Frederick Converse
Life
Converse was born the youngest of seven siblings and was ten years old, started piano lessons. He studied music at first at Harvard University, then from 1896 to 1898 with Joseph Rheinberger in Munich. Since 1899 he taught theory in Boston, 1901-1907 Composition at Harvard. He later became vice president of the Boston Opera Company and taught from 1921 to 1938 composition at the New England Conservatory in Boston.
Among his most famous pupils Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) and Florence Price ( 1888-1953 ).
Work
Although Converse was closely bound to the late Romantic style of his European contemporaries, his work became increasingly but with specifically American themes. The lush orchestration of his programmatic works was compared with the early Richard Strauss. However, Converse did not stop in the late Romantic period. Around 1905 he took suggestions of French Impressionism in on harmonies and orchestration; and from the late 20s, he modernized his style again by including bitonality Quart harmonies and dissonances. In his symphonic suite American Sketches (1928 ), he eventually even used jazz rhythms and harmonies. An avant-gardist, he did not want to be, but life remained open-minded about new developments and tolerant.
Converse wrote, among other things, five operas and symphonies 7. 1905 his opera The Pipe of Desire was listed as the first work of an American at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Among the still well-known works include the symphonic poem by Converse The Mystic Trumpeter (1904 ) for a homonymous poem by Walt Whitman, the orchestral piece Flivver Ten Million ( The ten-millionth Ford car) from 1927, and the American Sketches of 1928.