Music

In 1965, when she was 38 years old, Molly decided to pursue her goal of becoming a composer. She planned to acquire a master’s degree in composition in order to teach at a college or university. She had already acquired a BA in bible history from Wellesley (1949) and a master’s degree in musicology at Columbia University (1955). She had made her first foray into composition at the Royal College of London winning second place in a national competition for a piano sonata she composed in 1959. She was also the first female to study composition at the University of Michigan in 1960. Yet the sum total of her experience did not qualify her for entry into a master’s program in composition at the Manhattan School of Music. Instead she had to start over as a bachelor’s candidate in order to be accepted into the MSM composition department.

Variants for Orchestra was Molly’s bachelor’s thesis for the degree she finally earned while raising a family and attending school part-time. Her daughter Meg brought the work to the attention of the Women’s Philharmonic, which performed it on mother’s day in San Francisco in 2001.