Eggplant

Betsey wrote this piece for piano and bassoon in 1983 when she was 25 years old. She was working in the Admissions Office at Bennington College for our friend John Nissen, and took a course at the college in composition with Vivian Fine. I don't know if this piece was performed by college musicians as a part of the course, but I'm pretty sure I personally have never heard it. Betsey also composed a song-cycle at that time which was for piano and baritone, and I did perform that at a recital sponsored by the Guilford Friends of Music which featured local composers. Unfortunately, Betsey did not continue to compose - she met Rob the following year, got married, and her life took another direction.

The score of Eggplant

Betsey

Vivian Fine was a highly regarded composer and pianist. She championed and premiered the works of several 20th century American composers.

"Fine wrote extensively for voice, employing the poetry of Shakespeare, Racine, Dryden, Keats, Whitman, Dickinson, Kafka, Neruda, and others in a wide variety of settings. She composed two chamber operas, The Women in the Garden (1978) and Memoirs of Uliana Rooney (1994). In The Women in the Garden, Fine used the writings of Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Isadora Duncan and Gertrude Stein to fashion conversations among the four women and a tenor representing the various men in their lives. Memoirs of Uliana Rooney (1994), Fine's last major composition, is a contemporary opera buffa, with libretto and videography by Sonya Friedman. The work, autobiographical in spirit if not in factual detail, follows American composer Uliana Rooney as she journeys through the 20th century, surviving changing political climates and several husbands to ultimately triumph"

Fine died in 2000 at age 86, following an auto accident.

Vivian Fine