Discipline: Music Composition

Gisele Barreau

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1978
Gisèle Barreau is a French composer from Nantes, in Brittany. Barreau began studying composition at Jussieu University where she worked with Émile Leipp and Michèle Castellengo, she then went to the Paris Conservatoire where she studied with Pierre Shaeffer and later with Oliver Messiaen. Barreau was awarded first prize in harmony, counterpoint, fugue, analysis, and composition in Messiaen’s class before receiving her diploma in electroacoustic music from the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. She then became a resident at Villa Medici, and worked as a professor at the Paris Conservatoire. Barreau received numerous accolades for her work, including the Koussevitsky Composition Prize (1977), the Composition Prize of the SACEM Georges Enescu (1978), the Award of the Ministry of Women’s Rights (1986), and the Prix SACEM Partition teaching (2000).

Studios

Sprague-Smith

Gisele Barreau worked in the Sprague-Smith studio.

In January of 1976, the original Sprague-Smith Studio — built in 1915–1916 and funded by music students of Mrs. Charles Sprague-Smith of the Veltin School — was destroyed by fire. Redesigned by William Gnade, Sr., a Peterborough builder, the fieldstone structure was rebuilt the same year from the foundation up, reusing the original fieldstone. A few…

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