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Richard Beaudoin (born October 10, 1975) is an American composer of contemporary music. His music and writings explore compositional uses of expressive timing, or microtiming.
Beaudoin was born in North Attleborough, Massachusetts. [1] He graduated from North Attleborough High School in 1993, [2] studied privately with bassist Mibbit Threats, and enrolled at Amherst College in 1993 where he remained for three years, studying with Lewis Spratlan.
In 1996, he withdrew from Amherst College and spent a year living in Mortlake, near London, studying composition privately with Michael Finnissy. He returned to Amherst College and graduated summa cum laude in 1998. [3] He was a MacDowell Colony Fellow in January 1999.
In 2000, Beaudoin returned to London and earned his M.Mus. in Music Composition from London's Royal Academy of Music in 2002, studying again with Michael Finnissy. He returned to the United States and, in 2008, earned his Ph.D. in Composition and Music Theory from Brandeis University, studying composition with David Rakowski and Martin Boykan, and theory with Eric Chafe. [4]
While still a Ph.D. student at Brandeis, he held two visiting professorships at Amherst College: as Joseph A. and Grace W. Valentine Visiting Professor of Music at Amherst College (2005–06) and as Visiting Professor of Music (2007). Since earning his Ph.D., he has taught composition and theory at Harvard University, first as lecturer on Music (2008–11) and then as Preceptor in Music (2011–present).
Beaudoin's most widely performed works are those related to expressive timing, or microtiming. This process, which he developed in 2009 with the Swiss musicologist Olivier Senn, is based on millisecond-level microtemporal analyses of recorded performances. The timing measurements of every sound in a given recording are used to create a detailed transcription of the recording in musical notation, often in elongation.
Beaudoin has composed cycles of works based on microtimings of specific recordings. The twelve works in the series Études d'un prélude (2009–2010) are based on Martha Argerich's October 1975 recording of Chopin's E minor Prélude, Op. 28, no. 4. The six works in the series The Artist and his Model (2010–2012) are based on Alfred Cortot's July 1931 recording of Debussy's Prélude, "...La file aux cheveux de lin". Other source works have included Maurizio Pollini performing Anton Webern (nach Webern, nach Pollini 2011), Thelonious Monk improvising on "Body and Soul" (Now anything can hang at any angle 2011), and Pablo Casals performing Johann Sebastian Bach (Ebenbild 2014).
In addition to the music based on microtiming, Beaudoin has written over 50 songs, including a cycle of 17 songs called Nach-Fragen (The Inquiries), for the German soprano Annette Dasch, commissioned by the Konzerthaus Dortmund. [5] He has also composed chamber operas for Boston Lyric Opera and Staatstheater Kassel.
Writings on these works, by Beaudoin and others, have appeared in the Journal of Music Theory , Perspectives of New Music , Divergence Press, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , and David Bard-Schwarz's 2014 book, An Introduction to Electronic Art Through the Teaching of Jacques Lacan: Strangest Thing. [6] [7] [8] [9] Beaudoin has lectured widely on his music, including at the Centre for Music and Science at Cambridge University, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and at the Hochschule, Luzern in Switzerland.
Recordings include Microtimings (New Focus Recordings, 2012), a double album by Mark Knoop and the Kreutzer Quartet, and Constantine Finehouse's Backwards Glance Piano Music by Brahms and Beaudoin (Spicerack Records, 2010). A collection of six scores was published in the handmade artist book Richard Beaudoin: The Artist and his Model (Daniel Kelm, 2014).
| Year | Type | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1999 | Orchestra/Large ensemble | Two Women |
| 2000 | Orchestra/Large ensemble | Arcangelo |
| 2001 | Orchestra/Large ensemble | I Hear America Singing |
| Three Dreams | ||
| Choral | A stand of people, a cappella choir | |
| 2002 | Songs | Light Verse, voice and piano |
| 2004 | Solo | Qui Tollis |
| 2005 | Chamber | In höchster Not, for violin and piano, dedicated to Jesse Holstein [10] |
| Love Affairs and Tales of Atrocity | ||
| Solo | Five Counterpoints | |
| La bella confusione | ||
| Songs | Eunoia Songs, tenor and piano | |
| 2006 | Solo | Étude: The world itself might be vague |
| Les signes de ma faiblesse | ||
| 2007 | Chamber | Memor fui nocte nominis tui—First String Quartet |
| Opera | Pierre | |
| Songs | Romanzero Lieder, tenor and piano [11] | |
| 2008 | Solo | Summer Canons |
| Opera | Himmelfahrt (Ascension), chamber opera for six voices | |
| Songs | Nach-Fragen, voice and piano [12] | |
| 2009 | Orchestra/Large ensemble | Étude d'un prélude V—Photorealism |
| Chamber | Étude d'un prélude II—Flutter Echoes | |
| Étude d'un prélude VI—The Real Thing | ||
| Étude d'un prélude VII—Kertész Distortion | ||
| Étude d'un prélude X—Second String Quartet | ||
| Solo | Étude d'un prélude XI—four28 | |
| Étude d'un prélude VII—Latticed Window | ||
| Étude d'un prélude IV—Black Wires | ||
| Étude d'un prélude I—Chopin desséché | ||
| Songs | Étude d'un prélude III—Wehmut | |
| 2010 | Chamber | The Artist and his Model II—La durée sans contacts s'affaiblit, string quartet |
| Solo | The Artist and his Model I—La fille floutée | |
| nach Webern, nach Pollini | ||
| Opera | The After-Image (Das Nach-Bild), bass, mezzo-soprano, clarinet, violin, violoncello and piano | |
| Songs | dreifacher Frühling | |
| 2011 | Chamber | The Artist and his Model IV—La tradition française |
| Solo | Now anything can hang at any angle | |
| The Artist and his Model III—La fille rhythmée | ||
| Opera | The After-Image (Das Nach-Bild) | |
| Choral | Villanelle for an Anniversary | |
| 2012 | Chamber | The Artist and his Model VI—La fille dérivée |
| Solo | The Artist and his Model V—Brûlage | |
| Songs | Three Darsham Songs | |
| 2014 | Orchestra/Large ensemble | Ebenbild |
| Chamber | Ladies and Gentlemen | |
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Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality, in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a single, central triad is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another. More narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized European classical music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. "The repertory of atonal music is characterized by the occurrence of pitches in novel combinations, as well as by the occurrence of familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar environments".
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer, conductor, and musicologist. His music was among the most radical of its milieu in its concision and use of then novel atonal and twelve-tone techniques in an increasingly rigorous manner, somewhat after the Franco-Flemish School of his studies under Guido Adler. With his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was at the core of those within the broader circle of the Second Viennese School. Their atonal music brought them fame and stirred debate. Webern was arguably the first and certainly the last of the three to write music in an aphoristic, expressionist style, reflecting his instincts and the idiosyncrasy of his compositional process.
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg was an Austrian and American composer, music theorist, teacher and writer. Among the first modernist composers to write music of dense motivic relations saturating the musical texture, he propounded concepts like developing variation, the emancipation of the dissonance, and the "unity of musical space".
In music, serialism is a method of composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though some of his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as a form of post-tonal thinking. Twelve-tone technique orders the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, forming a row or series and providing a unifying basis for a composition's melody, harmony, structural progressions, and variations. Other types of serialism also work with sets, collections of objects, but not necessarily with fixed-order series, and extend the technique to other musical dimensions, such as duration, dynamics, and timbre.
Maurizio Pollini was an Italian pianist and conductor. He was known for performances of Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, and the Second Viennese School, among others. He championed works by contemporary composers, including Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin, Roberto Carnevale, Gianluca Cascioli and Bruno Maderna. Several compositions were written for him, including Luigi Nono's ... sofferte onde serene ..., Giacomo Manzoni's Masse: omaggio a Edgard Varèse, and Salvatore Sciarrino's Fifth Sonata. As a conductor he was instrumental in the Rossini revival at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, conducting La donna del lago from a new critical edition in 1981. He also conducted from the keyboard.
Klangfarbenmelodie is a musical technique that involves splitting a musical line or melody between several instruments, rather than assigning it to just one instrument, thereby adding color (timbre) and texture to the melodic line. The technique is sometimes compared to "pointillism", a neo-impressionist painting technique.
The Alban Berg Quartett was a string quartet founded in Vienna, Austria in 1970, named after Alban Berg.
In music, modernism is an aesthetic stance underlying the period of change and development in musical language that occurred around the turn of the 20th century, a period of diverse reactions in challenging and reinterpreting older categories of music, innovations that led to new ways of organizing and approaching harmonic, melodic, sonic, and rhythmic aspects of music, and changes in aesthetic worldviews in close relation to the larger identifiable period of modernism in the arts of the time. The operative word most associated with it is "innovation". Its leading feature is a "linguistic plurality", which is to say that no one music genre ever assumed a dominant position.
Inherent within musical modernism is the conviction that music is not a static phenomenon defined by timeless truths and classical principles, but rather something which is intrinsically historical and developmental. While belief in musical progress or in the principle of innovation is not new or unique to modernism, such values are particularly important within modernist aesthetic stances.
Humphrey Searle was an English composer and writer on music. His music combines aspects of late Romanticism and modernist serialism, particularly reminiscent of his primary influences, Franz Liszt, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, who was briefly his teacher. As a writer on music, Searle published texts on numerous topics; he was an authority on the music of Franz Liszt, and created the initial cataloguing system for his works.
Michael Peter Finnissy is an English composer, pianist, and pedagogue. An immensely prolific composer, his music is "notable for its dramatic urgency and expressive immediacy".
Jacques-Louis Monod was a French composer, pianist and conductor of 20th century and contemporary music, particularly in the advancement of the music of Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and uptown music; and was active primarily in New York City and London during the second half of the twentieth century.
Martin Boykan was an American composer known for his chamber music as well as music for larger ensembles.
Peter Burlingham Child is an American composer, teacher, and musical analyst. He is Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was a composer in residence with the New England Philharmonic.
Paul E. Beaudoin is an American composer, theorist and author. His 60-second piano piece "dance re: pnmr" has been on a worldwide tour with pianist Guy Livingston and was recorded by him for the Wergo label.
Edward Cowie is an Australian composer, author, natural scientist, and painter.
Evren Celimli is an American composer and producer of music for modern dance, theater, film and the concert hall. His music has been heard throughout the U.S. and Europe at music festivals, in theaters and film festivals.
Arnold Elston was an American composer and educator. Though he studied with Anton Webern, he did not himself use the twelve-tone technique.
Charles Burkhart is an American musicologist, theorist, composer, and pianist. He holds the title of Professor Emeritus in the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College, and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is known especially as a scholar in Schenkerian analysis and as a successful lecturer and master class presenter.
The 36 Verdi Transcriptions for piano by the British composer Michael Finnissy were composed between 1972 and 2005. They are based on the works of Giuseppe Verdi.
Bernhard Haas is a German organist, music theorist and academic.
