composed more than 20 religious works after her conversion, setting a number of sacred texts and spiritual writings. Talma's copious correspondence reveals several passionate affairs with women, including one in late life with Ethelston (Eth) Chapman, who had been a fellow student in Fontainebleau with Talma. She never married. Talma's first pieces show an interest in neo-classical approaches and techniques and appear to be highly autobiographical, establishing compositional patterns that would continue throughout her career. Speaking of her creative life, Talma identified three periods: her early works, which were composed during her “neo-classical period,” 1925–1951; her “serial period,” 1952–1967; and her “non-serial atonal period,” 1967–1996. However, after adopting serial methods in 1952, the majority of her works even in this last period owe something to serial approaches, especially in terms of melody creation. Talma's Piano Sonata No. 1 (1943), Toccata for Orchestra (1944) and Alleluia in the Form of Toccata for piano (1945) were highly praised by critics and helped establish Talma as an important American composer at the beginning of her career. Based in part on the success of these works, she was the second woman (after Ruth Crawford Seeger in 1930) to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition and the first woman awarded back-to-back Guggenheims in 1946 and 1947. In the 1940s Talma also began spending each summer at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where most of her mature works were composed. Talma was a full-time member of the music faculty at Hunter College in New York from 1928 until 1979, during which time she helped author two harmony textbooks for her students. In 1952, Talma heard Irving Fine's serial but tonally-centered string quartet and immediately began working with serial approaches and techniques in her works. Although she stated that her serial period primarily extended from 1952 to 1967, the majority of her works up until her death engaged with some form of serial practice. Her setting of e. e. cummings's “Let’s Touch the Sky” was her first completed serial work; her String Quartet (1954), Piano Sonata No. 2 (1955), and La Corona (1955), a setting of John Donne's Holy Sonnets all use clearly audible serial elements. As she developed her own compositional voice using serial elements, Talma created rows that allowed for tonal centering as well as more traditional, stricter use of pitch class sets. Talma began working on a grand opera with writer