Myriam Marbé

Myriam Marbe (April 9, 1931 in Bucharest – December 25, 1997 in Bucharest) was a Romanian composer and pianist. Marbe received her first piano lessons from her mother, who was a pianist. She studied at the Bucharest Conservatory from 1944 to 1954, where she took classes in piano with Florica Musicescu and Silvia Capăţână, as well as in composition with Leon Klepper and Mihail Jora. From 1953 to 1965, she was a film director at the Casa de filme in Bucharest. She taught counterpoint and composition at the Bucharest Conservatory from 1954 to 1988, where her refusal to join the Romanian Communist Party prevented her from reaching the rank of Professor. Between 1968 and 1972, she managed to obtain permission from Romanian authorities to travel to the West and participate in the Darmstadt New Music Summer School in West Germany, and in 1971, at the Royan Festival for Contemporary Music in France. After the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, she was awarded a working grant from the German city of Mannheim for the year 1989-90. Besides being a composer, Marbe worked as a journalist and musicologist. She coauthored a monograph on George Enescu and also wrote critical essays and analyses on musical style. The composer's heritage is located at the Sophie Drinker Institut (Bremen/Germany) [1] and most of the scores are available at the Institut's internet-site [2].