Leon Kirchner
Leon Kirchner ( born January 24, 1919 in Brooklyn, New York, † 17 September 2009 in Manhattan, New York) was an American composer.
Life
The young Kirchner studied piano at Los Angeles City College, where he caught the attention of Ernst Toch, who sent him to Arnold Schoenberg; He studied from 1938 to 1942 with him and Ernest Bloch at the University of California at Berkeley, where he graduated and the " George Ladd Prix de Paris " in 1942 won. Because of the war, it was not possible for him to go to Paris Instead, he took private lessons with Roger Sessions in New York. After his three years of military service, he returned to Berkeley and began working as a music teacher. In 1954 he went to the Faculty of Music at Mills College in Oakland, Calif. , A job, had recommended him for the Stravinsky. From 1961 to 1991 he was a professor at Harvard University, where he was also the teacher of John Adams. In addition to his professorship, he conducted and performed as a pianist.
After moving to New York in 1948 Kirchner was soon in the series of composers who shaped American music in the second half of the 20th century, such as Arthur Berger, Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Lukas Foss, and Earl Kim.
Especially Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern influence Kirchner's always individually lasting Music, " which acts sometimes tortured, sometimes impulsive and energetic ." The highly educated Kirchner has referred several times in his works on writer: His opera Lily is based on a novel by Saul Bellow, for his oratorio Of Things Exactly as They Are, he used texts of Robinson Jeffers, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Wallace Stevens and Robert Lowell, his choral work Words from Wordsworth processed verses by William Wordsworth.
For his third string quartet, he received the 1966 Pulitzer Prize.
Works (selection)
Biography
- Robert Riggs: Leon Kirchner: Composer, Performer, and Teacher. Publisher: University of Rochester Press, 2010 ISBN 978-1-5804-6343-0.