Earle Brown (composer)

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Earle Brown (born December 26, 1926 in Lunenburg , Massachusetts , † July 2, 2002 in Rye, New York ) was an American composer.

In the 1950s he met John Cage who moved him to New York. There he was then considered a member of the so-called New York School of Composers with Morton Feldman , David Tudor and Christian Wolff .

Life

Brown first devotes himself to jazz. At first he did not study music, but engineering and mathematics (Northeastern University, 1944–45). Between 1946 and 1950 he learned the Schillinger system for composition at the Joseph Schillinger House of Music in Boston. Brown had private trumpet and composition lessons. He cited the artists of the so-called New York School , for example Jackson Pollock and Alexander Calder, as major influences . John Cage invited him to New York, and so Brown left Denver to join Cage's Project for Music for Magnetic Tape . Brown also worked as a sound engineer for Capitol Records (1955-60) and as a producer for Bob Shadow's label Time and Mainstream Records (1960-73).

Brown's contact with Cage led David Tudor to learn about Brown's early piano works and to perform them in Darmstadt and Donaueschingen . Then composers like Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna stood up for him, so that his scores were bought and his works played. From 1957 to 1965 Brown worked as a lecturer and conductor at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music .

Brown died of lung cancer in 2002 .

music

The new notation principle of the so-called "open form" attributed to Brown was his most important contribution to the history of music in the 20th century.

This principle not only influenced his friends and colleagues in New York in the 1950s and 1960s, but later also had a great influence on younger European and American composers: John Zorn and (in some earlier works) Karlheinz Stockhausen are probably the most famous composers, who resorted to this idea.

His best-known work is December 1952 , which caused a sensation with its strictly geometrical-graphic notation. Available Forms is Brown's most played orchestral work.

Works (selection)

  • Home Burial (1949), for piano
  • Three Pieces for Piano (1951)
  • Music for Violin, Cello & Piano (1952)
  • Twenty-Five Pages (1953), for 1–25 piano (s)
  • Octet I (1953), for 8 loudspeakers
  • Indices (1954), for chamber orchestra
  • Folio and 4 Systems (1954), for variable instrumentation
  • Indices [piano version] (1954)
  • Octet II (1954), for 8 loudspeakers
  • Music for Cello and Piano (1955)
  • Four More (1956), for piano
  • Hodograph I (1959), for chamber ensemble
  • Available Forms I (1961), for chamber orchestra
  • Available Forms II (1962), for two orchestras
  • Times Five (1963), for chamber ensemble
  • Corroboree (1964), for 3 or 2 pianos
  • Nine Rarebits (1965), for 1 harpsichord or 2 harpsichords
  • String Quartet (1965)
  • Calder Piece (1966), for percussionists and mobiles
  • Module I (1966), for orchestra
  • Module II (1966), for orchestra
  • Event: Synergy II (1967), for chamber ensemble
  • Module III (1969), for orchestra
  • Small Pieces for Large Chorus (1969)
  • Time Spans (1972), for orchestra
  • Centering (1973), for solo violin and ensemble
  • Cross Sections and Color Fields (1975), for orchestra
  • Folio II (1982), for variable instrumentation
  • Tracking Pierrot (1992), for chamber ensemble
  • Summer Suite '95 (1995), for piano
  • Special Events (1999), for chamber ensemble

further reading

  • Thomas Seedorf: Earle Brown . In: Hermann Danuser , Dietrich Kämper , Paul Terse (eds.): American music since Charles Ives . Laaber, Laaber 1987, ISBN 3-89007-117-1 , pp. 312 f .
  • John P. Welsh. Open Form and Earle Brown's Modules I and II (1967) , in: Perspectives of New Music, xxxii / 1 (1994), pp. 254-290.
  • Sabine Feißt, The term "improvisation" in new music , Sinzig (Studio, Verl. Schewe), 1997, pp. 97-100 (on the open form and Earle Brown).
  • Clemens Gresser, entry on "Earle Brown" in: Lexikon des Klaviers , ed. by Christoph Kammertöns and Siegfried Mauser , Laaber (Laaber), 2006, pp. 130–131.
  • Dan Albertson (ed.). Earle Brown: From Motets to Mathematics , in: Contemporary Music Review, Vol. 26 Issue 3 & 4 (2007), Routledge (online access requires subscription).

swell

  1. ↑ Earle Brown at Edition Peters. Composers from A to Z ( Memento from December 17, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  2. ^ Memorial (English) ( Memento from September 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), accessed April 23, 2018
  3. ↑ David Nicholls, [untitled review of several books], in: Music & Letters , vol. 76, no. 1 (February 1995), pp. 128-131, here p. 129.
  4. ↑ Eleanor Dubinets, "Between Mobility and Stability: Earle Brown's Compositional Process", in Contemporary Music Review , Vol 26, No. 3 & 4, 2007, pp 419-420...
  5. ↑ John P. Welsh, Open Form and Earle Brown's Modules I and II (1967), in: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Winter 1994), pp. 254-290, especially p. 257. See also the more critical examination of this concept in Clemens Gresser, Earle Brown's 'Creative Ambiguity' and Ideas of Co-creatorship in Selected Works, in: Contemporary Music Review, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 377–394.
  6. ↑ Robert P. Morgan, Stockhausen's Writings on Music, in: The Musical Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 1 (January 1975), pp. 1–16, especially p. 15.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Brown, Earle
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Lunenburg, Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH July 2, 2002
Place of death Rye (New York)