Shulamit Ran (born 1949)
Shulamit Ran was born in Tel Aviv. She heard Jewish cantor music on the radio at an early age and began composing her own songs to Hebrew poetry at the age of seven. Her serious study of composition started two years later.
At 14, Shulamit Ran moved from Israel to New York City to attend the Mannes School of Music. Her composition teachers included Elliott Carter. She has been teaching at the University of Chicago since 1973.
Shulamit Ran has composed music for piano and other solo instruments, for orchestra, for choruses, for chamber ensembles, and in 1997 an opera, Between Two Worlds (The Dybbuk). Her Symphony won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Music. This is her orchestral composition Legends from 1992–93):
The following video of Shulamit Ran’s dramatic 2008 string sextet Lyre of Orpheus includes some preliminary remarks by the composer. The music begins at about the 5:40 mark:
Although the composer admits that the title came after she composed the work, in retrospect she found that the music did have a kind of narrative that paralleled the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The first cello is considered the “protagonist” of the work, while the second cello also plays an unusual role in that its lowest string is tuned a third lower to get deeper notes.