Diehn Composers Room New Music Performance Collection

HISTORY

The Southeastern Composers Competition and Symposium (SECCS) was held on June 24, 2000. It was sponsored by the Diehn Composers Room, Old Dominion University Libraries, and supported by a grant from the Norfolk Foundation. The Diehn Composers Room was established by a gift from composer F. Ludwig Diehn to support research leading to the performance of contemporary musical works. It houses primary source materials (mainly scores in manuscript, recordings of performances, and personal papers) relating to American composers, and its programming provides public opportunities for new music to be performed and heard.

The symposium consisted of lectures and a question and answer period led by Adolphus Hailstork, Virginia Laureate Composer and Composer-in-Residence at Norfolk State University (currently professor of music and Composer-in-Residence at Old Dominion University), and Judith Shatin, Chair of the McIntire Department of Music and Director of the Virginia Center for Computer Music at the University of Virginia. Hailstork and Shatin were also the judges of the competition, in which composers from the southeastern states of Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C were invited to submit anonymously either one or two musical scores (with biography and program notes) that had not previously been published or selected for a prize. The scores were to be fifteen minutes long or less, could not exceed sixteen musicians, and were to be for any combination of the string quintet, brass quintet, flute, oboe, clarinet, two pianos, and eight voices (SSAATTBB). The winning compositions were performed and recorded at Chandler Recital Hall in the Diehn Fine and Performing Arts Center following the symposium.

COLLECTION SCOPE AND CONTENTS

The Southeastern Composers Competition and Symposium (SECCS) Collection is the result of a competition of musical scores held by the Symposium. The competition consisted of sixty-three pieces by thirty-nine composers. The six winning pieces are part of the Diehn Composers Room's New Music Performance Collection. Those composers and their entries are Allen Anderson, "Cloud Collar" [1997]; Matthew Bumbach, "Alleluia" [2000]; Tayloe Harding, "Terra Ceia Set" [1997]; Jonathan Newmark, "String Trio" [1997]; Greg Scheer,"6, For String Quartet" [1998]; and Perry Townsend "The Jester Sings: An Elegy" [1995].

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