Jean Réti Forbes

Réti Forbes, Jean

Jean Réti Forbes (b Sahlmark, m Réti, m Forbes). Pianist, teacher, musicologist, editor, b Saltcoats (near Yorkton), Sask, 19 May 1911, naturalized US 1965, d Athens, Ga, 7 May 1972; ATCM 1930, LRAM 1933. She received her early training at the Regina Cons and studied 1932-3 in London at the RAM with Harry Isaacs (piano) and Adam Carse (composition). She taught 1934-9 at the Regina Cons and played an important role (1938) in the drafting and adoption of the first provincial bill in Canada to regulate the certification of music teachers. She studied in 1939 with Schnabel and Sessions in New York and subsequently toured the USA.

In 1943 she married Rudolph Réti (1885-1957), Viennese composer, critic, and scholar, and contributed to the writing of his The Thematic Process in Music (London 1951, 1961). After his death she edited and supervised the publication of his Tonality, Atonality, Pantonality (London 1958) and Thematic Patterns in Sonatas of Beethoven (London 1967).

Following a successful European tour in the early 1960s Réti Forbes joined the Dept of Music at the University of Georgia, where she compiled and annotated an 800-page catalogue of the Olin Downes papers. She wrote two books of poetry published after her death, To Dwell in Sound (Darien, Ga 1972) and Child of the Prairie (Clayton, Ga 1977). Her last work, Notes on Playing the Piano, was published privately in 1974.