Arlene Zallman


Arlene Zallman was an American composer and music educator.

Life

Zallman was born in Philadelphia and graduated from the Juilliard School of Music. She received a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied composition with Vincent Persichetti and George Crumb. In 1959 she received a two-year Fulbright Scholarship to Florence, Italy, to study with Luigi Dallapiccola. She held positions on the faculty of the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and Yale University and then became a professor of composition at Wellesley, Massachusetts in 1976.
She received the Marion S. Freschl Award for Vocal Composition, and awards from Meet the Composer, the Mellon Foundation, the Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her Three Songs from Quasimodo won awards from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the International Society for Contemporary Music.
She held fellowships at the MacDowell Colony, where she received the Faye Barnaby Kent Fellow. During 2001-2, she was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. In 2003 Zallman was a guest composer-in-residence at the Rocca di Mezzo Music Festival in the Abruzzi region of Italy.
Zallman had two daughters. She died in her home in Wellesley in 2006 and was buried in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Works

Zallman completed a number of compositions on commission, including The Trio in 1999. Her works are published by the Association for the Promotion of New Music and by C.F. Peters.
Selected works include:
  • A Whimsical Offering piano solo 7 min 1994
  • Analogy for solo flute 5 min 1971
  • And with Ah! Bright Wings chorus and organ 8 min 1986
  • Emerson Motets for chorus 12 min 1985
  • Letters for mezzo-soprano and viola 5 min 1996
  • Luoghi tenor 14 min 1998
  • Nightsongs I for violin and piano 4 min 1984
  • Racconto for piano 8 min 1968
  • Shakespeare Sonnet CXXVIII for baritone and piano 4 min 1980
  • Shakespeare Sonnet XVIII for soprano and piano 3 min 1958
  • Shakespeare Sonnets XXXIII & XL baritone, 7 min 1979
  • Soliloquium solo violoncello 5 min 1986
  • Sonnet/Sonata for soprano and piano 7 min 1991
  • The Cigarette Butt Blues for women’s voices, 7 min 1991
  • Three Preludes piano solo 5 min 1979
  • Three Songs from Quasimodo soprano, 6 min 1976
  • To a Hurdy-Gurdy for soprano and violoncello 4 min 1975
  • Vox Faminae Song cycle for soprano and piano 23 min 2002