Hunter Johnson (April 14, 1906 – August 27, 1998) was an American composer. His compositions include a

piano sonata A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movement (music), movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement (Domenico Scarlatti, Scarlatti, Liszt, Scr ...

and the

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

l music for

Martha Graham Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer and choreographer. Her style, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide. Graham danced and taught for over seventy years. She ...

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form ...

s ''Letter to the World'', based on the life and poetry of

Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...

, and ''

Deaths and Entrances ''Deaths and Entrances'' is a volume of poetry by Dylan Thomas, first published in 1946. Many of the poems in this collection dealt with the effects of World War II, which had ended only a year earlier. It became the best-known of his poetry c ...

''. His musical style was a combination of neoclassic, neoromantic, and

nationalist Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...

. Johnson was born near

Benson, North Carolina Benson is a town in Johnston County, North Carolina, United States, near the intersection of Interstates 95 and 40. Benson celebrates Mule Days on the fourth Saturday of September, a festival that attracts over 60,000 people each year. In 2010, ...

. He attended Benson High School and the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which r ...

before leaving the state to finish his undergraduate studies at the

Eastman School of Music The Eastman School of Music is the music school of the University of Rochester, a private research university in Rochester, New York. It was established in 1921 by industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman. It offers Bachelor of Music ...

in 1929. UNC later awarded him an

honorary doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad ho ...

. He taught at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

(1929–33), the

University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba.Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teac ...

(1948–53), the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Unive ...

(1959–65) and the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

(1966–71). He retired in 1971 and returned to the family farm in Benson. He was the first composer

laureate In English, the word laureate has come to signify eminence or association with literary awards or military glory. It is also used for recipients of the Nobel Prize, the Gandhi Peace Award, the Student Peace Prize, and for former music direct ...

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia a ...

, an award he received in 1991.

Footnotes

References

*
Albany Records product informationDatabase of Recorded American Music article
*Monaco, Richard A. (1960), "The Music of Hunter Johnson". Ph.D. diss. Ithaca: Cornell University. *Monaco, Richard A., and Michael Meckna (2001). "Johnson, Hunter". ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. New York: Grove's Dictionaries.

External links

September 5, 1987 1906 births 1998 deaths American male composers Cornell University faculty People from Benson, North Carolina University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni Eastman School of Music alumni University of Michigan faculty Academic staff of the University of Manitoba University of Illinois faculty University of Texas faculty Musicians from North Carolina 20th-century American composers 20th-century American male musicians {{US-composer-20thC-stub