Gillian Bibby
Kranichstein Music Prize for Composition 1972
The New Zealand composer and pianist Gillian Bibby (1945–2023) came to Berlin on a DAAD scholarship in 1971 after studying music in her home country. In 1972, she attended the Darmstadt Summer Course for New Music, where she was awarded the prestigious Kranichstein Music Prize for Composition in the same year. Until then, the prize had only been awarded to performers of new music. From 1972 until today, it has also been awarded for composition. In addition to Bibby, the composers Helmut Cromm and Martin Gellhorn were also honored in 1972. However, Bibby’s award is also remarkable because music by female composers was only occasionally represented in concert programs at the Darmstadt Summer Course and elsewhere.
Unfortunately, however, Gillian Bibby is not identified on any of the photographs in the Darmstadt Summer Course archive.
She met Karlheinz Stockhausen in Darmstadt in 1972 and shortly afterwards went to Cologne to work with him at the WDR electronic studio. Stockhausen, who was a regular lecturer at the Summer Course in those years, also supported Bibby’s application for a scholarship to take part in the 1974 Darmstadt Summer Course. For a while, the young composer accompanied Stockhausen on his concert tours through Europe.
In 1974 she was in Darmstadt again and gave a lecture at the Summer Course. There is no photograph of this either, but a sound recording was made (IMD-M-1974MC001-01) which can be accessed in the IMD archive.
After her return to New Zealand, Bibby worked as a lecturer in composition, piano and music history, as a music critic and editor of music editions, especially of New Zealand music for piano. After composing electronic pieces, chamber music in various formations including chamber orchestra, a string quartet, a children’s opera and spatial pieces in the 1970s, after this time she mainly produced works for piano, including several cycles that incorporated the sounds of New Zealand birds.
Gillian Bibby died on August 7, 2023 in Wellington.
For her piece Musik für drei und einige Hörer (1971) [later titled Musik für drei Hörer] Gillian Bibby was awarded the Kranichstein Music Prize in 1972. for voice, electric clavichord and percussion, which Gillian Bibby herself, percussion teacher Christoph Caskel and participants of the summer courses performed in a studio evening at the Georg Büchner School in Darmstadt on August 5, 1972. A recording of this is preserved in the archive of the Darmstadt International Music Institute (IMD-M-11036).
