Elizabeth Garrou Furr: A Journey of Musical Creativity and Tribute
- WOMCO
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
Elizabeth Garrou Furr was the Gold Prize Winner in the Original Composition, at the 2025 Season 1 Berlioz International Music Competition.
Can you introduce yourself and share how you got into music?
My name is Elizabeth Garrou Furr from Valdese, North Carolina, USA, and I am descended from a group of early Protestants that immigrated to the US from the Cottian Alps. These people, though poor, loved to sing from their little cottages across to the other side of the mountaintops, so obviously, they loved music. I, myself, began listening to classical music with my father as a small child and became enamored with the main theme in Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake, which I played over and over again until my parents became convinced I was obsessed.
My father found for me a Knabe upright converted player piano built about 1908, and it was life-changing for me with its lower range volume that shook the rafters. That began my love of piano. My mother was a well-known regional artist, and my dad, after retirement from his position as head of his family’s manufacturing company, bought a grand piano and learned to play. He took a composition course and wrote a few finished and unfinished pieces of music.
Dad was an inventor, and his company was considered the most innovative in the industry, so I think I inherited a bit of creativity from him and a bit of artistry from my mother. When he died at almost 101 in 2020, he left me his grand piano. He had written a beautiful theme for which I wrote three variations, and asked our choir director and organist to play them at his funeral. I tried to write the variations in keeping with the sentiment of Dad’s theme and did not depart from the mood his theme expressed. This tribute nudged me to think about writing my own music in a more serious way.
So, in early 2022, I began to write in earnest. I had retired from my last position as director of an arts foundation a few years earlier. I was 75 and had only written a couple of pieces (except the funeral music) since my mid-twenties. Back then, while visiting Paris after college, I had brought with me some staff paper and began writing little notes and pretended I knew their pitches as I munched on croissants. After earning certificates at the Alliance Francaise and attending the Sorbonne, I returned to the States and began working, having had several careers, including as a Medical Lab Research Technologist.
While working in Winston-Salem, NC, I took piano lessons from a graduate of the NC School of the Arts. We were focusing on Chopin, and I brought the teacher a Slavic dance and a theme and variations I had written. After listening to them, he sent me to study with the composer-in-residence Terese Kaptur at the School of the Arts, but I left after a few lessons because my expectations were that she would teach me what I was doing and how I was doing it. She only listened and did not comment or teach me anything.
However, she did tell me a very simple but important precept—if the listener goes away desiring to hum the piece and wants to hear it again, then the piece is successful. That was my only education in composition until three years ago when I began to teach myself. My family and my choir directors were so important for inspiration and support over these years.
I remember my dad saying that his mother’s favorite opera was Der Rosenkavalier, so after hearing a little of this opera a couple of years ago on the radio while traveling, it became my favorite too, and I came home and wrote a Tone Poem in the style of Richard Strauss. One unusual thing that was part of my music education happened when I was taking philosophy as a freshman at the University. Plato and Socrates’ works were completely beyond my comprehension, but the professor asked us to write an essay on any subject related to philosophy.
In an extreme panic, I decided to write about Vladimir Horowitz and his interpretation of Chopin’s music. I listened to a lot of recordings and wrote the critique. To my utter astonishment, I received an A+ for my efforts.
“Tragic Opera, Final Act, Final Scene” came about when I had been listening on YouTube to Neil Shicoff sing the beautiful Lensky’s aria from Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin. I wanted to write something as sad and tragic as this aria. After the first two somber chords, I wrote it down as I slowly played it. I imagined that the heroine in the first few measures is horrified that she is dying, and regrets her sordid past, and then in succeeding measures, has a conversation with God, trying to justify her past behavior. Then, in the denouement, she accepts atonement and forgiveness, and quietly and peacefully takes her last breath in the last measure.
I would say that my style is to create little vignettes scattered with highly emotional pieces. And I like to write pieces that can be interpreted in different ways to make them a bit more interesting. It seems that I don’t struggle very much with melody and am becoming more comfortable with the melody’s surrounding musical support.
I love the unexpected and remember thinking as a child that I did not prefer Mozart or Beethoven because I always knew what was coming next when listening to their music. I am always listening and searching for new aspects to learn about and include in my writing. I have managed to write about 50 pieces in the last 3 years—I may not have much time left on this earth, so I have to focus effectively. A delightful book from Amazon that I keep close by is Schumann on Music, a selection from the writings of Robert Schumann, translated by Henry Pleasants.
Appreciating the fact that there are composers around the world who have much more education, knowledge, genius, and proficiency, in the end, I just want to write beautiful music for myself and for others to enjoy if they have the opportunity to listen.
I would like to thank the choir directors and family members, and friends and neighbors who have encouraged me to continue, especially Carla Sperry, Laurie Nicholson, William Holmes, and my beloved mother and father, who gave me many opportunities and taught me so much. I especially want to thank my husband Jim for his critical honesty and tolerance during a lot of experimentation on the piano.
I would also like to thank the Berlioz competition organization for the opportunity to compete and for the support they make available to performers and composers, and for such an awesome forum in which one can work for musical excellence.
My artist mother, after a 50-year career as an artist and teacher, wrote a book of poems for her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. One of them is below:
From where do music, poetry, and painting spring?
Not from the brain alone,
But some small spot from deep inside
Called forth by God to make His presence known.
by Dora Elizabeth Bowles Garrou
