A Missing Piece of a

Abstract

Vivian Fine (1913-2000) was an American composer of avant-garde music. With a nearly 70-year-long career and 140 compositions, Vivian Fine deserves to be a celebrated figure in American music history. Fine’s name is hardly known despite her massive contribution to the American music repertoire and the impressive social and professional circles in which she navigated, which included famous names like Ruth Crawford Seeger, Aaron Copland, and Henry Cowell. Of her 140 compositions, Vivian Fine composed four works for solo oboe that fill major gaps in the oboe repertoire. These works have received little attention from the oboe community. This study will explore the life and music of Vivian Fine by examining the social and professional circles that Fine navigated in America during the Great Depression, the Red Scare, and the Second World War. The study will unfold the three compositional styles seen throughout Fine’s career. These stylistic periods are characterized by serially informed atonality, followed by a shift to tonality, and concluding with a transition back to serially informed atonality. This unfolding will be examined through her oboe music, followed by each piece’s pedagogical applications. The outcome of this study will advocate for the oboe music of Vivian Fine and further demonstrate her place as an important figure in American music history.