Elaine Bearer

Elaine Bearer, tell us something about yourself, and your career?

I am a brain scientist, neuropathologist and a person who writes music.
Growing up in New Jersey, I took the bus to NYC to study music in Manhattan. After two years as a Music Major at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) where I studied performance (French horn), composition, and computer science, I went to Fontainebleau’s Ecole des Beaus Arts, a summer program, to become a pupil of Nadia Boulanger. With her encouragement, I remained working with her in Paris that year. That time in France had a profound influence on my musical imagination, not only directly from Mlle. Boulanger but also from the other students and her circle of international friends, as well as the detailed rigorous training in musical theory, solfeggio, music dictation. I diligently completed all the exercises and then one day, she said “Show me your work.” I had just completed, not as an assignment but for my own pleasure, a little setting of “La Derniére Requête de la Vierge” based on a Jean Michel Passion play, a text I had discovered during one of my frequent visits to the Bibliotèque Nationale de France. I sang it for her and she coached me—O still have the score with her notes on it. Just this past summer, 2024, I discovered that Mlle. Boulanger had deposited my compositions, both scores and recordings, in this library’s magnificent archives. My music is also in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in Lincoln Center.

From a small child, I have heard music in my head all the time. The challenge has been to realize it, either by performance/improvisation, on paper as a musical score or playable graphic, or with computational tools and synthesizer sounds. I studied Theory and Composition at the Manhattan School in NYC after leaving Paris, where I received the Bachelor’s of Music in less than 2 years, and then went on to study Musicology at NYU where I earned a Master of Art in Musicology, a terminal degree in those days. The Manhattan School awarded me a Distinguished Alumna Award in 2019. From there I accepted a tenure-track professorship at a small liberal arts colleg in San Francisco. This job was unsatisfying. My curiosity about where the music in my mind was coming from drove me to pursue studies in biomedical sciences, particularly neuroscience with John Nicholls at Stanford, and then to UCSF where I earned the MD-PhD combined degree. During all this time, my musical work never stopped. I wrote 16 pieces, most of which were premiered, including a Piano Concerto “Ode to the White Crown Sparrow” in three movements, which received a Meet the Composer Award, a String Quartet (Fenestrae) in four movements, featured on my CD premiered and recording by the Charleston Quartet and produced by Albany Records, as CD, a Woodwind Quintet in three movements recorded and distributed by CRS, an overture for full orchestra, and many smaller chamber, solo piano and vocal works. I also taught a class at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Towards the end of the 1980’s I began using various computer programs to compose music, i.e. to get the sounds in my head onto a score so that others could reproduce them.

In 1991, Brown University recruited me to a tenure-track professorship in Biology and Medicine with a secondary appointment in Music. Brown granted me tenure in 1997, and I rose to full professor a few years later. During this period I composed “SeaSelves” in collaboration with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a famous poet-laureate who had befriended me in San Francisco, and The Nicholls Trio, premiered at the Society for Neurosciences meeting in Miami in 1994.

Towards the end of this period, I composed “The Magdalene Passion” for Julian Wachner and the Providence Singers, a chorus of over 70 voices, both amateur and professional. They premiered and recorded the piece in Providence in 1999.

Since then I continue to compose and study the brain. In 2009 I was recruited away from Brown, to an endowed professorship at University of New Mexico with appointments in both the Medical School and the Music Department—and surprisingly, in Department of Neurosurgery, where I continue to collaborate to this day. The Stromstad Academy in Sweden awarded me an Honorary Professorship in 2021, for which I wrote The Stromstad String Quartet in four movements. I am currently publishing “Deep”, a solo piano piece written for Victoria Bragin and premiered at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, and working with Albany records on a commercial Album with both those pieces and two other string quartets. My next compositions will be a solo piano piece for Chemist Harry Gray, and a choral work on the Eaton Fire entitled “Time of Flight”. Most recent premier was of another Christian religious work, Canticle of Mary: A Magnificat, for soprano solo, chorus and organ, written for and performed by Brian Dehn and the Southern California Master Chorus in December 2024.

When did you start to write music?
I have also heard music in my head, since as early as I can remember. Once I began music lessons, first on violin and then keyboard, I could begin to notate it—i.e. write it down on a musical score.
What kind of music have you written so far?
Many, many pieces for all sorts of sound-makers, from classical orchestras, pianos, strings, to choral, to solo guitar and voice in a folk music style, to electronic sounds—engineered, synthesized, computer-generated or recorded and modified.
Tell us something about your work ”Magdalene Passion”?
The Magdalene Passion is an hour-long oratorio in twelve movements. Each movement has its own inspiration. The whole piece was inspired by Julian Wachner and Alie McGraw of the Providence Singers. They wanted a full piece, a piece that could fill half a program with another piece like Lord Nelson Mass.

I began with the 6th movement, Kasiani’s lament, which is from the Greek Orthodox tradition. I only used the text, the music was my own inspiration. The text dates to the 9th century and is believed to be written by a young nun. It is performed on Wednesday of Holy Week, a sinful woman’s lament for the death of a loved one, and has long been associated with the Magdalene complex, the weaving of the Magdalene story with all woman.

After composing this central movement, the Magdalene Passion grew outwards. The preceding five movements tell the story from Good Friday to crucifixion, and the following four movements lead to the resurrection. Much of the texts in the first five movements were either from the King James version of the English Bible or from the Mendocino poet, Sarah Flowers, and sometimes my own invention. For the second half, texts are taken from the Liber Usualis of the monks of Solesmes and the Gnostic Gospels, as follows: the Book of Mary (Movements VII & VIII, Gnostic Gospels), Victimae pascali laudes (Movement IX, a 13th century chant from the Liber Usualis), Thunder/perfect mind (Movement X, Gnostic Gospels) set in counterpoint with the Stabat Mater from the Liber. At Dawn, Movement XI is the climax of the piece, when Magdalene sees the empty tomb and recognized Jesus, calling “Rabboni!”. The oratorio ends with an Alleluia.

What other pieces have you written? What ensembles do you write for?
Many, any. Musicians ask for pieces, and I try to write for them. Piano solo, choir, string quartet, violin solo, woodwinds—you name it, inspire me, I will write it.

I have written many other pieces for choir. I was composer in residence for Unitarian/Universalist Musicians Network in 2004. My works for choir have been performed throughout the country, primarily at Unitarian Churches but also by Anglican, Lutheran and Methodist choirs. Prairie (on text by Emily Dickinson), Circle (on text by Jeanne Lohmann) Interweaving, (text by Denise Levertov), Benediction; Open and This Day (text by Rumi) etc.

Pieces for chorus and instruments
Snow (text by Jane Hirshfield); Tiger (text by William Blake); Moment (text by Vincent Vincent Giuliano and William Blake); Embers (text by Sara Tisdale);

Two organ pieces. Five Pieces for Organ; TutAnkhamen, for organ, narrator and bass drum.

Piano Concerto

Two orchestral pieces

5 string quartets

Pieces of piano 4 hands

Where do you find inspiration?
In a leaf, in the sea, in my lover’s arms.
In a poem, in a thought, in the complex sounds of an airplane motor.
What is the greatest challenge in writing music?
Getting from imagination onto the paper.
What is the greatest joy in writing music?
When you get it right. And the notes you hear inside come out from the players or the speakers.
What is your advice for those who want to find their own musical style in writing music?
Don’t manufacture it. Just let what you imagine be.
Be yourself, you have a voice, just use it. If you are truly a composer, you don’t have to “find” your voice, you already have it. Trust it.
Do you write on commission?
Yes, if it inspires me, attracts me.
Is your music published, and where can we buy sheet music?
Only the Nicholls Trio is published. I am working on the final proofs to publish “Deep”. I am also working with JW Pepper to distribute my music through MyScore.

I send scores on request for other pieces.

Links
Elaine Bearer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Bearer
NPR Interview on Morning edition, Sept. 21, 2018
http://www.kunm.org/post/neuropathologist-combines-music-composition-brain-research

Manhattan School of Music Distinguished Alumni Award, May 2019
https://youtu.be/Flu-56AA7f8

Magdalene Passion X
https://soundcloud.com/ebearer/magdalene-passion-10

Youtube has many Bearer videos
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFvTrD1h_oo_4AXKqgq4uIQ

Stromstadt Music and Mind talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD4Xa-6hmO4
String Quartet performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c81ZGfqrOM

Music and Mind lecture series (2011) The Santa Fe Complex, Art and Science of Systems Biology

Music and Mind, Part I: Music of the Spheres, E L Bearer SF_X.mov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_svXcw7i9k8&t=13s
Music and Mind, Part II: How we hear, E L Bearer SF_X.mov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-oMktD8iPI&t=46s
Music and Mind, Part III: Herpes virus and Alzheimer’s, E L Bearer SF_X
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=599LAhpbELk&t=24s
Music and Mind, Part IV: Memory and pleasure circuitry by MRI, E L Bearer SF_X
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yOGJFl5otA&t=11s
Music and Mind, Part V: Beauty, Truth, and Joy, E L Bearer SF_X
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehT9wpO2KCo&t=9s

Brain Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IqYbu2deZw

Inca Sun, Movement II from the Nicholls Trio
https://soundcloud.com/ebearer/inca-sun-scherzo-allegro-1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLTD5Qs_Syg
L’Alma Rapita, Gesualdo di ritorno
https://youtu.be/VYfU_NXD61Y