Composer of the Week

Ah, high noon approaches on the east coast and I find myself ready to face a worthy adversary:  the concert hall.  It is a truly strange place, the concert hall.  For all its glory and the millions of patrons whose musical palettes have been satisfactorily expanded, it is a discriminating structure when it comes to [...]

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I regret my trip to New York did not yield a new post.  Mostly due to exhaustion between the city trip and roof work the following day, I decided to ponder this week’s composer and also the impact of Steve Reich’s music on society.
Regarding Reich, I think it is safe to say that the accessibility [...]

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Throughout history, music has typically been defined by the art and architecture of the era in which it is written. Baroque, classical, romantic, impressionist, expressionist, minimalist, modernist — these are all categorizations of art, music, dance, architecture, and style.
To take this into consideration, we should look at what might broadly define minimalism.

Precise. Jackson Pollack, while [...]

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Reich’s writing often incorporates the use of canon, a compositional technique familiar to most.  What he refers to as phasing came from an experiment he conducted attempting to get two tape recorders to play back as identically as possible.  Sure enough, they played back almost in unison, prompting him to consider the chances of the [...]

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To many, Steve Reich is known as one of a few notable minimalist composers of the twentieth century. He is often referenced in conversation with Philip Glass, Terry Riley, or John Adams, yet there is an unmistakable aspect of Reich’s music that continually heightens a listener’s sense of musical color and motion, imposing a [...]

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A master of both music and the written word, Ned Rorem has become one of America’s most honored composers.
Known primarily for his art songs (which number over 500), he has been the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his Air Music for orchestra, as well both a Fulbright (1951) and Guggenhiem (1957) Fellowship. He [...]

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Composer of the Week, Vol. I, Issue V – February 18, 2008
Name:  Elliot Carter
Born:  1908, New York
Current post:  Full-time composer
Previous post:  N/A
Publisher:  Boosey & Hawkes | G. Schirmer
Suggested listening:  Eight Pieces for Four Timpani
Quote:
Talking about a materialistic thing, I get about 13 times more royalties from Europe than I do from America.
-Elliot Carter

Elliot Carter’s “Canaries” [...]

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Composer of the Week, Vol. I, Issue IV – February 4, 2008
Name:  Michael Colgrass
Born:  1932, Chicago area
Current post:  Composer and lecturer
Previous post:  N/A
Publisher:  Carl Fischer
Suggested listening:  Winds of Nagual
Quote:
I’m not trying to pull any tricks or dazzle anybody. I’m trying to make a music which convinces me, and which is interesting to me. It’s as [...]

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Composer of the Week, Vol. I, Issue III – January 28, 2008
Name:  Christopher Rouse
Born:  1949, Baltimore, MD
Current post:  Professor of Composition, The Juilliard School
Previous post:  Professor of Music, Eastman School of Music
Publisher:  Boosey & Hawkes | Schott-Helicon
Suggested listening:  Flute Concerto
Quote:
I got the opportunity to know Mr. Bernstein only in the summer of 1989, although I [...]

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Composer of the Week, Vol. I, Issue II – January 21, 2008
Name:  Tan Dun
Born:  1957, China
Current post:  Full-time composer
Previous post:  N/A
Publisher:  G. Schirmer
Suggested listening:  Symphony 1997
Quote:
“Organic music” concerns both matters of everyday life and matters of the heart.
These ideas find their origin in the animistic notion that material objects have spirits residing in them, an [...]

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