Tom Johnson (composer)

Tom Johnson ( born November 18, 1939 in Greeley ( Colorado)) is an American composer and music critic, and has lived in Paris since 1983.

Career

Johnson was educated at Yale College in New Haven ( Connecticut ) and others with Elliott Carter ( financial statements in 1961 and 1967) and privately with Morton Feldman (1965 /66). He became known as a composer of works with extremely reduced Tonvorrat or musical material, for example, the one-hour Four note opera (1972 ), which uses no more than four pitches in all possible sequences and plays. Here they are constructed with the aid of mathematical processes and models, which became the main compositional principle of Johnson's musical work.

Between 1972 and 1982, Johnson wrote a weekly music reviews for the New York Village Voice, especially about performances of the then-emerging minimalist music, becoming an authentic main witnesses of the creation of this musical style. These criticisms were later published as a book. Other books followed.

Style

Stylistically, Tom Johnson is indeed the minimum attributable to Music, but his individual character that direction makes his music in this context hardly comparable. Here, Johnson likes to use mathematical formulas, theorems, number pyramids or number games he melodic or rhythmic consistently on the music - especially on the piano - transfers. But his only string quartet Formula consists of eight sets, where each is a mathematical formula based. This logical- rational principles of composition are since the 80's graphic scores in the form of drawings over ( Symmetries for Piano Four Hands), which are relatively free to interpret.

Works

One of the first compositions, treading with Johnson this path, the work Nine Bells ( 1979). His most commercially successful work is likely the Riemann Opera (1988 ) be, in the various articles of Hugo Riemann's music lexicon were set to music. So there is a recitative to an aria and recitative text lexicon for lexicon text aria, etc.; the work has undergone numerous productions especially in European theaters. As one of his major works applies the full-length Bonhoeffer Oratorio ( 1988-92 ).

Publications

• The Voice of New Music. New York City 1972-1982; a collection of articles originally Publishes in the " Village Voice ". Het Apollohuis, Eindhoven 1989, ISBN 90-71638-09- X. ( available for free download available )
• Self- Similar Melodies. 75 Editions, Paris 1996, ISBN 2-907200-01-1