My Life as a Woman Composer

Emma Lou Diemer was born in Kansas City, Missouri on November 24, 1927. Her parents were Myrtle Casebolt Diemer (1889-1961), homemaker and church worker. Her father was George Willis Diemer (1885-1956), educator, college president. Her sister was Dorothy Diemer Hendry (1918-2006). Her brothers were George Willis Diemer II (1920-1944) and John Irving Diemer (1920-1964). Emma Lou received music composition degrees at the Yale School of Music (BM, 1949; MM, 1950) and the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D, 1960). She studied composition and piano on a Fulbright Scholarship at the RoyalConservatoire in Brussels, Belgium (1952-53) and at the Berkshire Music Center (summers 1954 and 1955). She taught piano and organ at colleges in Missouri (Park, William Jewell, Kansas City Conservatory) in the 1950s and theory and composition at the University of Maryland (1965-70) and at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1971-1991). She was composer-in-residence in the Arlington, VA schools under the Ford Foundation Young Composers Project (1959-61) and composer-in-residence with the Santa Barbara Symphony (1989-1991). Honors have included a NEA fellowship in electronic music, a Friedheim/Kennedy Center award for her piano concerto, many commissions for chamber, orchestral, piano, organ, choral music. Her music has been published since 1957 and much of it is recorded. Her website is emmaloudiemermusic.com.