Donald Erb

Donald Erb ( born January 17, 1927 in Youngstown, Ohio; † August 12, 2008 in Cleveland Heights, Ohio ) was an American composer.

Erb played as a student trumpet in a dance band and after his military service in World War II in various jazz bands. He studied until 1950 at Kent State University, until 1952 at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and in 1963 gained a doctorate at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he was a student of Bernard Heiden. During a stay in Paris in 1953 he studied with Nadia Boulanger.

From 1953 to 1961 he taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and was there until 1966 Composer in Residence. Then he looked at the Symphony Orchestra in Dallas and eventually returned to Cleveland. In 1987 he received here a professor of composition. He also taught at Indiana University at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Erb overtures composed a symphony, a concerto for percussion and orchestra, The Seventh Trumpet (UA 1967) based on motives of the Apocalypse and chamber works. With the piece Reconnaissance, where he began as one of the first composers to the synthesizer, he is one of the pioneers of electronic music in the United States.

Works

• Reconnaissance
• The Seventh Trumpet, UA 1969
• Concerto for Brass and Orchestra, 1986
• Changes in 1994
• Remembrances, 1994
• Sonata for Solo Violin, 1994
• Sunlit peaks at dark Valleys, 1995
• Sonata for Solo Harp, 1995

• American composer
• Born 1927
• Died in 2008
• Man