Tera de Marez Oyens

Dutch composer and teacher Tera de Marez Oyens was born Woltera Gerharda Wansink in Velsen on 5 August 1932 and studied piano at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, where her talent for writing music was discovered.

She began her career as cantor of the Hilversum Reformed Church community and was very busy with church music at this time, writing fourteen melodies for church song books.

In the 1960s she became interested in electronic music and studied at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht with Gottfried Michael Koenig. In the early 1970s she created the electronic works Sound and Silence and Mixed Feelings.

From 1978 until 1988 she taught at the conservatory in Zwolle, and after that worked full-time as a composer, contributing pieces to the Scheveningen International Cello Competition and becoming composer in residence at Georgia State University in Atlanta, USA.

Her output as a composer consisted of more than two hundred works, including The Odyssey of Mr Good-Evil (1981) and Unison (1995) for the UN's fiftieth anniversary. She received commissions from the Dutch Ministry of Culture and from several broadcasting networks.

Tera de Marez Oyens died in Hilversum on 29 August 1996, aged sixty-four.

 

A selection of articles about Tera de Marez Oyens

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