BARD, Vivien

Vivien Nemo Bard was born in Terre Haute, Indiana on April 24, 1895. Bard’s talent as a pianist manifested early. During her teen years she studied piano with local virtuoso Anna Hulman.

Vivien earned her Bachelor of Music degree at DePauw in 1917 where she penned “A Toast to Old DePauw,” the school’s official Alma Mater. It may well be her best-known work as a composer. During her master’s degree work at American Conservatory in Chicago, she studied not only piano with Professor Levy but also composition with songwriter Arthur Olaf Anderson. That work resulted in a three-movement Sonata romantique in G major for piano and a single-movement Romance in E-flat major for piano, violin, and cello. A song, “Slumber Time,” also came from this fruitful period, and appeared with some frequency on vocal recitals for the next two decades.

She returned to Terre Haute in the early 1920s, where she was a performer, composer, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra.