Earle Brown
Earle Brown ( born December 26, 1926 in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, † July 2, 2002 in Rye, New York) was an American composer.
In the 1950s he met John Cage, who inspired him to move to New York. There he was with Morton Feldman, David Tudor, and Christian Wolff ( composer ) as a member of the so-called New York School of composers.
Life
Brown is dedicated to the first jazz. At first he did not study music, but engineering and mathematics ( Northeastern University, 1944-45 ). Between 1946 and 1950 he studied the Schillinger system of composition at the Joseph Schillinger House of Music in Boston. Brown had private trumpet and composition lessons. The main influences he gave to the artists of the so-called New York School, such as Jackson Pollock and Alexander Calder. John Cage invited him to New York, and so left Denver Brown to take part in Cage's Project for Music for Magnetic Tape. Brown also worked as a sound engineer for Capitol Records ( 1955-60 ) and as a producer for Bob Shad's Mainstream Records label and Time ( 1960-73).
Browns to Contact Cage meant that David Tudor Brown met early piano works and performed in Darmstadt and Donaueschingen. Thereupon, composers such as Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna offered their services for him, so that his scores were bought and played his works.
Brown died in 2002 from lung cancer.
Music
The Brown attributed new notation principle of the so-called " open form " was his most important contribution to music history of the 20th century.
This principle not only influenced his friends and colleagues in New York in the 1950s and 1960s, but was later large influence on younger European and American composers: John Zorn and (in some earlier works ) Karlheinz Stockhausen are probably the most well-known composers, the recourse to this idea.
His most famous work is December 1952 which caused a stir with its strictly geometric graphic notation. Available Forms is the most played orchestral work browns.
Works (selection)
- Home Burial (1949 ), for piano
- Three Pieces for Piano (1951 )
- Music for Violin, Cello & Piano ( 1952)
- Twenty-Five Pages ( 1953), 1-25 for Piano (s )
- Octet I ( 1953), for 8 speakers
- Indices ( 1954), for chamber orchestra
- Folio and 4 Systems (1954 ), for variable instrumentation
- Indices [ piano version ] (1954 )
- Octet II ( 1954), for 8 speakers
- Music for Cello and Piano (1955 )
- Four More (1956 ), for piano
- Hodograph I ( 1959), for chamber ensemble
- Available Forms I ( 1961), for chamber orchestra
- Available Forms II (1962), for two orchestras
- Times Five ( 1963), for chamber ensemble
- Corroboree (1964 ), for 3 or 2 pianos
- Nine rarebit (1965 ), for 1 or 2 Harpsichords Harpsichord
- String Quartet ( 1965)
- Calder Piece (1966 ), for percussionist and Mobile
- Module I ( 1966), for orchestra
- Module II ( 1966), for orchestra
- Event: Synergy II ( 1967), for chamber ensemble
- Module III (1969 ), for orchestra
- Small Pieces for Large Chorus ( 1969)
- TimeSpans (1972 ), for orchestra
- Centering (1973 ), for solo violin and ensemble
- Cross Sections and Color Fields ( 1975), for orchestra
- Folio II (1982) for variable Instrumentation
- Tracking Pierrot (1992 ), for chamber ensemble
- Summer Suite '95 (1995), for piano
- Special Events (1999), for chamber ensemble
Further Reading
- J. P. Welsh. Open Form and Earle Brown's Modules I and II ( 1967), in: Perspectives of New Music, xxxii / 1 ( 1994 ), pp. 254-290.
- Sabine Feißt, the term " improvisation" in new music, Sinzig (Studio, ET Schewe ), 1997, pp. 97-100 ( to the open form and Earle Brown).
- Clemens Gresser, entry to " Earle Brown" in: Encyclopedia of the Piano, ed. by Christoph Kammertöns and Siegfried Mauser, Laaber ( Laaber ), 2006, pp. 130-131.
- Dan Albertson (ed. ). Earle Brown: From Motets to Mathematics, in: Contemporary Music Review, Vol 26 Issue 3 & 4 ( 2007), Routledge (Online access requires subscription).