Borroff, Edith (1925-2019)

Edith Borroff was born in New York City, the daughter of Marie Bergersen and Ramon Borroff, both well-known professional musicians. Trained in music from babyhood, she composed songs and piano pieces before she was six. In 1941 the family moved to Chicago; there, Borroff, who already knew she wanted to be a composer, earned a B.Mus. (1946) and M.Mus. (1948) in composition at the American Conservatory of Music.

It was not easy for American women composers to be taken seriously at that time. From 1950 to 1954 Borroff taught at Milwaukee-Downer College, which was then a school for women students only. There she composed several choral pieces for women's voices, including ‘The Christ-Child Lay on Mary's Lap’. The poem, by G.K. Chesterton, had long been a favourite, and it was natural for her to set it to music. In composing it, Borroff tried to incorporate both the form and the mood of the poem in the music. 

In 1954 Borroff went to Ann Arbor, where she earned her Ph.D. in the history of music at the University of Michigan in 1958. She taught at Hillsdale College, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and was a professor of music at Eastern Michigan University from 1966. Her areas of research centred on 17th-century French chamber music, American and contemporary music. Borroff also held an interest in education and contributed to many educational journals. She became the contemporary music critic for the Ann Arbor News in 1966. She authored the book Three American Composers (Pub. Univ Press of America, 1986) which traces the power shift from the apprentice/conservatory system of training composers to the university system, which took place in the United States from 1925 to 1975. Borroff focused on how this change influenced the works of three renowned American composers: Irwin Fischer, Ross Lee Finney, and George Crumb.

Edith Borroff’s papers are housed in the Newberry Library in Chicago, and include her writings, musical compositions, correspondence, research materials, and lectures as musicologist and composer. Shepassed away March 9, 2019 in Durham, NC, USA.

 

Edith Borroff

Compositions in catalogue

Catalogue no.

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Composer/arranger
 
 
 

Chamber Music series
 
 

Horn and piano
 
 
 
 
 
Sonata for horn and piano
edb 0702023
18.00
  
Edith Borroff