Stephen Albert

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Stephen Joel Albert (born February 6, 1941 in New York City , † December 27, 1992 in Truro , Massachusetts ) was an American composer .

Life

Albert, who learned to play the piano, horn and trumpet as a student, received his first composition lessons at the age of 15 from Elie Siegmeister . Two years later he moved to the Eastman School of Music , where he became a student of Bernard Rogers . The Swede Karl-Birger Blomdahl was one of his other composition teachers ; After completing his studies, he also worked with George Rochberg at the University of Pennsylvania in 1963 .

In the following years Albert gave classes at various institutes such as the University of Arts in Philadelphia (1968-70), Stanford University (1970/71) or Smith College (1974-76). As a composer he made a name for himself in smaller circles during this time. He has received a number of awards and grants, including the National Endowment for the Arts .

Stephen Albert achieved the decisive breakthrough in his career with his First Symphony RiverRun , a work that was commissioned by the Sydney L. Herchinger Foundation for the National Symphony Orchestra Washington, DC and Mstislaw Rostropovich , who recorded Albert's song cycle To Wake the Dead I heard with great enthusiasm. For this symphony Albert received the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1985 .

In the same year Albert was composer in residence of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra (until 1988). In the following years he received numerous composition commissions, especially for American orchestras. In 1988 he was appointed professor of composition at the Juilliard School . In December 1992, Stephen Albert was killed in a car accident. In 1995, his violoncello concerto received a Grammy Award in the "Best Contemporary Classical Composition" category.

Audio language

Stephen Albert's first works are still committed to trends in contemporary music such as serialism , and the composer also experimented with electronic music. Later, however, he saw serialism as "complexity for the sake of complexity" and developed his own tonal language that set itself apart from the avant-garde.

Albert's mature works are kept in a free tonality and have at times been characterized as "neo-romantic". Albert often builds on several small motivic cells that are constantly changing and interacting with one another. In addition, large, wide-ranging melodies also find their place in his music. The tone color palette is quite broad and tends to be rather dark; many of his works can be characterized as thoughtful and philosophical. His music is often filled with powerful pathos and has a very emotional and expressive effect.

James Joyce had a great influence on Albert's music . Albert set some passages from Finnegans Wake and Ulysses to music and was otherwise strongly inspired by Joyce's world of thought; his First Symphony was also composed under this influence. But the preoccupation with ancient Greek culture, especially theater and poetry, was of considerable importance to him.

Albert saw, among others, Béla Bartók and Gustav Mahler as his role models and expressly considered himself committed to a broader audience; he felt it necessary to bridge the gap between composer and audience that he believed many modern composers had created. Notwithstanding this declared attachment to tradition, his music was unmistakably rooted in the 20th century. Albert was committed to American musical culture, but developed his own, unmistakable musical language, which in some parts even seems to refer to Nordic and Eastern European influences.

Works

  • Instrumental music
    • Symphony No.1 RiverRun (1983/84)
    • Symphony No. 2 (1992, supplemented by Sebastian Currier )
    • Anthem and Processionals (1988)
    • Tapioca Pudding (1991)
    • Violin Concerto In Concordiam (1986, rev. 1988)
    • Violoncello Concerto (1989/90)
    • Clarinet Concerto Wind Canticle (1991)
    • Tribute for violin and piano (1988)
  • Vocal music
    • Supernatural Songs for soprano and chamber orchestra (1964)
    • Wedding Songs for soprano and piano (1964)
    • Bacchae: A Ceremony in Music for speaker, bass, choir and orchestra (1967)
    • Wolf Time for soprano and orchestra (1968)
    • To wake the Dead , song cycle based on James Joyce for soprano and chamber ensemble (1977/78)
    • TreeStone , song cycle based on James Joyce for soprano, tenor and chamber orchestra (1983/84)
    • The Stone Harp for tenor and chamber ensemble (1988)
    • Distant Hills after James Joyce for soprano, tenor and orchestra or chamber orchestra (1987-89)
    • On Nights like this , song based on Rainer Maria Rilke for soprano and chamber ensemble (1991)
    • Ecce puer , song based on James Joyce for soprano, oboe, horn and piano (1992)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albert at G. Schirmer Inc. Retrieved October 5, 2012 .
  2. ^ Obituary in The New York Times. Retrieved October 5, 2012 .
  3. ^ Supplement to the CD "Stephen Albert: Symphony No.1 'RiverRun', Symphony No.2", Naxos 8.559257
  4. ↑ Introduction to Albert's Joyce-Inspired Works. ( Memento from October 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Albert, Stephen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Albert, Stephen Joel (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , United States
DATE OF DEATH December 27, 1992
Place of death Truro , Massachusetts , United States