How to improve writing (no. 113)

Here’s the start of an obituary in today’s New York Times. Try reading aloud:

Gloria Coates, an adventurous composer who wrote symphonies — she was one of the few women to do so — as well as other works, pieces that were seldom performed in her home country, the United States, but found audiences in Europe, where she lived much of her professional life, died on Aug. 19 in Munich. She was 89.

That’s not the first time a Times obituary has opened with a sentence that tries to say too much. Here’s a 2013 OCA post that looks at another opening sentence with a parenthetical sprawl between subject and verb.

I have to invokes E.B. White’s advice again:

When you become hopelessly mired in a sentence, it is best to start fresh; do not try to fight your way through against the terrible odds of syntax. Usually what is wrong is that the construction has become too involved at some point; the sentence needs to be broken apart and replaced by two or more shorter sentences.

A possible revision:

Gloria Coates, one of the few female composers to write symphonies, died on Aug. 19 in Munich. She was 89. Though her works were seldom performed in the United States, they found audiences in Europe, where the Wisconsin-born composer lived much of her professional life.

Elaine, who knows hella lot more about music than the obituary writer does, takes issue with the “one of the few.” Better still:

Gloria Coates, a composer best known for her symphonies, died on Aug. 19 in Munich. She was 89. Though her works were seldom performed in the United States, they found audiences in Europe, where the Wisconsin-born composer lived much of her professional life.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 113 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. The passage from E.B. White appears in The Elements of Style, in “An Approach to Style,” the chapter White added when revising William Strunk Jr.’s book. Searching the Institute for Composer Diversity shows 1021 female composers of orchestral music and 233 female composers of works with symphony in their titles.]