Virginia Claire Seay Ploeser (8 August 1922 – 23 November 2015)[1] was an American composer and musicologist who studied and collaborated with composer Ernst Krenek. She published her works under the name Virginia Seay.
Seay was born in Palo Alto, California,[2] to Claire Soule and Welford Seay. She studied with Krenek at Vassar College, where she earned a degree in music composition in 1944, followed by a master's degree from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, also under Krenek's tutelage. She married James Ploeser in 1944, and they had three children, Monica, Stephen, and Christine.[1][3]
During Seay's time in Minnesota in the 1940s, one of her compositions was performed by the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.[3] In 1945, she won the third Young Composers Contest of the Federation of Music Clubs with her composition San Clemente, Low Tide, which was broadcast on national radio.[4][5] Krenek performed piano music she composed at a concert at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina.[6]
At Hamline, Seay collaborated with Krenek to translate his opera Karl V. from German to English. Krenek used a motif composed by Seay in his Hurricane Variations for Piano, opus 100 in 1944.[6] The following year, in his composition Tricks and Trifles, Krenek composed 22 variations on a four-note motif from a string quartet composed by Seay.[7] Krenek and Seay collaborated (with Russell G. Harris and Martha Johnson) on the book Hamline Studies in Musicology.[8] It included a chapter by Seay, "A Contribution to the Problem of Mode in Medieval Music".[9]
Seay's family lived in New Zealand from 1949 to 1954, where her husband had a Fulbright Scholarship to teach abroad. From 1957 to 2013, Seay taught music and other subjects in Catholic schools in San Jose and San Francisco.[3]
Seay's compositions are numbered through at least opus 8 (see below). Her works include:
Book
Hamline Studies in Musicology (with Ernst Krenek, Russell G. Harris & Martha Johnson)[8][10]
Chamber
San Clemente, Low Tide (flute, oboe, clarinet, timpani and strings)[4]