Charles Wuorinen

Charles Peter Wuorinen ( born June 9, 1938 in New York City ) is an American composer, pianist and conductor. He was awarded the 1970 Pulitzer Prize and is one of the leading contemporary composers in the United States.

Life

Wourinen was born in 1938 as the son of Finnish immigrants in New York. His father was a historian and worked during World War II for the Office of Strategic Services. At the age of five he began to compose and won the 1954 New York Philharmonic 's Young Composer Award. From 1955 to 1956 he was organist at Saint Paul 's Church in Gardner. In 1956 he made ​​his firing at the Trinity School. From 1956 to 1957 he managed the Columbia University Orchestra and sang as a countertenor in the Church of the Heavenly Rest and the Church of the Transfiguration in Manhattan. From 1957 to 1959 he studied conducting with Rudolf Thomas at Columbia University in New York. From 1958 to 1959 he was more personal than Woodrow Wilson Fellow assistant of Vladimir Ussachevski ibid. Furthermore, among his composition teachers Otto Luening and Jack Beeson. He was promoted also by Edgar Varèse and Jacques Barzun. In 1961 he received a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in 1963. He then taught at Columbia University. He previously played together in 1962 with Harvey Sollberger and Nicolas Roussakis the founders of the Group for Contemporary Music.

In 1970 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for the work Time's Encomium (composed at the Columbia - Princeton Electronic Music Center ). From 1967 to 1968 he was a guest lecturer at Princeton University and from 1968 to 1971 at the New England Conservatory of Music. Following followed lectureships at the University of South Florida, the Manhattan School of Music and the University of California, San Diego. He is currently professor of composition at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Lecture tours have taken him throughout the United States. He was composer-in- residence at the Chamber Music Northwest, Grand Teton Music Festival, the Cabrillo Music Festival, Louisville Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony. He was also a board member of the American Composers Alliance and the American Music Center. He founded the American Society of University Composers.

In 1970 he was invited by President Richard Nixon to the State Dinner at the White House. In the 70s, he was enthusiastic about the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, and composed at Bell Labs in New Jersey. Wuorinen worked from 1985 to 1989 in the American Academy in Rome, and from 1989 to 1994 as a consultant for new music for the music director Herbert Blomstedt in San Francisco. In 1975 he gave up the Igor Stravinsky 's widow the last scores for A Reliquary for Igor Stravinsky. As the first composer, he composed for the Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi and Michael Tilson Thomas. His compositions were, inter alia, by Naxos, Col legno and Albany Records (Charles Wuorinen Series) recorded. He also worked with the writers Salman Rushdie and Annie Proulx.

As a pianist he played among others with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted the leading orchestras in the United States ( Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and the American Composers Orchestra ). So he conducted the American premiere of Morton Feldman's Neither.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Prizes, Awards and Honors

  • New York Philharmonic 's Young Composer Award (1954 )
  • Bennington Composer's Conference Scholarship (1956-1960)
  • Woodrow Wilson Fellowship ( 1958)
  • Joseph H. Bearns Prize (1958, 1959, 1961 )
  • Alice M. Ditson Fellowship ( 1959)
  • BMI Student Composer Awards ( 1959, 1961, 1962, 1963)
  • MacDowell Colony Fellowship ( 1960)
  • Arthur Rose Teaching Fellowship (1960 )
  • Member of Phi Beta Kappa (1960 )
  • Henry Evans Traveling Fellowship ( 1961)
  • Lili Boulanger Memorial Award (1961, 1962)
  • Regents College Teaching Fellowship (1961, 1962)
  • Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1967 )
  • Guggenheim Fellowship (1968, 1972)
  • Ingram Merrill Fellowship ( 1969)
  • Koussevitzky International Recording Award ( 1970)
  • Pulitzer Prize for Music ( 1970)
  • Brandeis University Creative Arts Award (1970 )
  • Honorary Doctor of Jersey City State College ( 1971)
  • Phoebe Ketchum Thorne Honorary Award (1973 )
  • National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1974, 1976)
  • Creative Artists Public Service Award (1976 )
  • Rockefeller Fellowship ( 1979, 1981, 1982)
  • MacArthur Fellowship ( 1986)

Works (selection)

Wuorinen composed over 200 works, including symphonies and other orchestral works alongside, instrumental concertos and numerous chamber works and pieces for electronic musical instruments. His compositions are mostly published by Edition Peters.

  • Into the Organ Pipes and Steeples, 1956
  • Orchestral and Electronic Exchanges, 1965
  • The Politics of Harmony: A Masque, 1967
  • Grand Bamboula for string orchestra, 1971
  • A Reliquary for Igor Stravinsky, 1975
  • The W. of Babylon, opera, 1975
  • Percussion Symphony, 1976
  • Tashi, 1976
  • Two Part Symphony, 1978
  • Third Piano Concerto, 1983
  • Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra, 1983
  • The Golden Dance, 1986
  • Five: Concerto for Amplified Cello and Orchestra, 1987
  • Genesis, 1989
  • A Winter's Tale, 1991
  • Missa Brevis, 1991
  • Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra, 1992
  • The Mission of Virgil, 1993
  • Windfall, 1994
  • Symphony 7, 1997
  • Cyclops, 2000
  • The Haroun Songbook, 2002
  • Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie opera, world premiere 2004
  • The Dante Trilogy, ballet trilogy

Writings

  • Simple Composition, 1979

Student

Finland Phi Beta Kappa Society Rockefeller Foundation Arthur Russell (musician) Integrated Authority File
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