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- EMMA LOU DIEMER (b. 1927) is
a native of Kansas City, MO. She studied piano from an early age,
wrote piano pieces as a child, and began to play organ in
church at age 13. She decided to be a composer about that time with a
strong interest also in piano, taking lessons at the K.C. Conservatory
(with Wiktor Labunski).
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- Her degrees in composition are from
the Yale School of Music (BM,1949; MM, 1950) and the Eastman School of
Music (Ph.D.,1960), and she studied composition further in Brussels on
a Fulbright Scholarship (1952-53) and at the Berkshire Music Center
(summers of 1954, 1955).
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- From 1954 through 1957, Diemer taught
in schools in the Kansas City area (Park College, William Jewell
College, the K.C. Conservatory of Music) and was organist in area
churches. After receiving the doctorate from Eastman she spent two
years (1959-61) as composer-in-residence in the Arlington, VA schools
under the Ford Foundation Young Composers Project. She wrote many
choral and instrumental works while in Arlington.
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- From 1962 through 1965 she was a
consultant for the Contemporary Music Project of the Music Educators
National Conference, taught in the Arlington schools, and in 1962 became
organist at Reformation Lutheran Church in Washington, DC. In
1965 she joined the University of Maryland as assistant professor of
theory and composition. In 1971 she was appointed to a similar
position at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and
subsequently became a full professor and, since 1991, professor
emerita. Dr. Diemer is also organist emerita at First
Presbyterian Church in Santa Barbara.
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- Dr. Diemer
was instrumental in founding the electronic/computer music center at
UCSB and helped to develop the Ph.D./DMA degrees in composition as
well as other aspects of the curriculum.
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- She has written many works of
varying difficulty, from hymns and songs to concertos and symphonies.
Diemer's many awards include a Louisville Student Award (for a suite
for orchestra), the Arthur Benjamin Award for "Quiet Music"
from Eastman (for the second movement of her 2nd
symphony/dissertation), and a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award in Orchestral
Music for her 1991 piano concerto. She was composer-in-residence with
the Santa Barbara Symphony from 1990-92, and the 1995 Composer of the
Year of the American Guild of
- Organists.
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- Her music has been published by
many firms, and recorded on many labels including Crest, North/South
Consonance, Contemporary Record Society, Master Musicians Recordings,
Leonarda, and others.
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