Ruth S. White (September 1, 1925 – August 26, 2013) was an American composer known for her electronic music compositions. While most of her career was dedicated to educational recordings, she is best known for being an electronic music pioneer, owing to her early explorations of sound using the Moog synthesizer. The back cover of her 1971 release Short Circuits stated that “Ruth White is considered among today’s most gifted arbiters of what is termed ‘the new music’".
Her early recordings 7 Trumps From the Tarot Cards and Pinions (1968), Flowers of Evil (1969), and Short Circuits (1970) all featured surprising uses of the Moog synthesizer as well as other electronic musical equipment.
Biography
Ruth White studied music and composition and received three degrees from Carnegie Tech in Pennsylvania. While she focused on classical training in Piano, she also studied violin, cello, harp, clarinet, and horn. Recognized as gifted early on, White eventually studied under American avant-garde composer George Antheil. White credits Antheil with making her fully aware of the principles of classical sonata form, which provided “the key to writing larger works that were logical and structurally sound”.
White’s first studio was self-built in 1964, and was on display at The Fiske Museum for Musical Instruments in Pomona, California for a number of years. In 2008 these items were moved to The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, an institution which opened in April 2010, but has only kept those donations in storage without any anticipated exhibit. With the creation of her own studio White developed her own brand of electronic music which explored new timbral and harmonic resources without renouncing the order and logic instilled by her classical training. Early on, Ruth became intrigued by electronic music possibilities. According to The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, “White’s involvement in electronic music was precipitated by a belief that all experiments in traditional media from impressionism to atonality, polytonality and the like, were closed paths – that ‘this’ medium, with its fundamental key relationships, had been exhausted, had reached its zenith by the end of the nineteenth century, and, since then, its basic principles were being systematically destroyed. She also found much early electronic music ‘chaotic and senseless’, eventually concluding that those ‘unshaped and arbitrary sounds being made were noise and just that.”
Early on in White’s career, her love of educational recordings was evident. Beginning in 1955 where she worked with Marilyn Horne and Richard Robinson on the recording Lullabies From ‘Round the World. In 1957, White was commissioned by the Los Angeles Board of Education to record music for the Physical Education department for all of Los Angeles County Schools. These recordings – 5 box sets total – were called Folk Dances from ‘Round the World. In 1967 White was commissioned by choreographer Eugene Loring (for the University of California) to create the music for a performance titled 7 Trumps From the Tarot Card and Pinions. The event was a success, and revealed Ruth’s talent. The Los Angeles Times reviewed 7 Trumps as ” …a really exciting, organically musical, electronic score by Ruth White. Not only the soloists but all the participants seemed to draw heat from this score…”. Dance Magazine said “choreographed on contrasting planes, pinions comments on the wings of imagination and love, the shackles of philistinism, and always, Ruth White’s specially written and especially eloquent score heightens the drama of the dance while plumbing its depths …. “. Ruth’s musical recordings, (titled 7 Trumps From the Tarot Card and Pinions) from the show were also released on the increasingly experimental Limelight Records (1968).
In 1969 Ruth White's involvement in the arts community grew when she was elected to the local Los Angeles The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS) chapter. She remained active in the NARAS for years. In 1972 Ruth White was elected to the National NARAS board where she served as Vice President.
In 1969 she recorded Flowers of Evil, a record based on French poet Charles Baudelaire’s volume of poetry Les Fleurs du mal, reciting Baudelaire’s words over electronic music. The poems are accented eerily by White’s use of “electroacoustic” music – more specifically the Moog synthesizer. The work is well noted for its dark and uncompromisingly obtuse sound structure. Once again White’s music was published on Limelight Records.