peculiarly compelling. It’s not music that’s ever likely to leave even a single listener indifferent.”
CAREER SATISFACTION
While GC’s musical works weren’t often heard in the United States, critics and other writers admired her originality. One noted that Ms. Coates had set herself apart from other out-of-the-mainstream composers as “one who doesn’t merely surprise or amuse you when you encounter their music for the first time, but who completely knocks you off your feet, and moves you very deeply and powerfully, even if, at the time, you’re not really sure why you’re experiencing such a strong reaction.”
Another critic called GC simply “our last maverick.”
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This career story is based on several sources including an obituary for Gloria Coates written by Neil Genzlinger, published by The New York Times on 9/7/23 plus internet research.
