Richard Edward Wilson Explained

Richard Edward Wilson
Birth Date:May 15, 1941
Birth Place:Cleveland, Ohio, US
Occupation:Composer, pianist, professor

Richard Edward Wilson (born May 15, 1941) is an American composer and pianist. Rejecting serialism, to some extent Wilson engages in tonality, though often with the use of considerable chromaticism.[1] His oeuvre includes orchestral, operatic, instrumental, and chamber music among other genres.

Life and career

Wilson was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was at a young age drawn to the concerts of George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. His studied piano with Roslyn Raish, Egbert Fischer, and Leonard Shure. He studied cello with Robert Ripley and Ernst Silberstein. In 1963, Wilson graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University, where he studied with Robert Moevs and Randall Thompson. He later received an MA from Rutgers University. From 1966 to 2016, he taught at Vassar College, where he was Mary Conover Mellon Professor of Music.[2] Since 1992 he has been composer-in-residence with the American Symphony Orchestra.

Music

Richard Wilson's compositions are marked by a stringent yet lyrical atonality which often sets him apart from the established schools of modern American music: minimalism, twelve-tone, neo-romanticism, and avant-garde. Two of his works, Eclogue for solo piano, and his String Quartet No. 3, are considered high points of twentieth-century American music. His large-scale orchestral works include the Symphony No. 1, premiered by the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and recorded by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra; Articulations, written for the San Francisco Symphony. Wilson is also the composer of the one-act whimsical opera, Æthelred the Unready, based on the exploits of the ill-advised Saxon king, Æthelred II of England.He classified the three types of irregular resolutions of dominant seventh chords.[3]

Critical response

Wilson has been praised by 21st Century Music as a "splendidly talented and highly accomplished composer whose music rewards seeking out" [4] and by the New York Sun as "possessed of a hard-won idiom that has grown and developed over the years into a probing blend of wit, classic form, modern harmony, and impressionistic color."

Writing in the New Yorker, Andrew Porter called his String Quartet No. 3 a "richly wrought and unusual composition,"[5] while the New York Times has deemed it "a work of substance and expressivity ... [that] merits a place in the active repertory."

In a review of a recent concert, the New York Times wrote, "Richard Wilson's Diablerie[6] stood apart, contemporary in its vocabulary and grammar but pursuing always the long, lyrical, sometimes operatically expressive lines and Romantic-era concerto writing."[7] A review in Strings Magazine heralded the same composition as "another gem in Wilson's mélange of solo pieces."[8]

Honors

In 2004 Wilson received an Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, from which he previously received the Walter Hinrichsen Award. Other recent honors include: the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; a Guggenheim Fellowship; the Cleveland Arts Prize; residencies at the Bogliasco Foundation and the Bellagio Center in Italy; and commissions from the Koussevitsky and Fromm Foundations, Chamber Music America, the Chicago Chamber Musicians, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, the Library of Congress, and the San Francisco Symphony.

Works

Source:[1]

Orchestra

Works for mixed ensemble

Works for string quartet

Works for solo piano

Works for solo instruments

Works for voice

Works for choir

Opera

Concert band

Selected discography

Sources

External links

General
Performances of Wilson's works
Performances of other composers

Notes and References

  1. Encyclopedia: Wierzbicki . James . Revised by Mary L. Frantz . 2001 . . Wilson, Richard . . Oxford . 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.43065 . 978-1-56159-263-0 . subscription .
  2. Web site: Archive from Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - Concerts to celebrate the work of retiring music professor and composer Richard Wilson (12/10, 12/11) - News - Info - Vassar College.
  3. Web site: Irregular resolutions of one dominant seventh into another . EUNOMIOS . Richard Wilson . March 8, 2011. April 17, 2011.
  4. Web site: Affirming Richard Wilson . 21st Century Music . David Cleary . April 1, 2001. July 20, 2008 .
  5. Web site: Archived copy . July 21, 2008 . May 10, 2008 . https://web.archive.org/web/20080510134407/http://faculty.vassar.edu/riwilson/compositions/StringQuartetNo_3.pdf . dead .
  6. Web site: Archived copy . July 21, 2008 . May 9, 2008 . https://web.archive.org/web/20080509192836/http://faculty.vassar.edu/riwilson/compositions/Diablerie.pdf . dead .
  7. Web site: Piano Performances Stand Out at Mannes College Festival . New York Times . Bernard Holland . June 26, 2006. July 20, 2008 . Bernard Holland .
  8. Web site: Diablerie for Solo Violin . Strings Magazine . Jennifer Caine . July 1, 2008. April 26, 2011 . dead . https://archive.today/20130203031126/http://www.stringsmagazine.com/layout/set/print/Reviews/Editions/Diablerie-for-Solo-Violin-by-Richard-Wilson-Peer-Music-Classical-10.95 . February 3, 2013.

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