# Amelia Whiteheart - Unknown composer incredibly ahead of her time or...



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

http://www.jashiin.com/amelia.html
http://meyer-plutowski-is-listening-to.blogspot.it/2014/04/the-music-of-morton-feldman-and-amelia.html

I think it's just a hoax (even considering that the fragment called "To a summer day" is a bit much too similar to the beginning of the first gymnopedie, and the other fragments sounds just like few random notes put together), but I'm curious to hear other opinions.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

A hoax, but a poor one. A good hoax has to offer something interesting - but I suspect interesting music would have been too difficult for the perpetrator to come up with.

If this Amelia attempted to fly around the world and went down in the south Pacific, no one would turn up forty years later in the National Inquirer claiming to be her.


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## yohji_nap (Jul 2, 2009)

I'm sorry if the text misled anyone into thinking that the story is true. I thought that by including the pieces into a list of my own works, I would've made it quite clear that it is a story, quite obviously inspired by Borges and many other authors. 

I've found this post and another like it, through a Google search. Apparently the pieces have been performed in public - I have not been aware of that - and I guess the performer never thought to ask me, since the members of the audience had no idea about the pieces' origins. I can offer this brief explanation for anyone who might look for Amelia Whiteheart in the future: some years ago I had a black and white dream about an eccentric old lady who composed very short pieces of just one or two bars, with one or two notes. Being a composer, I later tried making such pieces - just for fun - and got carried away, of course, since one-note one-bar pieces aren't particularly interesting to write in any large amount. And as I was working, the pieces got a little bit more complex, always using the same limited language of gestures. That suggested the idea of a musical diary in which "life experiences she connected to ... positions of notes and chords" - as the text on the website states. And then the shallow old woman from my dream was replaced by a very introverted, quiet, reserved woman, from the late 19th century, writing these little pieces in secret, as remembrances. I got carried away, again, and ended up writing the text, finding some old photographs, etc.

In the end 123 pieces and a text were all that was left intact, that and the idea of an imaginary composer. It was great, because I'm not the kind of person to keep a diary so complex and mysterious and strange. And I don't have the extraordinarily original mindset required to see the world that way - but Amelia did. I've since made a few more pieces by imaginary composers, one of which, a clarinet teacher from early 20th century France, is also present in my works list at the website. I hope the name "Amelia Whiteheart" is rare enough so that anyone interested, in the future, will be able to find this page and know for certain what is what.

Much as I admire Satie's work, the "reference" in one of the pieces was quite accidental. Also, believe it or not, but Amelia Earheart is not well known in my country. I don't think I even know any single person here who'd know who she was. I'd never heard about her before I made the pieces. And when I found out, well, I didn't think a change was necessary - I'm quite the low profile composer. Woodduck is quite right though - had Amelia Whiteheart existed, her relatives would forget her soon after her death, and few if any people would be able to appreciate whatever music she had been composing as her diary, and of which music my pieces are but a second-hand guess.

- J.


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