Janet Beat is a Scottish composer, music educator and music writer. She was born in Streetly, Staffordshire, England and studied piano privately and horn at the Birmingham Conservatoire before reading music at Birmingham University, graduating with a Bachelor of Music degree in 1960. After completing her studies, she took a position teaching music with the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Her music has been performed internationally. She is one of the women pioneers in electronic music composition in Great Britain for her earliest musique concrete pieces belong to the late 1950s. Daphne Oram was helpful and encouraging here. The influences on her music are diverse and include non-European music as well as the sounds of nature and industry. The use of music technology allowed her to make sonic explorations and the use of microtonality. These influences also enriched her writing for acoustic instruments as in "Study of the Object no V" for unaccompanied voices, a graphic score she calls sound sculpture, "Mestra" for solo flutes and "Hunting Horns are Memories" for horn and tape for which she worked out quarter tone fingerings for the F/B flat double horn. How time passes is also intrigues her and she has experimented with polymetric and polytempi music. Janet Beat is included in the British Music Collection archive at Heritage Quay, Huddersfield. She is an Honorary Research Fellow of the School of Culture & Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow and an Affiliate of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery as a Curatorial Consultant.
Works
Beat composes for instruments, electronic music for tape alone and also for acoustic instruments with tape or computer. She has written for orchestra, chamber ensemble, theatre and film. Selected works include:
After Reading 'Lessons of the War', a violin and piano sonata inspired by the poems of Henry Reed
2 Caprices for solo flute: "Dialogue" and "Krishna's Hymn to the Dawn"
"The Splendour Falls.." for 3 trumpets, 3 trombones and tuba
"En Pkein Air" for wind octet
"Harmony in Opposites" for flute,viola and harp
"Encounter" for flute, cello and harp
"Mexican Night of the Dead" for clarinet and violin
"Apsara Music 1" for SSA
"Sylvia Myrtea" for SSAA
"Canite Tuba" for SATB
"Piano Sonata"
5 Stücke for oboe
Circe for viola solo
Equinox Rituals: Autumn for viola and piano
Piano Quintet: The Dream Magus for viola with 2 violins, cello and piano
Study of the object no 3 for female choir
These pieces are published by , Kassel, Germany. Unpublished music and recordings are available from . She has written professional articles including:
Monteverdi and the Opera Orchestra of his Time in Arnold, Denis and Fortune, Nigel : The Monteverdi Companion. London: Faber and Faber, 1968
Two Problems in Carissimi 's Oratorio Jephte, MR 34, 1973
"An extension of vocal accompaniment to dance", The Laban Art of Movement Guild Magazine,
"The Composer Speaks: Janet Beat on Cross Currents & Reflections", Stretto, vol.4, no 1
Janet Beat & Nick Pearce: "Themes & Variations: A Discussion of Some parallels between Western Music and Chinese Scroll Painting", Notis Musycall,
"Endless Pleasure", The Collector's Art, exhibitihttp://womeninmusicblog.org.uk/janet-beat-becomes-first-recipient-of-the-scottish-women-inventing-music-swim-lifetime-achievement-awardon catalague,
Accolades
She won the Cunningham Award in 1962. In 2019 Beat was awarded the first Scottish Women in MusicLifetime Achievement Award with the award intended to be known in future as the 'Janet Beat SWIM Lifetime Achievement Award'.
