Gardner Read

Gardner Read ( born January 2, 1913 in Evanston, Illinois, † October 10, 2005 in Manchester -by-the -Sea, Massachusetts ) was an American composer.

Read studied composition at the Music School of Northwestern University and took private piano and organ lessons. 1932 and 1933 he attended summer courses in conducting and composition at the International Music Camp of the Interlochen Center for the Arts.

In 1932 he received a scholarship to a four-year degree at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, where Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson were among his teachers. In 1938 he traveled to Europe and took lessons there at Ildebrando Pizzetti in Rome and Jean Sibelius in Helsinki. In 1941 he studied with Aaron Copland at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood.

Between 1941 and 1948, headed Read the composition department of the St. Louis Institute of Music, the Kansas City Conservatory of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music. From 1948 until his retirement in 1978 he was professor of composition at Boston University. In 1966 he was Visiting Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition, Read was 1943-44 Principal Conductor of the St. Louis Philharmonic Orchestra and appeared as guest conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra and various university orchestra.

Read composed over 200 works, including an opera about the life of François Villon, an oratorio by Khalil Gibran's book The Prophet, four symphonies, a violin and a piano concerto, chamber music, organ and piano works and songs. He also wrote a number of books on musical notation and instrumentation.