Betsy Jolas - Biography

Biography

Betsy Jolas was born to an artistic and literary milieu, and remembers in her childhood visits from writers such as Joyce, Stein, and Hemingway, who were all published in the literary journal Transition that her parents founded and edited (1937–47). After the family moved from Paris to New York in 1940 she studied at the Lycée Français and then at Bennington College (1945–6), where in addition to her formal studies she gained a thorough acquaintance with the 16th-century polyphonists and especially Lassus and Palestrina, “when I became a contrapontist rather than a harmonist”). Her American relations are significant: her father, Eugène Jolas was born there as was her mother, Maria MacDonald in Kentucky. In more recent years she has taught at the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts and Mills College in California, occupying as a guest professor the Chair of her former teacher Milhaud. She sang and played with the Dessoff choir. Returning to France in 1948, she married Gabriel Illouz the following year; they had three children. Meanwhile Jolas continued her studies at the Paris Conservatoire, where her teachers included Messiaen and Milhaud. In 1995 she advanced in the Faculty of the Conservatoire and was named Chair of Analysis, and in 1978 succeeded Messiaen as professor of composition.