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Wuorinen
Charles Peter Wuorinen (, ; June 9, 1938 – March 11, 2020) was an American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City. He also performed as a pianist and conductor. Wuorinen composed more than 270 works: orchestral music, chamber music, solo instrumental and vocal works, and operas, such as ''Brokeback Mountain'' (2014). His work was termed serialist but he came to disparage that idea as meaningless. ''Time's Encomium'', his only purely electronic piece, received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize. Wuorinen taught at several institutions, including Columbia University, Rutgers University and the Manhattan School of Music. Life and career Background Wuorinen was born on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. His father, John H. Wuorinen, the chair of the history department at Columbia University, was a noted scholar of Scandinavian affairs, who also worked for the Office of Strategic Services, and wrote five books on his native Finland. His mother, Al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Compositions By Charles Wuorinen
The following is a reverse-chronological list of works by the American composer Charles Wuorinen. List *''Second Percussion Symphony'' – 2019 *''Burlesque'' – 2018, for two pianos, for the American Contemporary Ballet, Los Angeles *''Sudden Changes'' – 2017, for Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony *''Second String Trio'' – 2017, for the Goeyvaerts String Trio, Belgium *''Xenolith'' – 2017, duo for viola and percussion, for Lois Martin and Michael Truesdell *''Eros and Nemesis (symphonic poem after Brokeback Mountain)'' for orchestra, for James Levine – 2016 *''Exsultet (Praeconium Paschale)'' for Francisco Núñez and the Young People's Chorus of New York City – 2015 *''Brokeback Mountain'' (chamber version) – 2015 *''Megalith'' – 2014, piano and 15 players, for Peter Serkin *''Doubletake'' – 2014, for Steven Beck *''Jan's Dowland'' – 2014, two Dowland works for solo harp *''Alphabetical Ashbery'' – texts of John Ashbery – 2013, for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brokeback Mountain (opera)
''Brokeback Mountain'' is an opera by American composer Charles Wuorinen, with a libretto in English by Annie Proulx, based on her 1997 short story "Brokeback Mountain". They began work on it in 2008 under a commission by Gerard Mortier of the New York City Opera. He took the project with him to the Teatro Real of Madrid, where the opera was premiered on January 28, 2014. Composition history In 2007, Wuorinen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, saw the 2005 film directed by Ang Lee and "was inspired by its operatic possibilities." He approached Proulx with the idea of turning her short story into an opera and "to ask for her blessing to adapt the story for opera. Proulx went one step further, offering to write the libretto".Ashifa Kassam (20 January 2014), ''The Guardian''. As recounted by Ashifa Kassam: After reading Proulx' tale of doomed lovers, composer Charles Wuorinen knew he had the makings of a tragic opera. "In older operas there would be an illegitimate chil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Time's Encomium
''Time's Encomium'' (Jan. 1968-Jan. 1969, 31'43") is an electronic, four channel, musical composition by Charles Wuorinen for synthesized and processed synthesized sound. Released on Nonesuch Records in 1969, the composition was commissioned by Teresa Sterne for the label. It was awarded the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and was realized on the RCA Mark II Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, NYC. At the time Wuorinen was the youngest composer ever to win the Pulitzer. The piece is also the first electronic piece to win the prize. According to the composer, the primary concern of the piece appears to be rhythmic, since only pure quantitative duration, as opposed to qualitative performance variable inflection, is available to one in the electronic medium, though, "the basic materials are the twelve tempered pitch classes, and pitch-derived time relations," (due to the constraints of the synthesizer). As such, he composed, "with a view to the propo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulitzer Prize For Music
The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted into a prize: "For a distinguished musical composition of significant dimension by an American that has had its first performance in the United States during the year." Because of the requirement that the composition have its world premiere during the year of its award, the winning work had rarely been recorded and sometimes had received only one performance. In 2004, the terms were modified to read: "For a distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year." History In his will, dated April 16, 1904, Joseph Pulitzer established annual prizes for a number of creative accomplishments by living Americans, including prizes for journalism, novels, plays, histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bearns Prize
The Joseph H. Bearns Prize in Music was established on February 3, 1921, by Lillia M. Bearns in memory of her father. The purpose of the prize is to encourage talented young composers in the United States. Administered by Columbia University, the prize is open to United States citizens who are between 18 and 25 years old. It is divided into two categories: larger-form works (such as orchestral and choral compositions) and smaller-form works (such as solos, quartets, and sextets). The Joseph H. Bearns Prize is one of the most significant awards granted to young American composers, and in 2006, it amounted to a total of $7,200. Past winners * Milton Babbitt (for ''Music for the Mass'') * Christopher Bailey (for ''Six Songs on Poems of John Monroe'') * Samuel Barber (1929, for ''Violin Sonata'', and again in 1933, for ''School for Scandal Overture'') * William Bergsma * Stephen Cabell (2004, for Cosmicomic) * Ronald Caltabiano (1981, 1983) * Carlos R. Carrillo Cotto (1993, for Canta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milton Babbitt
Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He was a Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, recognized for his serial and electronic music. Biography Babbitt was born in Philadelphia to Albert E. Babbitt and Sarah Potamkin, who were Jewish. He was raised in Jackson, Mississippi, and began studying the violin when he was four but soon switched to clarinet and saxophone. Early in his life he was attracted to jazz and theater music, and "played in every pit-orchestra that came to town". Babbitt was making his own arrangements of popular songs by age 7, "wrote a lot of pop tunes for school productions", and won a local songwriting contest when he was 13. A Jackson newspaper called Babbitt a "whiz kid" and noted "that he had perfect pitch and could add up his family's grocery bills in his head. In his teens he became a great fan of jazz cornet player Bix Beiderbecke". Babbitt's father was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method of composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though some of his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as a form of post-tonal thinking. Twelve-tone technique orders the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, forming a row or series and providing a unifying basis for a composition's melody, harmony, structural progressions, and variations. Other types of serialism also work with sets, collections of objects, but not necessarily with fixed-order series, and extend the technique to other musical dimensions (often called " parameters"), such as duration, dynamics, and timbre. The idea of serialism is also applied in various ways in the visual arts, design, and architecture, and the musical concept has also been adapted in literature. Integral serialism or total serialism is the use of series for aspects su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
