Lora Aborn Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Composer Lora Aborn

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

Lora Aborn (May 30,1907 - August 25, 2005) began music studies at the Effa Ellis Perfield School of Music in New York City, studying piano, music theory and composition. Upon her mother’s death she was sent to live with her maternal aunt in California where she stayed through 4 years of high school. There she studied piano and voice, played with the school orchestra and chorus and a 4-piece jazz band earning her first “money”. As her mother had planned, she attended Oberlin Conservatory where a talent for composing was recognized and she was taught composition privately and generously by Dr. George W. Andrews, dean of the school. Continuing her studies at the American Conservatory in Chicago she was awarded the gold medal for composition when she graduated. She continued studying under her composition teacher, John Palmer, as a protégé for many years.

Miss Aborn has written in all categories: ballet, voice (solo and choral), instrumental, piano, organ, opera, orchestra and varied chamber works. Lora Aborn’s music has been played in various forms throughout the United States, in Europe and in China, and she was named in the list of top American women composers.

Among her commissioned works are five full length ballets and many solo dances for Walter Camryn, Bentley Stone, Ruth Page and the Chicago Grand Opera Ballet Company, two commissioned works for the Chicago Chamber Choir and “The Mystic Trumpeter” for trumpet solo, baritone and organ, commissioned by Dexter Bailey, concert organist. “The Mystic Trumpeter” with text by Walt Whitman was transcribed for orchestra, trumpet and voice and first played by The Lake Forest Symphony in 1980 with Victor Aitay conductor, and by Oak Park-River Forest Symphony in 1982, Perry Crafton conductor. In 1987 the ballet score “In My Landscape” was performed by The Oak Park Symphony with Robert Smith, narrator.

Lora Aborn was for many years organist and director of music at the Unitarian Universalist Church, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple, where she was composer-in-residence. As a lifetime composer whose career spanned over seven decades, one of her special joys was writing vocal solos and choral works, to texts of her own choosing for the Unitarian church services.

Three of Lora’s compositions are featured on the CD “My Native Land” (1997), A Collection of American Songs, performed by world-renowned mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore. The works are: “T’is Winter Now”, “Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day”, and “Make Me An Instrument Of Thy Peace”.

A complete list of Aborn’s works is shown at the bottom of this webpage.

== Biography and photos of Aborn are from her official website.
== Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website. BD

Full disclosure, this interview was arranged by my long-time friend, bass-baritone William Powers. He had sung several of the songs by Lora Aborn, and wanted to be sure that her thoughts were part of my ongoing series of interviews with composers. After learning a bit about her, I was delighted to have the opportunity.

We met a couple weeks before her ninety-second birthday in 1999, and she was still bright and cheerful, as well as being thoughtful and clear in her responses to my questions.

Bruce Duffie:   You’ve been a composer all your life?

Lora Aborn: Yes, even when I was very young, and I couldn’t even play. I had no lessons, but I would fool around with the notes on the piano.

BD:   We’re sitting in a room with an organ. I didn’t know if you started with the organ or the piano.

Aborn: Oh no, that came later.

BD:   Do you enjoy being a composer? [Note that in the program shown at right, Aborn’s first name is mis-spelled!]

Aborn: I have a lot of joy, and a lot of satisfaction. A composer is very critical of himself, as well as others, because you’re educated that way. You have learned to criticize and listen, and follow the classical ideals.

BD:   Should we make a differentiation between the classical and the popular in music?

Aborn: I don’t know. I always did. I played popular music when I was young. I played it for dances in school, and at the same time I played classical. At that age, when you’re young, you can handle both of them, but now it’s just classical.

BD:   Was there ever any thought that you would want to write popular songs, or Big Band material?

Aborn: No, no, no. I didn’t go in for Big Band. Symphony orchestra, yes, but I never did Big Band.

BD:   Did your playing for dances influence anything you wrote?

Aborn: It might have, but I don’t know. Whatever you have inside comes out. [Laughs] It’s from the combination of whatever you put in there, like a computer.

BD:   Were you surprised at what would come out?

Aborn: No. For ten years I wrote ballet music, and it was performed well all over Europe. Ruth Page and Bentley Stone were the ballet company, and they performed my things. I wrote for them, so I did a lot of that. That came very easy to me.

BD:   Was it easy because you were writing for someone you knew?

Aborn: No, it’s just I had a natural feeling for it. I loved to dance! I don’t know if that anything to do with it, but...

BD:   You love the movement, so you felt the movement in your music?

Aborn: Yes.

BD:   Are there some pieces that you’ve not written specifically for the dance which would work well for it?

Aborn: Oh, yes! They have used a lot of my music for the dances, both solo dances and ballets. I wrote quite a long piece, a theme and variations, and they used almost all of it. It was taken by Jacob’s Pillow, a big dance company in Massachusetts, and set by Ruth St. Denis. That was years ago. She was old when I met her, but I enjoyed writing for dance.

shawn & st. denis

The site of Jacob's Pillow in Becket, Massachusetts, was originally settled in 1790 by Jacob Carter III. Due to the zigzagging road leading to the hilltop property, it became known as "Jacob's Ladder", after the Biblical story, and a pillow-shaped rock on the property prompted the farm to acquire the name "Jacob's Pillow".

The farm was purchased in 1931 by modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn (1891-1972) as a dance retreat. Shawn and his wife, Ruth St. Denis (1879-1968) [shown together in the photo at left], led the highly regarded Denishawn Company, which popularized dance forms rooted in theatre and cultural traditions outside European ballet. They were influential in training a host of dance pioneers, including Martha Graham, Charles Weidman, Doris Humphrey, and Jack Cole.

Shawn's objective was to establish a dance organization for American men. The early corps of his all-male company built many of the structures on the Jacob's Pillow campus. This effort came to an end in 1940 with the advent of American involvement in World War II; Shawn's company disbanded and most of its members joined the military.

Significant debt forced Shawn to consider a sale of the property. In 1940, he leased the property to dance teacher Mary Washington Ball, but her summer festival was also financially unsuccessful. British ballet stars Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin learned of Shawn's financial difficulties and decided to acquire the property. With financial backing and fundraising support from millionaire Reginald Wright, $50,000 was raised to purchase the property and construct a theatre building. The summer dance festival was revived, and Shawn was retained as its director until his death in 1972.

In 2003, the Jacob's Pillow property was declared a National Historic Landmark District by the federal government as "an exceptional cultural venue that holds value for all Americans". It is the only dance entity in the U.S. to receive this honor. In March 2011, Jacob's Pillow was named a recipient of the 2010 National Medal of Arts, a national award of distinction.

BD:   Does it take a special kind of idea to write for the dance?

Aborn: You have to have a feeling for it, yes.

BD:   Does it take a special kind of feeling to write for the human voice?

Aborn: Yes. Now there’s a feel that I definitely write easily in. Usually, I had someone in mind when I wrote for a singer, but sometimes I just wrote. I enjoy writing for the voice, I really do.

BD:   Why? What about it grabs you?

Aborn: I love finding the right words, poems, or whatever. I wrote an opera called Mitty. It was based on The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber. It’s a one-man show, and I think it’s one of my best things. It runs about forty-five minutes.

BD:   Did you write that for a higher voice or a lower voice?

Aborn: He’s a baritone. I wrote it for Robert Smith, who sang with the Lyric Opera. My other opera was Gift of the Magi, which is also in one act.

smith

Robert Ervin Smith, Jr. (August 24, 1934 - January 4, 2022) was born in Chicago to Robert Sr. and Wanda (Daufenbach). He became a Chicago public school teacher for thirty years and was chosen to co-teach a gifted ed program for grades 6, 7, and 8. For 10 years he taught art and music to these students, and his co-teacher taught language arts. Bob also taught voice and was a well-known and respected baritone for 13 years at Lyric Opera of Chicago. He sang continually throughout the area in many diverse venues, including creating a leading role in The Diva by William Ferris.

Robert married Geraldine (Fontana) whom he had met at Teachers College. They were together for 62 years and had six children.

BD:   How is writing an opera different from writing songs?

Aborn: Oh well, songs are one or two minutes, or not more than five minutes.

BD:   Is a song a two-minute opera?

Aborn: [Thinks a moment] You start out with the words, the poem or the words, and you just think about it. I found when I was writing for Shakespeare, I got so much more out of Shakespeare when I thought of it musically than I did when I just read it. You do a lot of erasing just like a writer, and sometimes you’re on the wrong track. When you find that out, then you go back. But sometimes it’s very easy and practically writes itself. It’s very funny, and it isn’t always the same.

BD:   Do you feel that you are creating something, or do you feel that you’re discovering something?

Aborn: You’re creating.

BD:   Are you always creating in your mind?

Aborn: I used to, but not so much now that I’m older. You really do lose it as you get very old, but yes, I think you’re always creating. There’s an imagination there. There’s a creative process behind it, and you do a lot of thinking. It’s just letting your mind go.

BD:   When you’re sitting there with a text in front of you, does the music come little by little, or does it come all of at once?

Aborn: No, you can’t get the whole thing at once. It grows as you go on.

BD:   How do you know when it is fully developed?

Aborn: It’s a hard question to answer because it doesn’t really work that way. When you are writing, you have a definite idea, or you have a definite pattern, and that’s it! It doesn’t go beyond that. As I said, I found Shakespeare so easy to put to music. It wasn’t that it was so easy, I was inspired. It was easy for me because I just fell into it. I never would have believed that until it actually happened. I thought it was odd that it was easy for me when setting Shakespeare to music. [Pauses a moment, then continues] I’ve written a lot or organ music because I played the organ. I was music director in the Frank Lloyd Wright Unity Temple for forty-three years. This was a very liberal religion, depending on what minister you were working with. Some were very picky about what words to use. You just didn’t use certain words and doctrines, so that influenced me a lot. [With a wink] I realized there’s no religious music in this world, so I had to write some. [Much laughter] I’ve written over a hundred items, and they’re good pieces of church music. Robert Smith sang a lot, and [noting his presence in the room] Bill Powers sang some. [Big smiles all around]

BD: When you write a religious piece, are you trying to instill the religion then into the people who hear it and sing it?

Aborn: No, you don’t have that at all. You have the words. If you’re using the Bible, you have the words just as they are. You don’t try to do anything with them. You just use them and put them to the music that you feel is there.

BD: This is writing with text. How is that different from writing for an orchestra?

Aborn: I hate to say this, but writing for an orchestra entails a lot of work. For example, it took me three years to write one specific thing for orchestra. I orchestrated it after writing, and then there was the copying, and let’s face it, it wasn’t going to be played a lot, especially since I was a woman. I did orchestrate some other things that I wrote, and they were used, but again, not very often.
aborn

BD:   Were these things you had to write, or were they on commission?

Aborn: I wrote a lot of commissioned things.

BD:   Those guaranteed you a performance.

Aborn: Yes, and when you have a chorus, an orchestra, and soloists, you know what you have to work with. It would be approximately thirty or forty-five minutes for a certain program.

BD:   That’s the length of the performance. Did you know ahead of time how long it would take to actually compose and complete the piece?

Aborn: Yes and no. You know what you have, how long your text is, and by the time you put that to music, you pretty well know what that is. I used many of the Shakespeare lyrics.

BD:   Were the musical ideas always there when you wanted them?

Aborn: I think so, more or less. Sometimes you have just a little something to start with, and that would grow as you worked on it. Sometimes you’d hear something, or you’d see something, and that would start an idea. But usually someone said what they wanted, and I wrote it.

BD:   Was it what you wanted to write?

Aborn: Yes. I could work into that pattern. If I wasn’t interested in the first place, I wouldn’t even accept it, but I don’t think that ever happened.

BD:   Did you ever turn down a commission?

Aborn: No, not that I remember. I suppose if I went through my music I might find something, but I don‘t remember ever turning down anything.

* * * * *

BD:   Were you basically pleased with the performances you heard of your music over the years?

Aborn: Not the orchestra works! [Both laugh] They didn’t give it enough practice. I don’t know what it was, because I’m sure they work awfully hard on their Beethoven. But on mine, they didn’t give it enough practice, and it was agony. It was really agony. I’m glad I didn’t follow that very far. The other things I really get pleasure out of are the songs and the dances.

BD:   The singers and the choreographers understood your music?

Aborn: Yes, they liked it, so those went well. You get an orchestra, and they’re playing their notes whether they like it or not. A player just thinks he should be playing his part, and I don’t know if he can hear the whole thing or not. He just hears his part.

BD:   Right, whereas the singer would have to get completely into the songs.

Aborn: Yes. When you learn it, you have to study and rehearse it, and learn it.
aborn

BD:   Do you feel you are part of a lineage of composers?

Aborn: A musical family?

BD:   Yes.

Aborn: If you mean am I influenced by anybody, I think so. Bach is my favorite, so maybe he influenced me a great deal. Maybe Stravinsky at some time, but it’s hard to say. At the time I was writing something I might have had some kind of an influence working in me because I listened a lot.

BD:   Do you have any advice for those who want to write for the voice, or for the ballet, or even for the orchestra these days?

Aborn: I don’t think I could say anything in so many words that would help anybody. It’s a kind of an agony and a joy. It’s hard work, and it’s fun, and it’s satisfactory. It’s a whole lot of things that you have to experience. So many times I get up from the piano, and I walk and I walk. For some reason, something was just bugging me. Then I’d go back... [Pauses a moment]

BD:   In the end, though, you were able to work through it?

Aborn: Yes. When I was writing songs, a lot of influence came from who you’re writing for. I wrote so many songs for Robert Smith because he was my soloist. I admired his voice so much, as well as his musical and emotional feeling for them. I could hear him singing when I wrote each one. That’s why so many of my songs are for men in that range. His artistry also influenced the text that I choose, the poems and things like that.

BD:   Is it safe to say you’re sympathetic to men?

Aborn: [Laughs] Well, if I am I’m not conscious of it!

BD:   Does it please you to know that there are more and more women composers coming along these days?

Aborn: Yes. I don’t think I’d dance all over the place to know it, but I think it’s good. It’s certainly better than it used to be!

BD:   Are you optimistic about the future of music?

Aborn: When I hear some of it, I wonder what phase it’s going through. I don’t know. At my age, it’s hard to say this is what I like best for contemporary music. Now, at this particular time, it’s so different from what it was fifty or sixty or seventy years ago when I was writing.

BD:   Are you still writing today?

Aborn: Nope. It’s gone. I have no craving to sit down and compose. I don’t know if it’s the brain that has something to do with it. I don’t want that challenge. I’m not tired, but it’s the psyche. I know a lot of old people do tremendously creative things. I’m speaking now of those who are in their 90s, or near 100, but it’s not common. [Sighs] I guess you wear out!

BD:   I trust you’re pleased with the body of work you’ve assembled?

Aborn: Yes, I am.

BD:   That’s good! Let me ask an easy question... what’s the purpose of music?

Aborn: [Laughs] Oh boy, that is a big question! I suppose it depends on the individual. Some people always do music. They just like to listen to it while they drive the car, and someone else, like the girl who lives upstairs, likes to listen to it while she works. She likes to have it going all day, though she’s not really listening. A person who’s trained to listen can’t help it. They’ve got to listen to it. Even if it’s trash, they’ve got to listen. They can’t ignore it. That’s the difference.

BD:   Can we assume that you write music which should not be ignored?

Aborn: Oh, you couldn’t! [Laughs] I don’t think so. Background music??? No way! With my friend upstairs, I’ll be playing something and she’ll come down, and clap. I don’t think she’s really listening to what I played. To her, music is pretty. That’s all it is, pretty.
aborn

BD:   What is music to you?

Aborn: That’s too big a question! I just can’t respond to that! [Much laughter] Maybe a lot of people do this, but you wake up in the morning with something going in your head. There’s music in there all the time. Even if I’m talking, I don’t pay any attention to it, but there’s music in there.

BD:   Is it your music, or nature’s music?

Aborn: It can be silly music, too! It can be some little nursery tune. I don’t know what brings it on...

BD:   [Even though I ask this of most of my guests, I had the temerity to pose it here.] You mentioned that you’ve been composing for many, many years. Would you mind if I asked your birth date?

Aborn: The real Memorial Day, May 30th.

BD:   [Pressing my luck...] Of which year?

Aborn: Very early in the century! I’ve lived most of this whole century, since 1907. I like to say that I married an older man. He was two months older! [Much laughter] We both were born in 1907. I’m the last one in my generation in my family anywhere, the last one.

BD:   One last question. Was composing fun?

Aborn: Yes! Yes! It’s a good gift. It’s an expression that one does if one is creative. It’s fun, yes, I would say. It could be agony as well, but it’s fun.

BD:   Thank you for all that you’ve given us.

Aborn: Well, thank you for your questions! [Laughs] Was it hard for you?

BD:   Oh no! It’s wonderful to listen to the accumulated ideas of a century.

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on May 17, 1999. This transcription was made in 2024, and posted on this website at that time. My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.