Vivian Fine | | The Guardian

Vivian Fine

Vivian Fine, who has died aged 86 after a car accident, was a prolific composer of voice, ballet, orchestra and chamber works, and a concert pianist. The only female member of Aaron Copland's Young Composers' Group, she wrote for choreographers, including Martha Graham.

Fine was born in Chicago, into a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants, and began her piano studies at the age of three. Recognised as a child prodigy, she went on two years later to win a scholarship to the Chicago Musical College. By the age of 11, she was a pupil of Djane Lavoie-Herz. Herz arranged to have one of her other students, Ruth Crawford, give theory lessons to Fine. As an assignment, Crawford asked Fine to write a short piece, and Fine claimed it was the expression on Crawford's face on seeing this first work that led to her becoming a composer.

With her mother's permission, Fine left high school and devoted her energies to furthering her piano and compositional skills. In 1926, she received a scholarship to study counterpoint with Adolph Weidig at the American Conservatory of Music, and made her debut as a composer with a performance of Solo for Oboe (1929) at Carnegie Hall when she was just 16 years old. In 1931, still in her teens, Fine moved to New York, where she quickly established an excellent reputation as a freelance dance accompanist.

She was recognised as an outstanding performer of difficult contemporary works and Aaron Copland invited her to join his Young Composers' Group in 1932, where she was the only woman in the company. Copland also included her in the first Yaddo Festival (1932), where she performed her Four Polyphonic Pieces for piano to critical acclaim. In 1934, she continued her composition studies with Roger Sessions, at what she called the "end of the avant-garde era", and stopped writing experimental music, engaging in a more conventional and consonant style. Fine produced a tremendous repertoire; some of her best known works include Prelude for string quartet (1937), Concertante for piano and orchestra (1943), the witty Guide to the Life Expectancy of a Rose (1956), based on texts from the New York Times garden page; Meeting for Equal Rights 1866 (1975); and Drama for Orchestra (1982), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She wrote two operas, Women in the Garden (1978), and the autobiographical, multi-media work Memoirs of Uliana Rooney (with librettist Sonya Friedman), both of which explored feminist issues.

She also taught composition at New York University, the Juilliard School, State University Teacher's College at Potsdam, and Bennington College.

Vivian Fine is survived by her husband, sculptor Ben Karp, and two daughters, Peggy and Nina. Vivian Fine, composer and pianist, born September 28, 1913; died March 22 2000

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