Gyring, Elizabeth (1906–1970)

Austrian composer. Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1906; died in New York City, 1970; received her musical education in Vienna.

Elizabeth Gyring was one of several thousand musicians who arrived in the United States in the late 1930s as refugees from Nazi racial and political persecution. Like most of them, she arrived without money, connections, or even a working knowledge of the English language. As a young composer in a Vienna beset by immense economic problems and political tensions, not to mention deeply embedded gender prejudice against female composers in a city that prided itself on being the "Musical Capital of Europe," Gyring had been able to assert herself as an artist. By the mid-1930s, a number of her compositions had received public performances, including concert premieres played by virtuoso members of both the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras. Nazi ideology demanded that Jewish, female, and progressive composers be eliminated from the "Greater German" cultural landscape that was created with the annexation of Austria in March 1938.

Gyring had to flee her home and create a new artistic home for herself in a United States that was itself reeling from the immense economic and social problems of the Depression. By the end of her life in 1970, Elizabeth Gyring had become a productive American composer, one who had seen many of her works performed by American soloists and ensembles and been fortunate enough to have several works recorded. She composed in virtually all forms, including a symphony, military marches (a genre rarely practiced by contemporary women composers), organ works, and several cantatas set to patriotic texts.

John Haag , Athens, Georgia