MANZIARLY, Marcelle De

Marcelle de Manziarly (1899–1989) was a Russian-born French-American composer, pianist, conductor, and music educator. Born in Kharkiv to a cosmopolitan family, she moved to Paris as a young child and became one of the earliest and most devoted private students of the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, beginning studies with her at age twelve. She later trained in conducting under Felix Weingartner in Basel and studied piano with Isabelle Vengerova in New York.

Manziarly developed an extensive catalog encompassing chamber music, orchestral works, concertos (notably for piano and orchestra), choral pieces, and art songs setting texts in French, English, and Russian. Her compositional language merged French neoclassical clarity, transparent counterpoint, and rhythmic vigor with subtle modernist harmonic colors. A close friend and colleague of Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland, she divided her career between France and the United States, performing internationally as a concert pianist and teaching at institutions including Sarah Lawrence College.