« Les américains chantent et font de la musique spontanément » : conversation avec Betsy Jolas

Abstract

In this interview, the French composer Betsy Jolas evokes her lifelong transatlantic experience with vivacity, humor and generosity. Born in Paris to a French father of German descent— the poet Eugene Jolas, founder of the important literary review transition — and an American mother—the translator Maria Jolas—, Betsy Jolas spent her formative years during World War Two at Bennington College, Vermont, before completing her studies at the Paris Conservatoire, where she was later to teach musical analysis and composition. She has returned regularly to the United States from 1971 onwards, teaching at such prestigious institutions as Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, and Mills College ; she has been invited several times at the world-renowned Tanglewood Festival. She has been awarded many prizes and distinctions both in France and the United States, where she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Betsy Jolas is undoubtedly one of the “great witnesses” of American and French twentieth-century artistic life. Her spirited commitment to teaching, her utter originality and independence from all schools and coteries, her often trenchant views on music, her creative vitality, all bear witness to an exceptional artistic personality. A ceaseless teller of anecdotes with a wonderful sense of detail, she always captures in her vignettes the essence of the people and situations she fondly remembers throughout this interview.