Bethany Beardslee

Bethany Beardslee, born December 25, 1925, in Lansing, Michigan, is an American soprano whose Broadway appearances spanned from 1960 to 1977, including credits with Martha Graham and Company and Nureyev. Her career extended well beyond the stage, establishing her as one of the foremost interpreters of 20th-century contemporary classical music and earning her a reputation among composers as a singer of singular dedication to new music.

Beardslee completed her undergraduate training at Michigan State College, now Michigan State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Music degree cum laude. She subsequently pursued postgraduate study at the Juilliard School, training with Louise Zemlinsky, wife of composer Alexander Zemlinsky. Princeton University awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1977, the New School of Music in Philadelphia granted her an honorary Ph.D. in 1984, and the New England Conservatory followed with an honorary degree in 1994.

Her first marriage, in 1951, was to French conductor Jacques-Louis Monod, who introduced her to the vocal repertoire of the Second Viennese School. Throughout the 1950s, the two toured the United States performing that literature alongside standard Lieder. In 1956, she married composer Godfrey Winham, a pioneer in computer music research, with whom she had two children, Baird and Christopher Winham. Godfrey Winham died in 1975. Her collaboration with Milton Babbitt began as early as 1949 and proved to be among the longest and most consequential of her career. Babbitt composed multiple works specifically for her voice, among them Du, a song cycle for soprano and piano set to poetry by August Stramm; Vision and Prayer, based on poetry by Dylan Thomas; Philomel, with text by John Hollander; and A Solo Requiem, written in honor of her late husband Godfrey Winham. Babbitt described her capacity for learning difficult music by saying she could work through material no one else in the world was capable of mastering. The Ford Foundation Award in 1964 provided Beardslee the means to commission Babbitt to compose Philomel, which was later selected for the National Recordings Registry in Washington, D.C.

Her 1961 recording of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire with conductor Robert Craft on Columbia Records became a landmark document in 20th-century music. Craft credited it as the first recording in which the sprechstimme was realized in the manner Schoenberg had originally conceived, and the recording was subsequently used by choreographer Glen Tetley when he staged his version of Pierrot Lunaire. In 1977 and 1978, Rudolf Nureyev danced Tetley's choreography to Beardslee's live performances in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris, a collaboration that connects directly to her Broadway credit with Nureyev. Beardslee performed Pierrot Lunaire more than fifty times in the United States and abroad. Her first performance of the work had taken place in November 1955 at Town Hall in New York, with Jacques-Louis Monod conducting, for Camera Concerts.

In 1961, Beardslee sang for Martha Graham's premiere of Clytemnestra, a credit reflected in her Broadway association with Martha Graham and Company. That same year, she gave a 1961 Newsweek interview in which she stated that she did not think in terms of the public and regarded music as belonging to musicians rather than as a form of entertainment. She premiered new works by Babbitt, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Krenek, Webern, Dallapiccola, and Berg, and performed with major orchestras including the Boston Symphony Orchestra under conductors Charles Munch, Erich Leinsdorf, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Gunther Schuller; the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez; the Detroit Symphony under Paul Paray; the Buffalo Philharmonic under Lukas Foss; and the Columbia Symphony under Igor Stravinsky himself, for the premiere of Threni. She also performed lieder recitals with pianists Robert Helps, Jacques-Louis Monod, Yehudi Wyner, and Richard Goode.

In 1962, the American Composers Alliance presented Beardslee with its Laurel Leaf Award for distinguished achievement in fostering and encouraging American music. Her discography spans decades and includes recordings on Columbia Records, New World, Nonesuch, C.R.I., Decca, and other labels, covering works by Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Stravinsky, Babbitt, Mel Powell, George Perle, Ben Weber, and others. A 2018 release, Bethany Beardslee Sings Schumann, Schubert and Brahms, extended her recorded legacy into the standard Lieder repertoire. In 2017, she co-authored a memoir titled I Sang the Unsingable: My Life in Twentieth-Century Music, published by Boydell and Brewer.

Beardslee officially retired in 1984, though she continued to perform periodically in the years that followed. Her final public performance took place in 1993 at Weill Recital Hall in New York City. In retirement, she served as president of the Association for the Publication of New Music and produced recordings of her own performances as well as works by Godfrey Winham and composer Arlene Zallman.