Ernst Bacon

Ernst Lecher Bacon (born May 26, 1898 in Chicago , † March 16, 1990 in Orinda ) was an American composer, conductor, pianist and music teacher.

Bacon had his first music and piano lessons from his mother Maria von Rosthorn Bacon, a musician from Austria who trained there. He studied mathematics from 1915 to 1918 at Northwestern University , then music at the University of Chicago (1919-20) and the University of California at Berkeley (graduated as an MA with the choir cantata The Song of the Preacher as a master's thesis in 1935). His most important teachers were Alexander Raab and Glenn Dillard Gunn (piano) as well as Ernest Bloch and Karl Weigl in Vienna (composition). He received his training as a conductor as assistant to Eugène Aynsley Goossens with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra .

From 1925 to 1928 Bacon taught at the Eastman School of the University of Rochester , then until 1930 at the San Francisco Conservatory . In 1935 he founded and directed the Carmel Bach Festival in California, in the following year he directed the WPA Federal Music Project in San Francisco and conducted its orchestra. From 1938 to 1945 he was dean and professor of piano at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, after which he went to Syracuse University , where he was professor and director of the music school until his retirement in 1964. In addition to his teaching activities, he has performed successfully as a pianist in the USA and Europe and published the books Words on Music (1960) and Notes on the Piano (1963).

In addition to major works such as symphonies and piano concertos, Bacon composed chamber music, choral works and numerous songs based on texts by Walt Whitman , Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Cornel Lengyel, among others . 22 songs based on Emily Dickinson were recorded by Helen Boatwright with the composer at the piano. Bacon received a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for his Second Symphony . He has also received awards from the National Institute of Arts and Letters , the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and the National Endowment for the Arts .

swell

personal data
SURNAME	Bacon, Ernst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Bacon, Ernst Lecher
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American composer, conductor, pianist and music educator
DATE OF BIRTH	May 26, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH	Chicago
DATE OF DEATH	March 16, 1990
Place of death	Orinda