Mabel Daniels (1878-1971)
Active in music from an early age, Mabel
Daniels was a magna cum laude graduate of Radcliffe College. While a student she was a soloist in the Glee
Club and composed two operettas that were performed by her fellow students. After graduation, she studied composition
with George W. Chadwick in Boston who encouraged her to study with Ludwig Thuille in Munich, Germany.
Once in Munich she attempted
to enroll in a score-reading class given by Director Stavenhagen. No woman had ever been admitted to his class. She entered the classroom to play her
audition where thirty male students waited in judgment of her keyboard skills. "You could have heard a pin drop, the
place was so still. . . . Just as I took my seat before the keyboard, I heard
one of the men smother a laugh. That settled it! I was bound to do or die, and
with a calmness quite unnatural I played the bars set before me without a
mistake. Nobody laughed when I had finished." Way to go Mabel!
Returning to the States,
Miss Daniels became director of the Glee Club at Radcliffe and later became
head of the Music Department at Simmons College. From 1918 on, she devoted her time to
composing.
Choral compositions were the
greater part of her output. Her Exultate Deo was written for the 50th
Anniversary of the founding of Radcliffe College and The Song of Jael was given its premiere at the Worcester Festival in
1940. She spent 24 summers at the
MacDowell Colony. Her generosity of
spirit shown through when she established scholarships and composition prizes
for music students at New England Conservatory of Music and Radcliffe
College.
As with many women composers
of her day, Miss Daniel’s compositions were published by Arthur P Schmidt of
Boston.
The Branscombe Choral
frequently performed her choral pieces in concert and on radio. In the Choral’s scrapbooks you will find
handwritten notes from Mabel Daniels to Gena Branscombe thanking her for
scheduling her piece and for the beautiful performance!
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