ABSTRACT
Hoping to create a number of late works that would enter the repertoire, Talma remained busy composing even after she stopped teaching at Hunter College and passed her eightieth birthday. Her last decade saw her compose a number of pieces and plan for many more that she left unfinished at her death in 1996 at Yaddo. Her completed works from this period do constitute some of her most often performed compositions, including her 1985 A Wreath of Blessings for mixed chorus a cappella; 1 Seven Episodes for Flute, Piano and Violin (1987); 2 In Praise of a Virtuous Woman (a setting of Proverbs 31: 10–30) (1990); 3 and others. She was particularly conscious of her age, and her works reflect this. She composed her final orchestral work, Full Circle, in 1985, returning to smaller forms that could be completed somewhat more quickly. She resisted taking on any new commissions, although she did accept a request from the new-music group Continuum to set Francisco Tanzer’s poem “Wishing Well” for soprano and flute for the ensemble’s twentieth anniversary concert in 1986. 4 The result was typical of this period of her work: a very straightforward setting of just 65 measures that Talma composed over a week in February in New York. Talma composed four works for chorus in the last 10 years of her life, and these, along with some songs for voice and piano in various states of completion, appear to be the works she spent the most time with before her death. These include A Wreath of Blessings, Give Thanks and Praise (1989), 5 and In Praise of a Virtuous Woman (1990). After 1990 and the completion of A Virtuous Woman, Talma’s output dropped considerably. Her most autobiographical works continue to express her devotion to her faith (several Psalm settings, Give Thanks and Praise, and In Praise of a Virtuous Woman, using Proverbs 31: 10–20); and her sense of aging and impending death (“Finis” (1993), “Heaven-Haven” (1993) and The Lengthening Shadows—also called Elegies—from 1993). 6 Although she finished a setting of Psalm 115 for mixed chorus (for which at this time the score is lost), the majority of her works begun in the last six years of her life remain incomplete, or exist only in sketch—rather than fair copy—form. Talma signified the finality of a work by creating a fair copy in ink; the last extant work to receive this treatment is her setting of Stevens’s Infanta Marina. 7 While her song on Landor’s text “Finis” is complete and dated, it is in pencil form only.
