Emma Lou Diemer




		by Emma Lou Diemer, '49 Mus.B.,'50 Mus.M. 75123.1015@compuserve.com I have my bachelor of music and master of music from the Yale School of Music. Both degrees are in composition, although I studied piano quite intensively, too. I received various scholarships and some prizes (Bradley-Keeler, Woods Chandler) for compositions written while there. I was enrolled in the music school three years: two for finishing the BM (I had been elsewhere for the first 2 years) and one year for the MM. At that time there were no women in Yale College, only in the professional schools. The gender balance is quite different now. There were about 150 students in the music school and a fair number of women, although only two of us (women) were composition majors.
		Paul Hindemith was on the faculty though teaching elsewhere (at Harvard delivering the Norton Lectures) for part of the time I was at Yale, and I was in some of his theory classes. I chose not to take composition from him, preferring not to sound like a little Hindemith as everyone else did, and studied composition with Richard Donovan. While at Yale I wrote a number of chamber works and a piece for piano and orchestra, and some choral works. Yale was a great experience: the music library, the main library, the Schubert Theatre, the organ concerts in Woolsey Hall (I'm an organist), the chamber concerts in the music school, the hint of the ocean from Long Island Sound, the trees, Harry's, the Whiffenpoofs, the famous faculty and visiting artists/speakers (Eleanor Roosevelt, Frank Lloyd Wright, Benny Goodman, Mel Powell). Since Yale I've been on a Fulbright, have umpteen publications and some recordings, was prof. at UCSB 20 years and at the Univ. of Maryland before that, composer-in-residence with the S.B. Symphony 2 years, various other great experiences in music. I'm very proud to be a Yalie -- especially a woman Yalie.