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Howard Pollack (born March 17, 1952) is an American pianist and musicologist, known for his biographies of American composers.
Pollack was born in Brooklyn and studied piano while attending James Madison High School. He continued his piano studies at the University of Michigan, where he received his Bachelor of Music in 1973; and at the Aspen Music Festival in 1970. He received a Master of Arts degree (1977) and Ph.D. (1981) in musicology from Cornell University, where he wrote his thesis, "Walter Piston and His Music", under the supervision of William Austin. He also studied composition privately with Samuel Adler in Rochester.
After serving on the faculties of the Rochester Institute of Technology, Cornell University, and Empire State College, Pollack joined the faculty of the University of Houston in 1987, becoming John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Music in 2005.
Pollack's books include biographies of Walter Piston, John Alden Carpenter, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Marc Blitzstein. In addition, he co-edited, with Claus Reschke, German Literature and Music: An Aesthetic Fusion (1890–1989) (1992). He also has published articles on Joseph Haydn, Victor Herbert, Charles Griffes, Samuel Barber, and Carlisle Floyd.[ citation needed ]
Pollack received the Deems Taylor Award from ASCAP (2000) and the Irving Lowens Award from the Society for American Music (2001) for Aaron Copland and an Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (2007) and another Deems Taylor Award (2008) for George Gershwin. His other awards include grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, the Newberry Library, the American Musicological Society, and the Society for American Music.[ citation needed ]
Pollack is a professor at the Moores School of Music of the University of Houston. [1]
Aaron Copland was an American composer, critic, writer, teacher, pianist and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as the "Dean of American Composers". The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his music are typical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. He is best known for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as "populist" and which the composer labeled his "vernacular" style. Works in this vein include the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid and Rodeo, his Fanfare for the Common Man and Third Symphony. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres, including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores.
The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted into a prize: "For a distinguished musical composition of significant dimension by an American that has had its first performance in the United States during the year."
Harold Samuel Shapero was an American composer.
Walter Hamor Piston, Jr., was an American composer of classical music, music theorist, and professor of music at Harvard University.
Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored with several awards including Germany's Order of Merit – Officer's Cross.
Irving Gifford Fine was an American composer. Fine's work assimilated neoclassical, romantic, and serial elements. Composer Virgil Thomson described Fine's "unusual melodic grace" while Aaron Copland noted the "elegance, style, finish and...convincing continuity" of Fine's music.
Connotations is a classical music composition for symphony orchestra written by American composer Aaron Copland. Commissioned by Leonard Bernstein in 1962 to commemorate the opening of Philharmonic Hall in New York City, United States, this piece marks a departure from Copland's populist period, which began with El Salón México in 1936 and includes the works he is most famous for such as Appalachian Spring, Lincoln Portrait and Rodeo. It represents a return to a more dissonant style of composition in which Copland wrote from the end of his studies with French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and return from Europe in 1924 until the Great Depression. It was also Copland's first dodecaphonic work for orchestra, a style he had disparaged until he heard the music of French composer Pierre Boulez and adapted the method for himself in his Piano Quartet of 1950. While the composer had produced other orchestral works contemporary to Connotations, it was his first purely symphonic work since his Third Symphony, written in 1947.
The Piano Variations of American composer Aaron Copland were written for piano solo from January to October 1930. They were dedicated to American writer and literary critic Gerald Sykes, and were originally published in 1932 by Cos Cob Press, which merged with Arrow Music Press in 1938 and was taken over by Boosey & Hawkes in 1956. The approximate performance time is 11 minutes.
Julius Hegyi was an American conductor and violinist.
Capricorn Concerto, Op. 21, is a composition for flute, oboe, trumpet, and strings by Samuel Barber, completed on September 8, 1944. A typical performance lasts approximately 14 minutes.
William Remsen Strickland was an American conductor and organist, noted for his lifelong promotion of American composers.
Herbert Elwell was an American composer and music critic. A native of Minneapolis, he was among the first Americans to study in France with Nadia Boulanger. While in Paris his Quintet for Piano and Strings (1924) garnered more praise than George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was premiered at the same concert. He began his studies in music at the University of Minnesota, and went on to work with Ernest Bloch prior to his sojourn in France. He also attended the American Academy in Rome during which time he composed his most frequently performed work, the ballet The Happy Hypocrite (1925).
Harold Shapero completed the Symphony for Classical Orchestra in B-flat major on March 10, 1947, in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. It is written for an orchestra consisting of piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in B-flat, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 2 horns in F, 2 trumpets in C, 2 tenor trombones and one bass, timpani and strings. Although labelled "Classical," many of the work's features point to Beethoven rather than Haydn or Mozart, such as "the way in which Shapero paces himself, alternating long passages in the tonic and the dominant, with fast, dramatic modulations often reserved for transitions and developments." Nicolas Slonimsky remarked on how the piece is "premeditatedly cast in the proclamatory key of B-flat major, the natural tonality of the bugle, and ending in a display of tonic major triads." But there are modern features as well, with "the work's orchestration, in general, ... distinctively bright and brassy, and undoubtedly derived a fair amount from Piston and Copland, as well as from the composer's experience as a dance band arranger."
The Sonatina for Violin and Harpsichord is a three-movement, neoclassical chamber work composed by Walter Piston in 1945, that marks the beginning of his postwar style.
String Quartet No. 1 by Walter Piston is a chamber-music work composed in 1933.
String Quartet No. 2 by Walter Piston is a chamber-music work composed in 1935.
String Quartet No. 5 by Walter Piston is a chamber-music work composed in 1962.
John Kirkpatrick was an American classical pianist and music scholar, best known for championing the works of Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, Carl Ruggles, and Roy Harris. He gave the first complete public performance of Ives's Concord Sonata in 1939, which became a turning point in the composer's public recognition. Kirkpatrick played an important role in Ives scholarship, and he was leader in the Charles Ives Society. One important example is his role in the editing of Memos, which is a collection of Ives's autobiographical writings. At the time of his death Kirkpatrick was a professor emeritus at Yale University, where he had also been the curator of the Charles Ives archives.
Michael Miller Horvit is an American composer. Horvit trained at Yale University and Boston University and studied with Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss and Walter Piston, as well as Quincy Porter and Gardner Read. He was a professor of music theory and composition on the faculty of the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston.
A Salute to American Music is a 113-minute live album of music, both classical and popular, performed by Steven Blier, Renée Fleming, Paul Groves, Jerry Hadley, Karen Holvik, Marilyn Horne, Jeff Mattsey, Robert Merrill, Sherrill Milnes, Maureen O'Flynn, Phyllis Pancella, Leontyne Price, Samuel Ramey, Daniel Smith, Frederica von Stade, Tatiana Troyanos, Carol Vaness and Denise Woods with the Collegiate Chorale and members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under the direction of James Conlon. The album was released in 1992.
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