Samuel Hans Adler (born March 4, 1928) 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.
Adler was born to a Jewish family in Mannheim, Germany, the son of Hugo Chaim Adler, a cantor and composer, and Selma Adler who was an amateur pianist.[1][2] At the young age of ten, Samuel was separated from his father while Hugo was imprisoned in the Netherlands following the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938.[3] After Hugo's return to Mannheim, the family was reunited and subsequently fled the Nazi regime in Germany through the Netherlands to the United States in 1939, where Hugo became the cantor of Temple Emanuel in Worcester, Massachusetts.[1][4] Sam soon followed his father into the music profession and began his musical studies on the violin with Albert Levy. His formal education in composition was initiated under Herbert Fromm in 1941. Subsequently, Adler earned degrees from both Boston University (where he studied musicology with Karl Geiringer) and Harvard University (where he studied with Aaron Copland, Irving Fine, Paul Hindemith, Paul Pisk, Walter Piston, and Randall Thompson and earned an M.A. in 1950).[5] He studied conducting with Serge Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in 1949.[6] Adler has been awarded honorary doctorates from Southern Methodist and Wake Forest Universities, St. Mary's College of Notre Dame and the St. Louis Conservatory of Music.[7][8][9][10]
Eastman School of Music- University of Rochester – general view
After completing his academic studies in 1950, Adler served as a corporal in the 2d Armored Division.[11][12] During this time he founded the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra (1952) in Stuttgart, Germany, which served to demonstrate the shared cultural heritage of America and Europe in the post World War II era through cultural diplomacy.[12][13][14] For this, he received a special Citation of Excellence from the Army for the orchestra's success between 1952 and 1961.[15] Subsequently, he accepted a position as music director at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas, beginning his tenure there in 1953.[10] At the Dallas temple he formed a children's choir and an adult choir. From 1954 to 1958 Adler conducted the Dallas Lyric Theater. From 1957 to 1966, Adler served as Professor of Composition at the University of North Texas College of Music.[9][10] Between 1966 and 1995, Adler served as Professor of Composition at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music.[7] In addition, he served as Chairman of the Department of Music at The Eastman School of Music from 1973 to 1994.[16] Since 1997, Adler has been a member of the composition faculty at Juilliard and, for the 2009–10 year, was awarded the William Schuman Scholars Chair.[17][9][10]
Juilliard School – Alice Tully Hall
He is also the author of three books, Choral Conducting (Holt Rinehart and Winston 1971, second edition Schirmer Books 1985), Sight Singing (W.W. Norton 1979, 1997), and The Study of Orchestration (W.W. Norton 1982, 1989, 2001, 2016; Italian edition edited by Lorenzo Ferrero for EDT Srl Torino, 2008).[7] He has also contributed numerous articles to major magazines, books and encyclopedias published in the U.S. and abroad. Adler also reflected upon six decades of teaching in his memoirs Building Bridges with Music: Stories from a Composer's Life which was published by Pendragon Press in 2017.[15][8]
Adler is married to Emily Freeman Brown, who is currently serving as Music Director and Conductor of the Bowling Green Philharmonia.[20][9][21][22][23]
Compositional style
External audio
You may hear Samuel Adler's Recitative 1962 for organ performed by Robert Noehren on the album 20th Century American Organ Music in 1968 Here on archive.org
Musicologists have noted that Adler's works incorporate a wide range of compositional techniques including: free atonality, diatonicism, and serialism. In addition, he is recognized for interweaving dance rhythms, folk themes, ostinati, and devices associated with aleatoric music throughout his scores.[11] Adler does not advocate serialism or atonality.
It has also been observed that Adler's compositions illustrate a "midstream modernism", which is characterized by interwoven contrapunctal musical lines which form the foundation for a tonal harmonic complex punctuated by tangential atonal episodes. In addition, his music is said to be inspired by the liturgical cantilena featured in the Jewish musical tradition as well as oriental inflections.[24]
Awards
Adler has been awarded many prizes, including a membership into the American Academy in Berlin (2004)[25] and Institute of Arts and Letters awarded in May 2001, the Charles Ives Award (1961),[26] and the Lillian Fairchild Award (1974).[27][28] In May 2003, he was presented with the Aaron Copland Award by ASCAP for Lifetime Achievement in Music (Composition and Teaching).[29] In 2008, he was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.[30] Similarly, in 2001 Adler was honored with a lifetime appointment to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[31][32] In 1999, he was elected to the Academy of Arts, Berlin for distinguished service to music.[27] In 1983, he won the Deems Taylor Award for his book on orchestration; in 1984, he was appointed Honorary Professorial Fellow of the University College in Cardiff, Wales, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 1984–85. He has been a MacDowell Fellow for five years between 1954 and 1963. In 1986, he received the "Distinguished Alumni Award" from Boston University.[7][1][27][30]
The Music Teachers' National Association selected Adler as its "Composer of the Year 1986–87" for Quintalogues, which won the national competition. In the 1988–89 year, he has been designated "Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar". In 1989, he was awarded The Eastman School's Eisenhart Award for distinguished teaching,[7] and he has been given the honor of Composer of the Year (1991) for the American Guild of Organists. During his second visit to Chile, Adler was elected to the Chilean Academy of Fine Arts (1993) "for his outstanding contributions to the world of music as composer, conductor, and author". He was initiated as an honorary member of the Gamma Theta (1960, University of North Texas) and the Alpha Alpha (1966, National Honorary) chapters of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and in 1986 was named a National Arts Associate to Sigma Alpha Iota, international music fraternity for women.[33] In 1998, he was awarded the Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association.[34][27]
Robert Eugene Ward was an American composer who is best remembered for his opera The Crucible (1961) after the 1953 play of the same name by Arthur Miller. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for that opera in 1962.
John Harris Harbison is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works.
Pēteris Vasks is a Latvian composer.
Walter Sinclair Hartley was an American composer of contemporary classical music.
David Sartor is an American composer, conductor, and educator, and is the founder and music director of the Parthenon Chamber Orchestra.
Chen Yi is a Chinese-American composer of contemporary classical music and violinist. She was the first Chinese woman to receive a Master of Arts (M.A.) in music composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Chen was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Si Ji, and has received awards from the Koussevistky Music Foundation and American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2010, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School and in 2012, she was awarded the Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019.
Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer and professor.
Hendrik Pienaar Hofmeyr is a South African composer. Born in Cape Town, he furthered his studies in Italy during 10 years of self-imposed exile as a conscientious objector. While there, he won the South African Opera Competition with The Fall of the House of Usher. He also received the annual Nederburg Prize for Opera for this work subsequent to its performance at the State Theatre in Pretoria in 1988. In the same year, he obtained first prize in an international competition in Italy with music for a short film by Wim Wenders. He returned to South Africa in 1992, and in 1997 won two major international composition competitions, the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition of Belgium and the first edition of the Dimitris Mitropoulos Competition in Athens. His 'Incantesimo' for solo flute was selected to represent South Africa at the ISCM World Music Days in Croatia in 2005. In 2008 he was honoured with a Kanna award by the Kleinkaroo National Arts Festival. He is currently Professor and Head of Composition and Theory at the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town, where he obtained a DMus in 1999.
Matthew John Hindson AM is an Australian composer.
Raymond Wilding-White ; was an American composer of contemporary classical music and electronic music, and a photographer/digital artist.
Ofer Ben-Amots is an Israeli-American composer and teacher of music composition and theory at Colorado College. His music is inspired by Jewish folklore of Eastern-European Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish Ladino traditions. The interweaving of folk elements with contemporary textures creates the dynamic tension that permeates and defines Ben-Amots' musical language.
Stefans Grové was a South African composer. Before his death the following assessment was made of him: "He is regarded by many as Africa's greatest living composer, possesses one of the most distinctive compositional voices of our time".
Donald Henry Kay AM is an Australian classical composer.
Iain Ellis Hamilton was a Scottish composer.
David Frederick Stock was an American composer and conductor.
Michael Schelle, born January 22, 1950, in Philadelphia, is a composer of contemporary concert music. He is also a performer, conductor, author, and teacher.
David Serkin Ludwig is an American composer, teacher, and Dean of Music at The Juilliard School. His uncle was pianist Peter Serkin, his grandfather was the pianist Rudolf Serkin, and his great-grandfather was the violinist Adolf Busch. He holds positions and residencies with nearly two dozen orchestras and music festivals in the US and abroad. His choral work, The New Colossus, was performed at the 2013 presidential inauguration of Barack Obama.
Gerald Cohen is an American composer and cantor. He is currently the cantor at Shaarei Tikvah in Scarsdale, New York and is based in Yonkers. Cohen serves on the faculties of Jewish Theological Seminary and Hebrew Union College. Cohen's compositions are published by Oxford University Press, G. Schirmer/AMP, and Transcontinental Music Publications.
Will Gay Bottje was an American composer known for his contributions to electronic music.
Graham Whettam was an English post-romantic composer.
↑ "Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians: Centennial Edition". Slonimsky, Nicholas editor. Schirmer Books, New York NY, 2001. Vol.1 pg. 23 ISBN 0-02-865526-5
↑ "Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians: Centennial Edition". Slonimsky, Nicholas editor. Schirmer Books, New York NY, 2001. Vol.1 pg. 23 ISBN 0-02-865526-5
↑ "Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians: Centennial Edition". Slonimsky, Nicholas editor. Schirmer Books, New York NY, 2001. Vol.1 pg. 23 ISBN 0-02-865526-5
↑ New Music New Allies Amy C. Beal, University of California Press, Berkley, 2006, P. 49, ISBN978-0-520-24755-0 "Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra (1952–1962) performing works by Roy Harris, Morton Gould and Leroy Anderson"
↑ "Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians: Centennial Edition". Slonimsky, Nicholas editor. Schirmer Books, New York NY, 2001. Vol.1 pg. 23 ISBN 0-02-865526-5
↑ "Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians: Centennial Edition". Slonimsky, Nicholas editor. Schirmer Books, New York NY, 2001. Vol.1 pg. 23 ISBN 0-02-865526-5
↑ Chute, James (2001). "Ince, Kamran". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
Sources
Darryl Lyman: Great Jews in Music. J. D. Publishers, Middle Village, N.Y, 1986.
David M. Cummings, Dennis K. McIntire (Ed.): International Who's Who in Music and Musician's Directory. In the Classical and Light Classical Fields, twelfth edition 1990/91. International Who's Who in Music, Cambridge, England 1991.
Kurtz Myers: Index to Record Reviews 1984–1987. G.K. Hall, Boston, Ma. 1989.
Gerry Cristol: A Light in the Prairie: Temple Emanu-El of Dallas 1872–1997. TCU Press, Fort Worth TX 1998, ISBN0-87565-184-4.
Don Michael Randel (Ed.): "Adler, Samuel". In The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996.
R. Winston Morris, Lloyd E. Bone Jr., Eric Paull (Ed.): "Adler, Samuel". In Guide to the Euphonium Repertoire – The Euphoneum Sourcebook. Indiana University Press, IN 2007
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Cross of Merit (Germany)
United States 
Corporal 
2d Armored Division 
