Otto Luening

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Otto Clarence Luening (born June 15, 1900 in Milwaukee , Wisconsin , † September 2, 1996 in New York City ) was a German -born American composer , conductor and flautist . He was one of the pioneers of electroacoustic music (electronic music and tape music) in the USA.

Life

Otto Luening was born in Milwaukee in 1900 as the son of the German singer, pianist and conductor Eugene Luening and his wife, the singer Emma Luening. His father studied at the Leipzig Conservatory , later sang under Richard Wagner and was from 1879 to 1904 the Milwaukee Music Society.

The Luening family moved to Munich in 1912 , where Otto was tutored by Alois Schellhorn , flautist at the Munich Court Orchestra. From 1915 to 1917 he then studied flute and piano with Josif Becht and composition with Anton Beer-Walbrunn at the State University of Music in Munich . From 1917 to 1920 he studied composition with Philipp Jarnach and conducting with Volkmar Andreae at the Zurich Conservatory . He also took private lessons with Ferruccio Busoni at the University of Zurich . From 1917 he played flute and percussion in the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich . Under the pseudonym James P. Cleveland he appeared as an actor in the English Players Company from 1918 to 1919 .

In 1920 he went to Chicago and was engaged as a musician with the Stratford Movie Theater Orchestra . There he studied harmony , music theory and counterpoint with Wilhelm Middelschulte , who taught Bernhard Ziehn's teaching . He became assistant to Eugène Aynsley Goossens , who led the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and worked from 1925 to 1928 as a conductor in the opera department of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. He directed the premieres of Virgil Thomson's The Mother Of Us All and Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium . In 1928 he took a stay abroad in Cologne , where he gave concerts.

From 1932 to 1934 he taught counterpoint, harmony and music history at the University of Arizona in Tucson. From 1934 to 1944 he headed the music department of Bennington College in Vermont . As part of the Bennington Composers Conference , he brought Aaron Copland , Henry Cowell , Paul Hindemith and Carl Ruggles to Vermont. In 1941 he founded the Green Mountain Festival in Middlebury with Alan Carter .

From 1944 to 1959 he was music director of the Brander Matthews Hall at Columbia University in New York. From 1949 to 1968 he was a professor there . At the same time he taught at Barnard College from 1944 to 1964 . In 1940 he founded the American Music Center , which he headed until 1960. From 1945 to 1951 he was President of the American Composers Alliance . In 1949 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the American Academy in Rome . In 1954 he founded the Composers Recordings label together with Douglas Moore and Oliver Daniel , of which he was chairman from 1968 to 1974.

He has been involved in electronic music since the 1950s . In 1951 he performed the first concert for tape music (under Leopold Stokowski ) in the USA with Vladimir Ussachevski , with whom he wrote about twenty compositions together, in the Museum of Modern Art . It was later broadcast on the Today Show by Dave Garroway. In 1959 he founded the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York with Milton Babbitt , Roger Sessions and Vladimir Ussachevski , the oldest institution for computer and electronic music in the USA. After working at Columbia University, he taught composition at the Juilliard School from 1971 to 1973 .

Prizes, awards and honors

Works

In addition to chamber music works in various casts, piano pieces, choirs and songs, Luening composed the opera Evangeline , two symphonic fantasies, symphonic interludes, a serenade and a suite . With his atonal , polytonal and serial works, he was part of the musical avant-garde in the USA.

Fonts

  • Modern music . 1943.
  • Odyssey of an American Composer. The Autobiography of Otto Luening . Scribner, New York 1980.

student

His composition students include Wendy Carlos , Wen-chung Chou , Gloria Coates , John Corigliano , Philip Corner , Mario Davidovsky , Charles Dodge , Malcolm Goldstein , Daniel Goode , Patrick Hardish , Ulysses Kay , Karl Korte , Ezra Laderman , Marvin David Levy , William Mayer , John Herbert McDowell , Joseph Pehrson , Eric Salzman , Elliott Schwartz , Seymour Shifrin , Faye-Ellen Silverman , Harvey Sollberger and Charles Wuorinen .

literature

  • Luening, Otto . In: John L. Holmes: Conductors on Record. Greenwood Press, Westport 1982, ISBN 0-575-02781-9 , p. 401.
  • Ralph Hartsock: Otto Luening. A Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood Press, Westport 1991, ISBN 0-313-24320-4 .
  • Lester Trimble, Severine Neff: Otto Leuning. In: Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. 22nd August 2012.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Luening, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Luening, Otto Clarence
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer and conductor
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Milwaukee , Wisconsin
DATE OF DEATH September 2, 1996
Place of death New York City