Harold Shapero

Harold Samuel Shapero ( born April 29, 1920 in Lynn, Massachusetts, † 17 May 2013) was an American composer and music educator.

Career

Shapero had composition lessons with Nicolas Slonimsky and Ernst Krenek and piano lessons with Eleanor Kerr and Manfred Malkin. He played piano in a dance band and founded with a friend the Hal Kenny Orchestra, a swing jazz band. From 1937 to 1941 he studied at Harvard University with Walter Piston and attended summer courses with Paul Hindemith at Tanglewood. The Rome Prize for his Nine -Minute Overture gave him a stay in Italy in 1941, after which he studied at the Longy School of Music with Nadia Boulanger. From 1951 to 1988 he taught at Brandeis University, whose electronic music studio he founded. 1970-1971 he was Composer in Residence at the American Academy in Rome.

1948 was premiered under the direction of Leonard Bernstein 's Symphony for Classical Orchestra of Boston Symphony Orchestra. In addition to this most famous of his works he composed a string quartet, sonatas for trumpet and piano and for piano four hands, songs based on poems by EE Cummings, a Partita for piano and small orchestra, the jazz studies on Green Mountain, Two Psalms for Chorus and the Hebrew cantata Poems of Halevi.

Since 1945, Shapero was married to the painter Esther Geller. Her daughter Hannah M. G. Shapero ( born 1953 ) was known as a painter.

Works

  • Leaves in the Wind for Piano, 1935-38
  • Sonatina for Piano, 1936-38
  • String Trio, 1937
  • Five Poems by EE Cummings for baritone and piano, 1938
  • Trumpet Sonata, 1939
  • Piano Sonata for four hands, 1940-41
  • Nine Minute Overture for Orchestra, 1941
  • Three piano sonatas, 1941-43
  • Violin Sonata, 1942
  • String Quartet, 1942
  • Serenade for Strings, 1945
  • Variations in C minor for Piano, 1947
  • The Travellers, Overture, 1948
  • Sonata in F minor for Piano, 1948
  • Arioso Variations for Piano, 1948
  • Symphony for Classical Orchestra, 1948
  • Credo for Orchestra, 1951
  • Hebrew Cantata for choir and chamber ensemble, 1956
  • On Green Mountain for jazz orchestra, 1958
  • Soundtrack to the television documentary The Twentieth Century with Walter Cronkite about Woodrow Wilson, 1959
  • Partita for Piano and Orchestra, 1960
  • Hebrew Poems for speaker and synthesizer, 1968-69
  • Improvisation in B for piano and synthesizer, 1969
  • Improvisation in C sharp for piano and synthesizer, 1970
  • AB -70 for piano, in honor of Arthur Berger's Birthday, 1982
  • For Louise for solo cello ( for Louise Vosgerchian ), 1990
  • In the Family, suite for trumpet and flute, 1991
  • Trumpet Concerto, 1994 ( for trumpet and orchestra )
  • America Variations for Piano in 1950, in progress
  • Concerto for Orchestra in progress
  • Chamber Symphony, in progress
Lynn (Massachusetts) May 17 Integrated Authority File
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