External links
- Official website
- Interview with Paul Moravec, October 28, 2006
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Paul Moravec (born November 2, 1957) is an American composer and a University Professor at Adelphi University on Long Island, New York and also a member of the composition department of the Mannes School of Music . Already a prolific composer, he has been described as a "new tonalist." [1] He is best known for his work Tempest Fantasy , which received the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Among his compositions are two operas: The Letter (2009) and The Shining (2016).
Moravec was born in Buffalo, New York, and subsequently attended the Lawrenceville School, graduating in 1975. [2] He received his B.A. in composition from Harvard University in 1980; while there, he performed with the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, one of the Holden Choirs. He won the Prix de Rome and studied at the American Academy in Rome after graduating. He then received the Master of Music (1982) and Doctor of Musical Arts (1987) in composition, both from Columbia University. [3]
Moravec has taught at Dartmouth College (1987–96) and Hunter College (1997–98). He suffered from clinically diagnosed depression that worsened during the time immediately surrounding his departure from Dartmouth College, and underwent electroshock therapy. [4] He is currently a University Professor in the music department at Adelphi University, He also teaches composition at the Mannes School of Music, contributing to what The New York Times has called a "renaissance" in a college that went through academic and financial difficulties in the 1990s. [5]
In 2004, Moravec received the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his work Tempest Fantasy . [6] [7] [8] [9] This prestigious award raised Moravec's profile significantly, and he was appointed to several residencies. He was named the new honorary composer-member of the New York Composers Circle in September, 2006. [10] He was also appointed the composer in residence for the 2007-2008 academic year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. [4] [11]
In addition to his Pulitzer Prize, Moravec has received a Composer Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, and the Charles Ives Prize and Goddard Lieberson Awards in American Composition. [3] He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2010. [12]
He has been commissioned by such ensembles as the Dessoff Choirs, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, and the Harvard Glee Club. [13]
Moravec has been placed into a group called "new tonalists" by the critic Terry Teachout, who describes them as composers who are "neither embarrassed nor paralyzed by tradition. Rather they accept it as a given." [1] Thus, according to this analysis, his style is primarily tonal and neo-romantic. However, Moravec himself asserts:
The term ‘new tonalist’ is a little outdated simply because of the passage of time[.] It had more relevance a few decades ago, when late modernism was dying or even dead. For my work, I regard the term only as a point of departure before considering each composition on a case-by-case basis. As a composer, I try always to make beautiful things, and I use whatever techniques and materials are useful for the particular composition at hand[.] Some of those materials are atonal or nontonal, but the overall harmonic context of my music derives from the tonal tradition, which after all is the lingua franca of Western music — essentially, Monteverdi to the Beatles and beyond. [4]
Critic Jens F. Laurson described Moravec's Pulitzer Prize-winning Tempest Fantasy as "remarkably accessible music. Picturesque, conventionally beautiful at times, but without pandering to the ears’ lowest harmonic expectations. [It is] music that works with all the traditional tools from the composer’s workshop[,] which have changed surprisingly little since Bach - but Moravec uses them to create music anew." He named Federico Mompou, Claude Debussy, Paul Hindemith, Francis Poulenc, and Elliott Carter as clear musical influences in Moravec's music. He also noted a clear disparity between Moravec's music and that of minimalist composers Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams. [14]
Critic Victor Carr Jr. characterizes Moravec's musical language as "generally tonal--and although it's not consistently melodic, it's always accessible. More than that, it's highly engrossing[.]" [15]
His best-known pieces include the Pulitzer-winning, Shakespeare-inspired Tempest Fantasy , a 30-minute chamber work scored for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, which was premiered on May 2, 2003, at the Morgan Library in New York City by David Krakauer and Trio Solisti, for whom it was written; [16] Northern Lights Electric, a 1994 work that combines a musical illustration of the Northern Lights with a musical depiction of electric light; and the 1998 cantata Fire/Ice/Air, which contrasts the journeys of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, on his expedition to the Antarctic, and Charles Lindbergh, on his trans-Atlantic flight. [1] An oratorio, Blizzard Voices, about the Schoolhouse Blizzard of 1888, was commissioned by Opera Omaha and was premiered there in September 2008. He collaborated with Terry Teachout on The Letter , an opera based on the 1927 play by W. Somerset Maugham that was premiered in 2009 by the Santa Fe Opera. [17]
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Samuel Osmond Barber II was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator, and one of the most celebrated composers of the mid-20th century. Principally influenced by nine years' composition studies with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute and more than 25 years' study with his uncle, the composer Sidney Homer, Barber's music usually eschewed the experimental trends of musical modernism in favor of traditional 19th-century harmonic language and formal structure embracing lyricism and emotional expression. However, he adopted elements of modernism after 1940 in some of his compositions, such as an increased use of dissonance and chromaticism in the Cello Concerto (1945) and Medea's Dance of Vengeance (1955); and the use of tonal ambiguity and a narrow use of serialism in his Piano Sonata (1949), Prayers of Kierkegaard (1954), and Nocturne (1959).
Paul Hindemith was a German and American composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the Neue Sachlichkeit style of music in the 1920s, with compositions such as Kammermusik, including works with viola and viola d'amore as solo instruments in a neo-Bachian spirit. Other notable compositions include his song cycle Das Marienleben (1923), Der Schwanendreher for viola and orchestra (1935), the opera Mathis der Maler (1938), the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943), and the oratorio When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (1946), a requiem based on Walt Whitman's poem. Hindemith and his wife emigrated to Switzerland and the United States ahead of World War II, after worsening difficulties with the Nazi German regime. In his later years, he conducted and recorded much of his own music.
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."
Shulamit Ran is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York City at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music. Her Symphony (1990) won her the Pulitzer Prize for Music. She was the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first being Ellen Taaffe Zwilich in 1983. Ran was a professor of music composition at the University of Chicago from 1973 to 2015. She has performed as a pianist in Israel, Europe and the U.S., and her compositional works have been performed worldwide by a wide array of orchestras and chamber groups.
Elliott Cook Carter Jr. was an American modernist composer. One of the most respected composers of the second half of the 20th century, he combined elements of European modernism and American "ultra-modernism" into a distinctive style with a personal harmonic and rhythmic language, after an early neoclassical phase. His compositions are performed throughout the world, and include orchestral, chamber music, solo instrumental, and vocal works. The recipient of many awards, Carter was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his string quartets; he also wrote the large-scale orchestral triptych Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei.
William Elden Bolcom is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, a Grammy Award, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America. He taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973 until 2008. He is married to mezzo-soprano Joan Morris.
Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl is an American music theorist and composer. Best known for his work on musical grammar, cognition, rhythmic theory and pitch space, he and the linguist Ray Jackendoff developed the Chomsky-inspired generative theory of tonal music.
George Perle was an American composer and music theorist. As a composer, his music was largely atonal, using methods similar to the twelve-tone technique of the Second Viennese School. This serialist style, and atonality in general, was the subject of much of his theoretical writings. His 1962 book, Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern remains a standard text for 20th-century classical music theory. Among Perle's awards was the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Wind Quintet No. 4.
Terrance Alan Teachout was an American author, critic, biographer, playwright, stage director, and librettist.
Elliot Goldenthal is an American composer of contemporary classical music and film and theatrical scores. A student of Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, he is best known for his distinctive style and ability to blend various musical styles and techniques in original and inventive ways. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 2002 for his score to the motion picture Frida, directed by his longtime partner Julie Taymor.
Joseph Clyde Schwantner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, educator and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 2002. He was awarded the 1970 Charles Ives Prize.
Zhou Long is a Chinese American composer. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Ralph Shapey was an American composer and conductor.
Paul Seiko Chihara is an American composer.
Jan Bach was an American composer. He taught at the University of Tampa (Florida) from 1965 to 1966 and at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois from 1966 to 2002. His primary performing instrument was the horn, and he was renowned among hornists for his horn pieces. He also played the piano.
The Letter is an opera by composer Paul Moravec and librettist Terry Teachout. It was commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera and was premiered there on 25 July 2009.
Tempest Fantasy is a 2003 chamber music composition in five movements for cello, clarinet, violin, and piano by the American composer Paul Moravec. The piece is dedicated to clarinetist David Krakauer and the piano trio Trio Solisti, who premiered the work May 2, 2003 at Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. The title of the work comes from the play The Tempest by William Shakespeare. The work won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Cello Counterpoint is a composition for cello and pre-recorded tape by the American composer Steve Reich. The work was jointly commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and Leiden University for the cellist Maya Beiser. It was given its world premiere by Beiser on October 18, 2003 at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. The piece was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
The Piano Concerto No. 3 is a composition for solo piano and orchestra by the American composer Peter Lieberson. The work was commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra for the ensemble's centennial. It was given its world premiere by the pianist Peter Serkin and the Minnesota Orchestra in Minneapolis on November 26, 2003. The piece is dedicated to Peter Serkin and was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Mark Campbell is a New York-based librettist and lyricist whose operas have received both a Pulitzer Prize in Music and a GRAMMY Award. Mark began writing for the stage as a musical theatre lyricist, but turned to libretto-writing after he premiered Volpone, his first full-length opera in 2004 at Wolf Trap Opera Company.
