Music Meets Drama

Music teachers…..the words evoke memories of our first piano teacher who helped us learn the names of the lines and spaces on the staff, note names and values, rhythm, and, practicing every day for a half hour as our fingers fumbled on those first pieces. What has that piano teacher memory to do with Gena Branscombe? In her extensive career Gena had numerous music teachers and professors whose guidance and teaching abilities help jettison her into the public eye. Yes, those teachers had a diligent pupil who took her studies seriously, who strove to have a music career by her hard work and determination, never sitting on her laurels yet always looking for an opportunity of self-promotion. One-on-one lessons with music teachers are more than just one hour of playing or singing your assigned pieces. They are sessions of intense personal happenings that deal with not only notes, phrasing, tone color and technique, but also, one’s emotions in expressing what the composer intended. Te...

In 1899 at the ripe age of 18 while in college, Gena Branscombe’s song “For Love’s Abroad in Springtime Eves” was published by the Hatch Music Company of Philadelphia. Imagine….over one hundred years ago, a woman composer had found a publisher to release her song. I try to comprehend that idea and often wonder how she managed to get published for the first time, then, just two years later in 1901, four of her piano pieces were published by the Canadian firm Whaley, Royce and Company. Two different music publishers in two years. It is difficult to grasp how hard it was for composers, even more so, women composers to be published. Composers submitted their compositions to music publishers who looked at the marketability of the piece, took into consideration the cost of type setting the music, printing, distribution, hopefully it would sell and the composer would earn royalties. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries people purchased sheet music with fancy colorful engaging art wor...

As I have written my blog entries, I realized recently that more has been said about my Gena Branscombe project than about Gena Branscombe the person. When I perform my lecture recital, “Gena Branscombe: Her Life in Poetry & Song” after singing the opening song, I begin speaking with the statement, “Gena Branscombe born Picton, Ontario, November 4, 1881 died New York City July 1977. Daughter, woman, wife, working mother with four daughters, pianist, accompanist, composer, conductor; founder, conductor, fund raiser and organizer for over twenty years of her women’s chorus The Branscombe Choral, leader of women holding executive offices in such organizations as the National League of American Pen Women, General Federation of Women’s Clubs, National Federation of Music Clubs, Society of American Women Composers, Altrusa International and more…..oh, and did I mention, she was the mother of four?” Here in pictures is Gena’s life with a little commentary. I trust this will expla...