The Dictionary of American Classical Composers covers over 650 composers active from the 18th century to today. Covering all classical styles, it offers the most comprehensive overview of key composers in the United States available. Entries include basic biographical information and critical analysis of each composer's key works and ideas. Entries also include worklists and bibliographic information. Whenever possible, the entries will have been checked by the composers themselves to assure greatest possible accuracy. This new edition, completely updated and expanded from the 1984 edition, also includes over 200 historic photographs.

In 1972-73, Barney Childs embarked on an ambitious attempt to survey the landscape of new American concert music. He recorded freewheeling conversations with fellow composers, most of them under forty, all of them important but most not yet famous. Though unable to publish the interviews in his lifetime, Childs had gathered invaluable dialogues with the likes of Robert Ashley, Olly Wilson, Harold Budd, Christian Wolff, and others. Virginia Anderson edits the first published collection of these conversations. She pairs each interview with a contextual essay by a contemporary expert that shows how the composer's discussion with Childs fits into his life and work. Together, the interviewees cover a broad range of ideas and concerns around topics like education, notation, developments in electronic music, changing demands on performers, and tonal music. Innovative and revealing, Interviews with American Composers is an artistic and historical snapshot of American music at an important crossroads.

A sequel to the award-winning The Black Composer Speaks (Scarecrow Press, 1978), this exploration of the creative world of African American composers traces the lives and careers of 40 talented individuals and, in their own words, provides perspectives on a world that has been slow to recognize their remarkable contributions to classical music. The discussion places the music of these composers within the greater context of Western art music, but analyzes it through the lenses of sociology, Western concepts of art and taste, and vernacular musical forms, including spirituals, blues, jazz, and contemporary popular music. Each chapter is devoted to an individual composer, who discusses his or her musical training, compositional techniques and style, and the composer's personal philosophy as reflected in his or her music. A selected list of compositions for each composer is included, as well as a photo and sample of the composer's "hand." Banfield offers unprecedented insight into the history and influence of the African American composer with this documentary, which will appeal to everyone from the music scholar to the general reader.

Unveils the unique influences of Sousa, Ellington and eight other composers whose musical creations have become some of the most memorable music in history.

" . . . Strickland's own deep involvement with the works of these composers [is] revealed by the questions and comments he poses in an appreciative, Paterian way. His profound pleasure in these works also leads him to scrutinize and challenge them intimately." —Publishers Weekly "This is an indispensable book about American music . . . " —Fanfare " . . . exhilarating . . . Any of the interviews in American Composers will stimulate your curiosity and appetite." —Hungry Mind Review " . . . not only engaging, but also a useful representation of the major compositional styles of the 1980s and their corresponding practitioners." —Notes Philip Glass, Keith Jarrett, Meredith Monk, and eight other active American composers reveal a broad spectrum of musical personalities in these candid, in-depth conversations. Witty and articulate, their remarks convey the great vitality, diversity, and distinctiveness of today's American music.

The first black American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for music (for his composition Lilacs), George Walker recounts the most significant events in his life and distinguished career as a composer and a musician.

In this first interpretive narrative of the life and work of Christian Wolff, Michael Hicks and Christian Asplund trace the influences and sensibilities of a contemporary composer's atypical career path and restless imagination. Written in full cooperation with Wolff, including access to his papers, this volume is a much-needed introduction to a leading avant-garde composer still living, writing music, and speaking about his own work. Wolff has pioneered various compositional and notational idioms, including overtly political music, indeterminacy, graphic scores, and extreme virtuosity. Trained as a classicist rather than a musician, Wolff has never quite had both feet in the rarefied world of contemporary composition. Yet he's considered a "composer's composer," with a mind ensconced equally in ancient Greek tragedy and experimental music and an eccentric and impulsive compositional approach that eludes a fixed stylistic fingerprint. Hicks and Asplund cover Wolff's family life and formative years, his role as a founder of the New York School of composers, and the context of his life and work as part of the John Cage circle, as well as his departures from it. Critically assessing Wolff's place within the experimental musical field, this volume captures both his eloquence and reticence and provides insights into his broad interests and activities within music and beyond.

In this collection of essays and interviews, nine gifted composers openly discuss their work.

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Includes material on Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Henry Dixon Cowell, Paul Creston, Norman Dello Joio, Lukas Foss, Stephen Collins Foster, George Gershwin, Morton Gould, Charles Griffes, Ferde Grofe, Howard Hanson, Roy Harris, Alan Hovhaness, Charles Ives, Ulysses Kay, Normand Lockwood, Edward MacDowell, Peter Mennin, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Douglas Stuart Moore, Walter Piston, Quincy Porter, Wallingford Riegger, William Schuman, Roger Sessions, John Philip Sousa, and William Grant Still.