Her college education was focused on medicine; however, she got very frustrated because the medical profession didn't take her seriously and often ignored her. When her father became ill during her undergraduate education, and she actually diagnosed what was wrong. The doctors, though, ignored her evaluation, and unfortunately, her father died soon after. After that terrible tragedy, Beverly lost all sight of her medical career and looked to something new.
In the 1940s, Beverly found Ernst Krenek, a European composer of great reputation, and began to study composition with him. He never brought up gender, and Beverly cites him as being instrumental in getting her interested in composing. When Beverly first asked if she could study with him, Krenek handed her one of his scores and told her to go away and analyze it, and not to return until it was thoroughly analyzed. "I didn't have a clue how Krenek's music was put together. There was no counterpoint [that she could recognize], no harmonic structure." She asked him where to start, to which he replied "with the first note!"
So, two months later she returned and told him that he had made some mistakes! Imagine the audacity of some young kid coming in telling the professional composer that he MADE A MISTAKE! Although she had never had a formal analysis class, Beverly had performed many of the works of Beethoven and Bach, and knew how the compositions worked based on her performances. After she told him that he had mistakes, Krenek was so impressed that he suggested she study with him. Krenek said, "What are you studying in school - medicine - why? My dear, you're a composer." Krenek became a sort of father figure to Beverly.
Like many of the European composers, Krenek came to the United States to escape persecution from Hitler. During the time Beverly studied with him, Krenek introduced her to many important composers, including Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg. When she heard Schoenberg's music for the first time, she returned to Krenek and stated "He [Schoenberg] writes music like me!" At the time, she had no idea who Schoenberg was!
Krenek went to Koln (Cologne) to work with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Herbert Eimert. His name lent credence to the program because he was a 'big-name' composer. Eventually he returned to the United States because there were conflicts with Stockhausen. Upon his return, Krenek started to put together a studio; Beverly assisted. They used all kinds of noise generators, oscillators, airplane test equipment, and even a Moog ring modulator.
According to Beverly, Ernst Krenek had an "amazing creative mind. He thought of spaceships way before a humans went to the moon." In fact, the his opera, the Golden Calf, tells the story of Jason and the Argonauts. Krenek was also a painter and a poet. He preferred to use his own text (as does Beverly...) for opera and other vocal works. Beverly remained close to Krenek, even after she was married, had 2 children, and "bought the home in the valley."
In 1963, Beverly was hired as an Assistant Professor of Music at San Fernando State University. By this time she was divorced and trying to make it on her own. The very next year, there was a concert on which she presented music from a film score she had just completed. That film score was for a young Frances Ford Coppola!
Beverly says, "I never did tell them I was working with scores for motion pictures, although this was more 'sound design.' I used all kinds of white noise - white noise, pink noise - that went with the story. Then I had the nerve to put this score, even with some of the dialog, on the National Association of Composers [now NACUSA]. The faculty [at San Fernando State] found out. Many men did not like women on the faculty in the first place [and now] they made hullabaloo of my putting on a film score."
She was told to cut it out or else she wouldn't be promoted. Because she didn't want to lose her job, she complied. However, she did continue to build her studio at college. In 1964 she heard about Donald Buchla and the synthesizers he was starting to design. It turns out that Krenek had bought a Buchla, one of the very first. Beverly, too, wanted to purchase a Buchla synth for her studio; however, she did not know if the bank would loan her the money to buy one. She knew she had to get a bank loan--the synthesizer was going to cost several thousand dollars. In the 60s, a divorced woman had a very difficult time, but the bank did give her the money. She immediately drove up to San Francisco where met with Buchla and bought one of his instruments (actually one of the first six!).
There were good times and bad in her college teaching career. Beverly has several suggestions for what might have caused friction: "I am a very enthusiastic person, when I think something is right, I just go for it. The men that worked in my area, music composition and theory, really wanted me out of the department." When others got wind of the electronic music studio that she was putting up at the college, several people wanted to get involved, but not necessarily for the right reasons---"One man wanted the name of being a 'modern' electronic music composer. He wanted to be the head of the studio. I went the chairman and said 'I'm not interested in electronic studios, there are computers. I want to start a computer studio.'"
"I was wandering around on the sabbatical looking for systems, looking into see what people were doing. That's when I met Jon Appleton. Ussachevsky had said 'Look Beverly, you don't want these giant systems...you can do better, they are working with digital [systems]...there's a bunch of young people up at Dartmouth, go see them. I flew up in a blizzard...and I came into Dartmouth and met with Jon and his colleagues. They were working on the prototype of the Synclavier. They had two and they sold me one. I got my university chairman to kick in for it, and I began the computer music studio at Northridge."
After Beverly met Jon Appleton (Professor at Dartmouth College and key developer of the Synclavier), she began to incorporate the instrument into her teaching. The Synclavier served as a mechanical teaching assistant for all kinds of courses--composition, counterpoint, and more. This new instrument had endless possibilities for the studio. "I never said no, I never said die." Some of her colleagues kept telling her that computers were a fad, and they would eventually go away. In fact, some of her colleagues went so far as to tell her students that Beverly was "crazy" and they shouldn't study with her! This reactionary viewpoint was, fortunately, unheard by many of the students, and Beverly was, in fact, inundated with students. There were more students than she believed--people were volunteering to work in the studio!
Beverly bought her first Fairlight system in 1981. The Fairlight is an integrated computer music system that has 'pages' which contain notation software, digital audio and sampling, and sequencing. In all the years that she worked with the analog synthesizers and then the digital systems, not one of the people who were upset about her studio ever actually came into the studio to learn anything the equipment. Instead, the were very underhanded about the whole issue and would vote against anything new she tried to propose. Beverly believes that the combined issues of working with electronics and being a woman contributed to the uneasiness of several of the male faculty members. She had a science background from her medical studies, and she was very enthusiastic about working with computers and synthesizers. Many of her colleagues dismissed her activities.
Even in the 1970s, she wanted to put computers in the library so that more people could have access to them. This idea was thrown by the wayside because they would be too much of a disturbance; however, Beverly has definitely been vindicated--"so guess where they have computers now?" all over the library, and the music library. It was a tough road all of the way, there were difficulties with each new idea. Although the chairperson at the time said "if you're that excited about it, then go for it." He quickly followed this with: "but you'll have to support it yourself." One the one hand he was allowing her to explore new areas, but financially, he was not able to support her. Student poured through the doors of the facilities. Eventually graduates from the department on to graduate school or into industry positions, and often they would come back and teach. Beverly even established a trust fund which helped to keep new equipment coming into the studio.
What's Beverly up to now that she has finally retired? First of on her list of priorities is getting her studio rebuilt. After the Northridge earthquake a couple of years ago, much of her equipment wound up in pieces.
In July 1996, she directed the California High School Arts Council. There were young composers from all over the country that came to study composition with the latest technology. There were Fairlights, computers, video workstations and much more. Beverly arranged for the students to got to do teleplays with Howard Ritter; compose for animated film; collaborate with music for dance or music for poetry. The students got a lot of exposure to technology in the musical arts. These students are now all working on film scoring projects in the movie industry.
No matter what she was doing or when she was doing it, Beverly Grigsby has continued to grow and to explore new technology in composition. Not only has she used the technology in her own compositions, but she has helped to educate several generations of students, and she serves as an excellent role model to young women in arts technology.
If you'd like to hear some of Beverly's music, click here...
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Copyright September 1996,
updated February 2004.
Kristine H. Burns,
Florida International University
Questions? Contact me.