Nancy Van de Vate

Nancy Jean Van de Vate (Hayes; December 30, 1930 – July 29, 2023) was an American-born Austrian composer, violist and pianist.

She also used the pseudonyms Helen Huntley and William Huntley.

She is known for operas such as All Quiet on the Western Front, and orchestral music such as Chernobyl and Journeys, including concertos like the Kraków Concerto for percussion and orchestra.

Van de Vate taught at several universities in the United States and led composers' organizations such as the Southeastern Composers League and the International League of Women Composers.

Nancy Jean Hayes was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, on December 30, 1930.

She studied piano on a scholarship at Eastman School of Music and music theory at Wellesley College.

She completed graduate degrees in music composition at the University of Mississippi and Florida State University, where she earned a Ph.D. She pursued further studies in electronic music at Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire.

In 1952, Van de Vate married Dwight Van de Vate Jr. The couple had three children.

They later divorced.

The first professional performance of her work was in 1958 the Adagio for orchestra.

Van de Vate taught at Memphis State University from 1964 to 1966.

She also played viola in the Knoxville Symphony, founded a chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in Tennessee, and directed the Southeastern Composers League.

She taught at the University of Tennessee (1967), Knoxville College (1968–1969; 1971–1972) and Maryville College (1973–1974).

She moved to Hawaii in 1975 where she first taught at the University of Hawaii, and from 1977 to 1980 at the Hawaii Loa College serving there also as Dean of Academic Affairs.

In 1975, she founded the League of Women Composers and served as chairperson until 1982; it was renamed the International League of Women Composers in 1979, and was merged into the International Alliance for Women in Music in 1995.

She became influenced by Asian music; and moved to Indonesia in 1982 for three years.

In 1985, she moved to Vienna, where she taught and founded a CD company for new orchestral music together with her husband.

She lived permanently in Vienna from 1985.

Her Chernobyl and her Violin Concerto was recorded by the same performers on a 1988 CD of mainly works by Penderecki, titled after Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima.

In 1990 she founded a CD company together with her husband Clyde A. Smith, Vienna Modern Masters, dedicated to new music for orchestra; she directed it after her husband's death.

She taught composition at the Institute for European Studies in Vienna (IES).

A CD of orchestral works was produced in 1990, named after Distant Worlds, and played by the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Szymon Kawalla Arnold Whittall reviewed the album for Gramophone; he summarized: "Her orchestral music undoubtedly makes its presence felt, especially by means of densely dissonant climaxes whose weight and seriousness are appropriate to works with such grandly evocative titles", adding that it "lacks that distinctiveness and magnetism".

Her Krakow Concerto became the title of a 1991 album by the same performers, including also her Katyn, Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw, and Penderecki's Dies irae.

Her vocal composition Cocaine Lil was recorded by Dietburg Spohr and her ensemble belcanto, as the final track of a 1994 CD named after Hanns Eisler's Woodburry-Liederbüchlein.

She later married Clyde A. Smyth, who died of cancer in 1999.

Van de Vate died on July 29, 2023, at age 92, at home in Vienna.

Van de Vate composed seven operas, many orchestral works including concertos for one or more instruments, and chamber music.

Her music has been seen as influenced by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Penderecki, Crumb and Varèse.

Several of her compositions won international awards, and were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, the orchestral work Chernobyl also for the Koussevitsky International Recording Award.

Her works have been performed internationally.

Many of Van de Vate's works were recorded by her CD company Vienna Modern Masters (VMM).

In 2010, the IES named her Composer-in-Residence.