(Every month, Musicians Against Elitism will feature one lesser-known composer belonging to a minority demographic. If you have any ideas, please feel free to send them over! For further reading, here’s the rest of our musician spotlight series.)
Margaret Bonds is an American pianist and composer. She is also one of the first black classical composers and performers to gain recognition. She is perhaps best known for her collaborations with Langston Hughes.
Bonds was born in Chicago, Illinois to Dr. Monroe Majors and Estella C. Bonds. Her parents divorced when she was very young and so Margaret and her mother both assumed the lasts name Bonds. Margaret’s mother was a church organist who taught her to play piano at the age of 5. When she turned 13, she began to study composition with 2 African American composers named William Dawson and Florence Price (who we’ve done a spotlight of!). She also studied piano with Price.
Bonds enrolled at Northwestern University in 1929 at the age of 16. She was awarded the Wanamaker prize in 1932 for her composition “Sea Ghost”, acheiving national recognition. As a pianist, she made her debut at New York’s Town Hall in 1932. She was the pianist with the Chicago Women’s Orchestra the next year when they played the D minor Piano Concertino written by Florence Price. It was conducted by Ebba Sundstrom and broadcast on CBS.
Margaret Bonds’s most acclaimed piece is “Troubled Water”. Maya Angelou has been quoted calling it a “masterpiece”. She also frequently collaborated with Langston Hughes, a well-known poet, playwright, novelist, and columnist. Some of her best known works are with Hughes, including the musical “Shakespeare in Harlem” and the cantata “Ballad of the Brown King”.
Here are some of our favorites of Margaret Bonds’ compositions:
Stopping By Woods
To A Brown Girl, Dead (TW for very sad/dark themes)
Gustavo Mon-Dieu Porquoi is an American composer with a wide range of compositions under his belt. He has been nominated for 30 Grammys and is widely considered to be the father of modern avant-garde composing. He is also gay as fucking hell and has like 9 whole husbands shit is lit my dude.
Porquoi was born and raised in Hellville, Ohio to his parents Julia and Ricardo Porquoi. His house was very musical, his mother was a professional jazz oboe and octavin player and his older brother Jeremy went on to physically evolve into John Cage somehow. He began composing at 11 years old, starting with his famous “Vivace for 13 Oboes and a Scarecrow”. He was always a lover of the avant-garde and out of the ordinary, and continued to almost exclusively write in this style, until he hit the age of 35, when he wrote his “Concerto for Sopranino Recorder and Piccolo”, in which he chose to use the 2 most annoying instruments he could think of and use them beautifully. (Author’s note: I actually high key love recorders.)
He studied music education and composition at the Sniggledap Conservatory in New York, there his friend and future 5th husband Amadeus Housuer, let him try his cello. Porquoi immediately fell in love with the instrument and began to learn all the string instruments he could. Which later evolved to woodwinds and percussion too. Around the time he began to pick up all these instruments was when he composed his first Orchestral Suite: “Tabatha and the City of Rainbows” which was critically acclaimed.
Here are some of our favorites of Gustavo Mon-Dieu Porquoi’s compositions:
(Every month, Musicians Against Elitism will feature one lesser-known composer belonging to a minority demographic. If you have any ideas, please feel free to send them over! For further reading, here’s the rest of our musician spotlight series.)
Ethel Smyth was an English composer as well as a lesbian and feminist. Ethel has written many works for a wide range of ensembles, including chamber music, symphonies, piano solos, and operas (and that’s just barely scraping the surface!).
Smyth was born on April 23rd, 1858. Her father, a Major-General in the royal artillery, was very against her starting a career in music. But contrary to her father’s wishes, Smyth continued her career. She attended the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig, which was founded by Felix Mendelssohn himself and had many many notable alumni including Edvard Grieg.
It is quite obvious that Smyth has made an impact on feminism. She was a member of the women’s suffrage movement. In 1910, she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), a militant organisation that campaigned for Women’s suffrage in the UK. Smyth wrote a piece entitled “March of the Women” which was widely accepted as the anthem of the women’s suffrage movement.
Smyth had realized very early in her life that she was a lesbian. She was very open and bold about it. She, among many other members of the WSPU, was arrested for breaking the windows of politicians who opposed women’s suffrage. This act of protest was led by Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the WSPU. Pankhurst and Smyth were thought to be in a relationship as they “...were often in Holloway together and shared a cell,” and were said to be very close. In addition, while she was in prison, she organized a choir with three other female prisoners whom she conducted with a toothbrush.
Here are some of our favorites of Ethel Smyth’s compositions:
amazing. i am proud of u. also very proud that you can play multiple instruments. :0 i only play the piccolo, flute, and guitar so far. i hope u enjoy, as my friends call it, playing the hell tube!! -a lesbian flutist that wants to see a lot more guys/masculine identifying people to play the flute
I could list all my instruments but someone would have to specifically ask first
And also that’s cool. I almost actually said hell pipe earlier when referring to bassoon no joke that’s so funny
(horn anon here!) oh my gosh yeah mellophone! i'm currently in marching season, so i'm getting a heavy dose of mellophone right now. and holton is a horn brand, and they make pretty good horns (like if these were fast food establishments, it'd be like a chipotle. not quite made to order artistanal mac n cheese, but pretty freaking great). i really want one, because i have one from my school and it's silver and pretty and i want my own so i can play nocturnes anytime i want lol
Oh that’s cool! A fellow Mello! Also I looked it up and Holton is apparently a part of Steinway and apparently they’re considered the “leaders” in low-brass manufacturing, no wonder you’d want a Holton Horn. (I kind of do too now..)
i'm a horn player (woot woot go brass) and i really love this blog. it's really nice to see a relatable music blog because I'm an amateur and have no intention of being a professional musician (although i want to get a holton, a girl can dream). So many other blogs just focus on being a professional musician and any time i have a question or something of interest, i can be put off because of my amateurness. Thanks for this awesome blog, i really appreciate this!!!
Hey finally another wind player in the abyss of strings I call Musblr! And Its cool you play horn I happen to be a Mellophone myself :)
anywho I’m really glad you enjoyed our blog! If you ever have a question you can come to us or maybe contact Mod Dvorak (peachesthecello) or Mod Chopin (pianistical) and we would be glad to help! Also what is a holton?
I want to see all the mods answer all the key signature asks!! Take your time if you need.
All of our answers are under the cut, because this is ridiculously long!
Mod Chopin:
C major: when i was like 7 i was playing in the mud with my nephew who’s actually only two years younger than me and he fell on his ass in the mud and couldn’t get up and i was laughing so hard
C minor: hahahahaha yeah
D-flat major: basically what i do every day because if you think i actually go outside you’re wrong
C-sharp minor: generally not really but more so among my youth orch friends than my school friends
D major: there was a cellist in my youth orch that kept bugging me to accompany him for a concerto competition that my orchestra hosts for its members, even after i politely rejected his request (i had a lot of stuff coming up and i was already accompanying someone, i didn’t want to do more stuff). but he kept bugging me and eventually resorted to insulting me and calling me slurs. i knew he’d gotten into trouble in orch before and gotten a warning, and next time he’d be kicked out. so at break during rehearsal, when everyone generally goes outside to talk and stuff, i purposefully riled him up near the end of it and when the conductor came out to call everyone back in he walked in on the cellist insulting me and i basically got him kicked out. he couldn’t even do the concerto competition anymore lmaoooooo
D minor: no, honestly people have no way to betray me because i don’t tell them my important secrets and such. also i don’t have drama in my life (not that i want any)
E-flat major: i’d rather work alone but if i had to pick i’d prefer to lead (although the people i’m leading better be competent or else i will scream)
E-flat minor: i’ve been told that i sit on every chair like i sit on a piano bench
E major: Are you a morning person? / i woke up at 12 pm yesterday and still wanted to sleep more so i’d say no
E minor: one thing alone doesn’t make me special, it’s everything added up (personality, abilities, skills, experiences, physical appearance, etc) that’s what makes every person unique. but if i had to pick a few facts, then i’m a fast learner, i have a very analytical mind, and i’m apparently super fast at both typing and reading.
F major: being prepared and having a strategy for every situation
F minor: logic and rationality but also screaming helps
F-sharp major: talking???? playing music together is fun too
F-sharp minor: reading, internet, drawing, writing, music-y stuff, writing or drawing stuff by hand in general
G major: don’t think so, we’re not that type of people
G minor: a lot actually, but generally they’re more like unstructured debates than arguments
A-flat major: a pianist/violinist i met at school
G-sharp minor: a lot of its problems pretty much boil down to illogical thinking but also like i hate society in general
A major: performing a concerto with an orchestra
A minor: not anything particularly big. and anyway, regretting things is of no use - we can appreciate that we shouldn’t have done that and learn from the experience for the future, but it’s not as if we can go back and change what we’ve done. i just try my best to make amends if needed, accept what i’ve done, and move on.
B-flat major: yulan magnolia / i’ve never thought too much about this, but probably the crow / i identify with a sea cucumber honestly but i can’t think of an actual fav animal
B-flat minor: haha nope and i’d like to keep it this way
B major: tbh i’m actually not too interested in this sort of thing??
B minor: studies have shown that mod chopin in fact views glasses that are mostly filled with water as 1/10th empty
Mod Holst:
C major: When I first learned bassoon
C minor: Fuck yes does any classical musician not feel this
D flat major: Sleep and practice
C sharp minor: not really
D major: Learning the rite of spring
D minor: I prefer not to say
E flat major: It kind of depends on the situation
E flat minor: My laugh is really squeaky and high pitched even though my voice is low af
E major: Nope
E minor: Uh, I guess when I’m composing I get really proud of myself because I’m selfish and rude ™
F major: When I practice and no time else because I don’t trust myself enough
F minor: Nothing. I just suffer alone. I guess I practice on occasion
F sharp major: Meming, m8
F sharp minor: well when I’m alone I like to get really comfortable and ready, and then I just go to town! ON A BOX OF CHOCOLATES AND I ALSO CRY
G major: I think the fact they claim to be my friends is a prank in and of itself
G minor: TOO OFTEN HAHAHA GENERALLY WITH MY S/O ABOUT STEVEN UNIVERSE BECAUSE THEIR SHIPS ARE BAD
A flat major: points to mod liszt (AHHHHHH ILY <3 -LISZT)
G sharp minor: Society.
A major: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
A minor: my birth
B flat major: Lily of the valley / Doves / Raccoons
B flat minor: too easily
B major: DOES OCEAN SOCIETY COUNT
B Minor: if you read any of this you already know the answer boo
Mod Liszt:
C major: when my sister was about two, she got almost all the frosting from her birthday cake stuck in her hair and i got to take pictures (which i still have). i don’t think i’m physically capable of forgetting this.
C minor: i don’t really consider myself hard to understand, but then again, i don’t exactly come with an instruction manual.
D-flat major: i like to read and play board games if there’s anyone else around, or practice a bit if i feel up to it!
C-sharp minor: sometimes i feel like a stranger around my friends. but don’t we all feel like that a bit?
D major: my ACT scores came in!! i scored almost perfect in every area (yes, even reading, by some stroke of luck).
D minor: i’ve been betrayed too many times to count. i’d rather not go into the details here.
E-flat major: half leader half follower, i guess! as much as i love taking charge, it gets tiring.
E-flat minor: i have a habit of standing on one leg almost all the time, and sometimes i dance as i walk. i have no idea how to explain it other than that. also my posture in general is really weird but apparently really interesting to watch.
E major: does staying up until three a.m. count as being a morning person? but when i do get enough sleep, i’m always really energetic when i wake up.
E minor: i have this birthmark on my neck. it doesn’t look like a birthmark but it’s very noticeable and people keep pointing it out. i’m the only person i know who has a birthmark like that; i guess you could say it makes me feel special!
F major: me? calm and in control? come on, my anxiety disorder is too severe to give a straightforward answer.
F minor: the fact that everything is temporary is what keeps me going. nothing feels better than moving on with my life after something awful happens.
F-sharp major: mostly my squad and i just chill out and talk and maybe go on runs or bike rides. sometimes i invite my music friends over for practice sessions!
F-sharp minor: usually i just read, sleep, or practice. sometimes i watch TV or work out.
G major: i’ve been pranked a few times. there was this incident involving cork grease and a clarinet mouthpiece but i don’t want to go into the details.
G minor: oh, please. look at my presence on this blog. guess for yourself. i think i need to tone down the argumentative-ness.
A-flat major: my flute teacher is probably the kindest person i know! she was one of my first real role models and i still look up to her both because she works hard and she’s so unconditionally nice to everyone.
G-sharp minor: if i were to describe everything i hate about society, i’d wear my fingers out. and i just practiced piano. vive le révolution.
A major: i’ve always wanted to be the first one to premiere a piece, and that dream has come true many times! it’s been fun all the way!
A minor: i really regret my entire classical elitist phase. yup, that’s right, a mod from musicians against elitism had one of those phases. but we all grow and learn and i can’t put enough emphasis on that.
B-flat major: roses, ducks, foxes! now you’ve got a good idea of the general mod liszt aesthetic.
B-flat minor: i’m usually very reserved, but there are many people who bring out the worst in me. and no one in a ten foot radius wants that.
B major: you’re asking me to choose just one society to study, and not even specifying which aspects? i want to study everything.
B minor: i am literally the most optimistic person i know, even though i don’t exactly come across like that.
