Die Familie war aus der Normandie in die Großstadt gezogen. Ihrem trunksüchtigen und jähzornigen Vater zum Trotz nahm sie, durch die Mutter heimlich unterstützt, als Achtjährige bei Eva Meyer Klavierunterricht und studierte ab 1903 gegen den teilweise gewalttätigen Widerstand des Vaters Klavier (bei Eva Meyer) und Komposition (bei Henri Dallier, Nadia Boulanger und Georges Caussade) am Conservatoire in Paris, wo sie im Laufe der Jahre zahlreiche Preise gewann. Durch ihre Kommilitonen kam sie mit der Avantgarde der französischen Musikszene in Kontakt, die sich in den Jahren unmittelbar nach Kriegsende in lebhaftem Aufbruch befand. Viele ihrer lebenslangen Freundschaften hatten ihre Wurzeln in dieser Zeit.

Werke:
Annäherung XII - an sieben Komponistinnen XII

Until 1993 she studied school music at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, and complemented her main studies with film music studies at Wiesbaden-based Music Academy (1992-1994 with Hubert Minkenberg). After that, she was granted a traineeship at a teacher training course in Bad Kreuznach. In 1996 she worked temporarily as a grammar school music teacher in Munich, and since September 1996 she has worked as a teacher at Kastellaun comprehensive school. So far, her compositions include songs, piano pieces, chamber music and orchestral works. However, she sees her main interest in film music and music theater. For example, she wrote the music for the short film 'Steinregen' (rain of stones) directed by Ralf Schöneberg, as well as the complete theater music for Friedrich Dürrematt's piece 'Romulus the Great'. Tina Ternes writes tonal compositions, and as a composer she deliberately tries to create a link between her works and musical practice. Even though she has a liking for instrumental effects, she still bears in mind the vocabulary of the instruments she uses. Often, Tina Ternes experiments with traditional forms and principles of composition and she has a talent for filling them with musical wit.

Werke:
Aufbruch (Awakening) for brass quintet (11') (2017)
Concer Tina
Concer Tina op. 6
Hexagramm op. 9 (Score) Canzona for six orchestra segments
Mayumi und Miyuki
Christmas Carols by women composers vol. 1
"Ich muß selbst Sonne sein" ("I myself must be sun")

Caroline Thon studied classical saxophone, then spent a year at Berklee College of Music (Boston/USA), before obtaining a degree in composition and arrangement from Cologne. In keeping with the multi-faceted nature of her training, she treads a path on the border between modern jazz, contemporary music and even rhythm’n’blues. She was commissioned by the European Music Festival Stuttgart to arrange the “Art of Fugue” from a jazz perspective (2008). Caroline Thon and Julia Hülsmann jointly led the first composition workshop for women composers as part of the Women in Jazz festival (2011). In 2012 she was invited by the Music Council of Saxony to direct the “Landesjugend Jazzorchester Sachsen” and was a member of the jury at the “Leipziger Jazznachwuchspreis” in 2012. She herself has received various awards as a woman composer and instrumentalist at international jazz competitions in the Netherlands. In 2014 the Women in Jazz festival saw the first performance of Caroline Thon’s project “Jazz aus der eurasischen Mitte”, with musicians from Iran, Lebanon, Bulgaria, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, which under its new name of EURASIANS UNITY was awarded the main 2015 RUTH prize at Germany’s biggest world music festival (TFF in Rudolstadt) in the summer of 2015. 2015 was also the year in which “Black&White Swan”, the second CD from the THONELINE ORCHESTRA, was released on the well-known ENJA-RECORDS/YELLOWBIRDS! label. For further information: www.carolinethon.de

Werke:
Le Ruisseau op. 21,2 for soprano and alto (duo or choir) with orchestral accompaniment

After the French revolution, which her husband had joined, the couple bought the secularized monastery Royaumont in Asnières-sur-Oise and transformed it into a factory. The couple became estranged from each other, since Jeanne-Rénée retained royalist sympathies, and later divorced. Her contemporary Henriette Louise von Waldner-Oberkirch depicts her as follows: “I am very intimate with Madame Thavanet, for whom I feel the greatest friendship, and with whom I constantly correspond. She is one of the best, the wittiest, and the most charming woman of my acquaintance. It is she who has composed the song of Pauvre Jacques, of which the words and air are both so touching. She had been for some time lady-in-waiting to Princess Elizabeth.” (“Memoirs of The Baroness d’Oberkirch, Countess de Montbrison” London 1852)

Werke:
L‘amour et le printemps. Songs around 1800

Between 1979 and 1984 Wen-Hui Tu studied composition (with professors Yen Lui and Chan-Fa Yiu) and viola at the Taiwan National Academy of Arts, and completed her studies by writing an awardwinning violin concerto. In the same year she continued her composition studies with professor Francis Burt, one of Boris Blacher students, at the academy of music and performing arts in Vienna. In 1989 she passed the composer diploma with distinction, was honored for it with an award by the Austrian Federal Minister for Science and Research, and was granted the academic title of a Master of Arts in 1991.cause she was repeatedly exposed to hostility as the wife of Louis Viardot, who was a Republican and a declared opponent of Louis Napoleon. However, the premiere of Meyerbeer. The Prophet (16th April 1849) and her interpretation of the role of Fidès were an astounding triumph. Pauline Viardot sang Fidès over 200 times on all the great European stages. Apart from her portrayal of this character, it was above all as Gluck Orpheus that she lent dramatic reality to the role through her musical and dramatic artistry. The part had originally been written for a castrato, but Berlioz arranged it for her and, as a result, the forgotten opera made its return to the stage (18th November 1859). The leading female roles in Beethoven Fidelio, Gluck Alceste and Verdi Macbeth were further milestones in her career. In 1863, at the age of 42, she retired from the stage and left France for political reasons. With her husband, her three younger children (Claudine, born 1852, Marianne, born 1854, Paul, born 1857) and Ivan Turgenev, she settled in Baden-Baden, taught female singers from all over the world, and built an art gallery and little opera house in her garden. Here she gave concerts with her pupils and children, and staged her own works in front of a cosmopolitan audience drawn from Baden-Baden society. Ivan Turgenev wrote the librettos. An orchestrated version of one of these pieces, Le dernier sorcier (1869), was also performed in public in Weimar (1869), in Riga and in Karlsruhe (1870). The first performance of Johannes Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody (3rd March 1870) also took place during the Baden period. The war between France and Germany, and the fall of Napoleon III, brought Pauline Viardot back to Paris via London (private performance of Le dernier sorcier 11.2.1871), where she continued to teach and compose until her death at the age of 89. Her compositions were mainly "salon operettas", among them Le conte de Fées (1879) and Cendrillon (1904). Until the deaths of her husband and Turgenev in 1883, she held a prominent music salon in the Rue de Douai, then in the Boulevard St. Germain. She published her own singing method, based on the Garcia school of singing, entitled Une heure d’étude; a collection of selected songs and arias: école classique de chant, with comments on phrasing and articulation, and notes on interpretation, etc.; and a critical edition of 50 Schubert songs. Apart from her own compositions and arrangements, these publications are today an important source of information about 19th century performance practices. "[…] she is the most brilliant woman I have ever met."2 It was not only Clara Schumann, the author of this quotation, who was of this opinion. Pauline Viardot’s singing and pianistic ability, her intelligence, and her extraordinary musical versatility, even by the standards of those days, were undisputed. She not only spoke fluent Spanish, French, Italian, English, German and Russian, but also composed in various national styles. Her more than one hundred songs and mélodies based on texts by Musset, Tergenev, Pushkin, Gautier, Mörike and Goethe were mostly published during her lifetime.

Werke:
Annäherung III - an sieben Komponistinnen. Kerstin Thieme, Ethel Smyth, Mia Schmidt, Wen-Hui Tu, Ver-dina Shlonsky, Elisabeth Kuyper, Jacqueline Fontyn
Tyan-Sian-Dzz