Marion Bauer, Composer
 Whitman College Professor of Music Susan Pickett portrays composer Marion Bauer
Marion Bauer was born in Walla Walla in 1882. Her father, Jacques Bauer, was a a Jewish emigrant from Alsace who was a member of the 9th Infantry which helped build Fort Walla Walla during the late 1850s. He remained in Walla Walla after his discharge from the Army and opened a general merchandise store near the corner of Main and Third. Marion's mother, Julia Bauer, also from Alsace, was a linguist on the Whitman College faculty during the 1880s and held language classes for recent immigrants in the Bauer home on Alder Street. Jacques and Julia Bauer had seven children, five of whom lived into adulthood. The Bauers thrived in Walla Walla until 1890, when Jacques died of a heart attack. The remaining Bauers then moved to Portland.
Two Bauer children became musicians. The oldest child, Emilie Frances Bauer, born in Walla Walla in 1865, moved to New York City during the 1890s, and became a highly regarded music critic. She was seventeen years older than the youngest Bauer child, Marion, who after graduating from high school in Portland joined her older sister in New York.
Marion was a gifted composer who thrived in the vibrant arts community in New York. She also studied composition in Europe during the first two decades of the 20th century. She experienced considerable success with her compositions, which were performed frequently in New York and elsewhere. Music critics lauded her melodic gift and her modernism. Famous performers like violinist Maud Powell commissioned Marion to write works for them.
Still, making a living as a composer was difficult, so Emilie Frances probably helped Marion considerably, both financially and professionally. During the mid-1920s, just when Marion's reputation was becoming more widespread, Emilie Frances died. Marion then took a professorship at New York University, where she taught over the next 25 years. Like her fellow composers, Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland, Marion experimented with music styles, leaving a considerable variety of music from her pen over her 50-year compositional career. The height of Marion's career was when the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leopold Stokowski, performed her "Sun Splendor" in Carnegie Hall in 1947. She continued to compose to the time of her death in 1955 and left a legacy of over 160 compositions.
Performances begin at 2:00 p.m. in the pioneer settlement at Fort Walla Walla Museum. Visitors are encouraged to question the Living History re-enactors about their lives and times. The Museum is open daily, 10 am - 5 pm, April through October; 10 am - 4 pm, November1 through December 23; and weekdays, 10 am - 4 pm, January through March.
Admission is free to Fort Walla Walla Museum members,
eligible service personnel & their familes through
the Blue Star Museums program, Tamástslikt Cultural Institute's
Inwai Circle cardholders,
enrolled members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and all children under 6;
$3/children
6-12; $6/seniors (62+) and students; $7/adults.
Your admission fee today may be applied to a membership,
priced beginning at $27. For more information, contact Fort Walla Walla Museum at 509-525-7703, or email: info@fortwallawallamuseum.org.
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