BRATTLEBORO — Blanche Moyse, one of Vermont's most influential musicians and the last surviving founder of the Marlboro Music Festival, died Feb. 10 at her home in West Brattleboro. She was 101.
Moyse likely did more to create Vermont's current vibrant music community than any other individual. She co-founded three of the state's most respected musical institutions - the famed Marlboro Music School and Festival, the Brattleboro Music Center, and the New England Bach Festival, which she led until her retirement in 2004 at age 95.
Blanche Honegger, a distant cousin to the composer Arthur Honegger, was born on Sept. 23, 1909, in Geneva, Switzerland, the youngest of a family of music-lovers, her father a prominent businessman. She began violin studies at age 5 with an uncle, but was discovered by the great German violinist Adolf Busch at the age of 12. Busch took over the prodigy's musical education and was to remain her mentor until he died in 1952.
At 16, Moyse earned her first prize, the equivalent of a doctorate, at the Geneva Conservatory, and began concertizing. She also studied chamber music with the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, and was the first student of the young Spanish guitar virtuoso Andres Segovia. Returning to violin, she made her debut with L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under Ernest Ansermet, playing the Beethoven Concerto at age 19.
Moyse later appeared as soloist with the French flutist Marcel Moyse with the Suisse Romande, and he invited her to continue her studies in Paris, living with his family. There, she studied with violinist Georges Enesco, better known today as a composer. With Marcel Moyse, she premiered concertos by Bohuslav Martinu and Jean Francaix.
Moyse also met and married Marcel's son Louis, a flutist, pianist and composer. Together, they formed the Moyse Trio, which became one of the most renowned ensembles in Europe before World War II.
The war brought poverty to the Moyses and, after the war, the three accepted Segovia's invitation to create the music department of a new university in Argentina. After the university fell through, the Moyses were invited by Busch and his son-in-law, pianist Rudolf Serkin, who had summer homes in Guilford, to found the music department at fledgling Marlboro College. This 1949 event changed music in Vermont forever.
The Moyses, joined by Busch, Serkin and Busch's brother, the cellist Hermann, banded together to play chamber music in the summer. They invited young professionals to come and learn, creating the Marlboro School of Music and Festival in 1951. The school/festival, which attracted teachers like Pablo Casals and students like Van Cliburn and Jaime Laredo, went on to become what Time magazine called the finest chamber music festival in the world.
The Moyses began inviting their friends to come play with them during the winter months, creating the Brattleboro Music Center in 1951. They also played in local schools and created a community music school. With the creation of the BMC Chorus, Blanche Moyse began conducting the choral music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
In the early 1960s, she was forced to give up violin, due to bow arm trouble, and she turned her efforts to Bach's choral music. Gradually she surveyed the cantatas of Bach - the B Minor Mass, and the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, using professional soloists and orchestra alongside her amateur BMC Chorus.
In 1969, Blanche and Louis Moyse founded the New England Bach Festival, using Blanche's chorus and inviting their musician friends from around the world. The Moyses divorced soon after, and Louis left the area. Blanche Moyse continued to develop the Bach Festival, creating the select Blanche Moyse Chorale in 1978 and enlarging the festival to a month with concerts throughout New England.
Excellent reviews led Moyse to take her festival to New York, first to Symphony Space with St. Matthew Passion in 1984, which The New York Times called the best event of the Bach centenary year. In 1987, she conducted Bach's Christmas Oratorio, joined by professional soloists and the St. Luke's Chamber Orchestra, making her Carnegie Hall debut at age 78 - to rave reviews in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Moyse conducted her last Marlboro Festival performance, Bach's St. John Passion, in 2001. Her last New England Bach Festival performance was in the fall of 2004.
Although the New England Bach Festival ended with Moyse's retirement, her legacy includes the Brattleboro Music Center, a model for community music organizations everywhere, the Blanche Moyse Chorale, which continues to perform, and the need for excellence she imbued in more than one generation of musicians, professional and amateur alike.
More importantly, she imbued that desire for excellence in Vermont audiences - which has raised the level of Vermont's music organizations.