Discipline: Music Composition

Mary Howe

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: Washington, D.C.
MacDowell Fellowships: 1926, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1940, 1941, 1943, 1944, 1946, 1947, 1951, 1952, 1957
Mary Howe (1882-1964) was an American composer and pianist. She received training in piano from Richard Burmeister in Germany and with Ernest Hutcheson and Harold Randolph at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, where she also studied composition with Gustav Strube. She also had lessons with Boulanger. Howe lived and worked in Washington and played an important part in the life of the city. She toured as a duo-pianist with Anne Hull from 1920 to 1935. With her three children, she appeared with the 4 Howes singing madrigals and early music. In 1930 she raised the money to found the Washington-based National Symphony Orchestra. Together with Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, she also founded the Chamber Music Society of Washington. In 1925 or 1926 she worked with Amy Beach to organize the Association of American Women Composers. Mary Howe spent several summers at MacDowell, where she composed many of her orchestral, chamber, and vocal works. She was an accomplished composer of works in a tonal idiom. Her numerous compositions include more than 20 large orchestral pieces, as well as a substantial body of chamber and piano music. Many of her works are orchestral tone poems, and her late Romantic musical language is richly expressive.

Studios

Schelling

Mary Howe worked in the Schelling studio.

Marian MacDowell funded construction of this studio the year that the organization was established and the first artists arrived for residency. It was called Bark Studio until 1933, when it was renamed in honor of Ernest Schelling, a composer, pianist, and orchestral leader who served as president of what was then called the Edward MacDowell…

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