The recent deaths of both George Perle and Lukas Foss are part of the sad but expected passing, of composers who came of age in the 1940s and 50s. But a slight shock went through me with Douglas Britt’s surprising news in the Houston Chronicle blogs that pioneering composer, percussionist, visual and sound artist Max Neuhaus (b. 1939) has just died as well. Neuhaus is from the generation that gives us Lucier, Ashley, Young, Reich, Glass and Riley. He semi-retired some time ago from pure composition and performance, preferring to focus on sound art and installations (one of which quietly
Read moreLukas Foss died yesterday at age 86. I didn’t know his music that well (I had heard Phorion), but still have his great performance of Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety with the composer conducting. He apparently even dabbled in minimalism, which I’d love to hear. A lot of the older guard seems to be passing away this year.
Read moreGeorge Perle died this weekend, at the ripe old age of 93. Little-known and little heard by the general audience, Perle was a name virtually every composer of the last half century knows. His book Serial Composition and Atonality passed through most of our hands at one point or other in our study; it and his later Twelve-Tone Tonality caused a lot of us to seek out performances and recordings of his poised, extremely lucid and limpid works. Big-name appreciation is rare enough anymore for composers, as to almost seem a fluke. Given that, the place to pay attention to is who
Read moreThe composer Jorge Liderman died Sunday morning after reportedly jumping in front of an oncoming BART train in the Berkeley, CA area. I had initially heard of him after coming across his name on a bulletin board in the early 80’s at the U of Chicago, and when I saw the news item about his untimely death at the age of 50, it caught my attention. Of Argentine descent, Liderman was being increasingly performed, although I regret that I actually never have heard a note of his music. The circumstances of his death are currently under investigation. (Update: a newer and
Read moreHonest, I swear this is Sequenza21, not the obituaries. But this is otherwise (and unfairly) likely to pass unnoticed in our usual music-blog land: Henri Chopin, one of the pioneering figures in sound poetry, passed away in France on January 3rd. Born in 1922, he was one of the great explorers of a poetry that favored supremacy of the voice — in all its manifestations — over the “tyranny” of the word. An early adopter of tape recorders and the same electronic studios European composers were at work in, and for many years an active publisher of magazines that disseminated many of the
Read moreThe past few months have seemed depressingly full of deaths, including some of the grand figures of our time. But sadder still is when we lose a wonderful musical voice far too soon. I just learned over at NewMusicBox that the highly talented composer and pianist Jennifer Fitzgerald lost her life to cancer just a few days before Christmas. Only 32 years old, but already crafting some really beautiful, exciting music… One of the strange artifacts of the Internet age is that a person can leave and yet appear to be around through their webpages, busy and happy, like nothing at all had happened
Read moreOne of our greatest musical thinkers in these last fifty years, Leonard B. Meyer has passed away. His series of books from 1956 onwards are still avidly bought, read and discussed in 2007, and that’s no mean feat. Some of his work was pioneering, some spookily prescient, and a lot of it has stuck in this head since my earliest college days. Thanks for all the fish, Leonard.
Read morePaul Dirmeikis attended Stockhausen’s funeral on December 13, and has a report. The family is already starting to slowly walk away. Some of us stay around the tomb, scattered between the neighbour tombs. Near the larger alley going down to the chapel, all members of Stockhausen’s family gathered together in a circle, holding their hands. Simon reads something. It’s around 4 pm. That’s it. One of the greatest composers of these last 50 years has just been buried. It’s a freezing afternoon in a distant German village. Fermata.
Read morerecieved at the Canadian Eletroacoustic mail-list: PRESS RELEASE The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen passed away on December 5th 2007 at his home in Kuerten-Kettenberg and will be buried in the Waldfriedhof (forest cemetery) in Kuerten. He composed 362 individually performable works. The works which were composed until 1969 are published by Universal Edition in Vienna, and all works since then are published by the Stockhausen-Verlag. Numerous texts by Stockhausen and about his works have been published by the Stockhausen Foundation for Music. Suzanne Stephens and Kathinka Pasveer, who have performed many of his works and, together with him, have taken care of
Read moreRecent postings here notwithstanding, I swear I’m not on a complete György Ligeti kick; but it just so happens that the German-news-in-English website Sign and Sight has printed the translation of a speech György Kurtág gave in remembrance of his great friend, fellow Hungarian and fellow composer. (The occasion was Kurtág’s receiving the Ordre Pour le Merite in Berlin.) The German version was originally published in August this year, in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. As a bonus, this article includes all the extra stuff that Kurtág never got to say during the ceremony. It’s a beautiful, intensely intimate memoriam.
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