The composer Norma Beecroft (1934-2024) was known for works that combined computer-generated and natural acoustic sounds. One among only a few Canadian female composers of her time, Beecroft’s musical formation, beyond her early training in Toronto, came with notable Italian musicians: composers Goffredo Petrassi and Bruno Maderna, and flutist Severino Gazzelloni. Yet her three years in Rome were eclipsed by her revelatory experiences at the Darmstadt Summer School in 1960, where she encountered twelve-tone serialism and the many variations brought to it by European masters of the method. Her career took off when Gazzelloni performed her composition “Tre Pezzi Brevi” at Darmstadt.
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