Billy Jim Layton

Billy Jim Layton (born November 14, 1924 in Corsicana , Texas , † October 30, 2004 in Cambridge , Massachusetts ) was an American composer.

Layton trained as a jazz saxophonist and clarinetist in his youth. During the Second World War he flew a B-29 long-range bomber in the US Air Force . After the war, he studied music at the New England Conservatory , Yale School of Music and Harvard University . His teachers included Francis Judd Cooke , Quincy Porter, and Walter Piston .

He received u. a. a Hertz Traveling Fellowship from the University of California , the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1954–57), a Prize from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship . After teaching at Harvard University for a few years, he became head of the music department of the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1966 , which he made into a center for contemporary music in the United States. In 1992 he retired and settled in Cambridge, where he died in 2004 of complications from pneumonia.

Layton's compositions were all written between 1946 and 1964. He described his compositional style, which was linked to traditional Western music, as new liberalism and featured it in the journal Perspectives of New Music in 1965. The Three Dylan Thomas Poems and Three Studies became known for piano, for which he was awarded the Rome Prize and the Guggenheim Scholarship. He also composed several string quartets and other works for chamber music.

swell

personal data
SURNAME	Layton, Billy Jim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American composer
DATE OF BIRTH	November 14, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH	Corsicana , Texas
DATE OF DEATH	October 30, 2004
Place of death	Cambridge , Massachusetts