Arthur Berger
Encyclopedia
Arthur Victor Berger was an American composer
who has been described as a New Mannerist.
, of Jewish descent, Berger studied as an undergraduate at New York University
, during which time he joined the Young Composer's Group, as a graduate student under Walter Piston
at Harvard, and with Nadia Boulanger
and at the Sorbonne
under a Paine Fellowship.
He taught briefly at Mills College
and Brooklyn College
, then worked briefly at the New York Sun
and then for a longer period of time at the New York Herald Tribune
. In 1953 he left the paper to teach at Brandeis University
where he was eventually named the Irving Fine
Professor Emeritus. His notable students there included Gustav Ciamaga
and Richard Wernick
. He taught occasionally at the New England Conservatory during his retirement.
He co-founded (with Benjamin Boretz), in 1962, Perspectives of New Music
, which he edited until 1964. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1971. He wrote the first book on Aaron Copland
(reprinted 1990, Da Capo Press), and coined the terms octatonic scale
and pitch centricity in his "Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky". He died in in Boston
, Massachusetts, age 91.
). His musical influences include Igor Stravinsky
, Arnold Schoenberg
, and later Anton Webern
. In the forties he composed neoclassical works including Serenade Concertante (1944) and Three Pieces for Strings (1945), and embraced the twelve-tone technique in the fifties. His later works moved away from serialism
but continued to use tone cluster 'cells' whose pitch class
es are displaced by octave
s. George Perle
has described his "keen and sophisticated musical intellect" and praised "his serial music [for being] as far removed from current fashionable trends as his diatonic music was a few years ago." Perle further praises his String Quartet: "in the quartet, as in Berger's earlier works, and in most of the great music of our Western heritage, timbre, texture, dynamics, rhythm, and form are elements of a musical language whose syntax and grammar are essentially derived from pitch relations. If these elements never seem specious and arbitrary, as they do with so many of the dodecaphonic productions that deluge us today from both the left and right, it is precisely because of the authenticity and integrity of his musical thinking at this basic level."
His works include Ideas of Order, Polyphony, Quartet for Winds, described by Thomson as "one of the most satisfactory pieces for winds in the whole modern repertory", String Quartet (1958), Five Pieces for Piano (1969) and Septet (1965-66). He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Berger is grouped in the "Boston school" along with Lukas Foss
, Irving Fine
, Alexie Haieff, Harold Shapero
, and Claudio Spies
.
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
who has been described as a New Mannerist.
Biography
Born in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, of Jewish descent, Berger studied as an undergraduate at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, during which time he joined the Young Composer's Group, as a graduate student under Walter Piston
Walter Piston
Walter Hamor Piston Jr., , was an American composer of classical music, music theorist and professor of music at Harvard University whose students included Leroy Anderson, Leonard Bernstein, and Elliott Carter....
at Harvard, and with Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
and at the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
under a Paine Fellowship.
He taught briefly at Mills College
Mills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...
and Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
, then worked briefly at the New York Sun
New York Sun (historical)
The Sun was a New York newspaper that was published from 1833 until 1950. It was considered a serious paper, like the city's two more successful broadsheets, The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune...
and then for a longer period of time at the New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
. In 1953 he left the paper to teach at Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
where he was eventually named the Irving Fine
Irving Fine
Irving Gifford Fine was an American composer. Fine's work assimilated neo-classical, romantic and, later, serial elements...
Professor Emeritus. His notable students there included Gustav Ciamaga
Gustav Ciamaga
Gustav Ciamaga was a Canadian composer, music educator, and writer. An associate of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Canadian League of Composers, he was best known for his compositions of electronic music, although he produced several non-electronic works. His compositions have been...
and Richard Wernick
Richard Wernick
Richard Wernick in Boston, Massachusetts is a US composer. He is best known for his composition "Visions of Terror and Wonder," which won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Music.-Career:...
. He taught occasionally at the New England Conservatory during his retirement.
He co-founded (with Benjamin Boretz), in 1962, Perspectives of New Music
Perspectives of New Music
Perspectives of New Music is a peer-reviewed, academic journal specializing in music theory and analysis. It was founded in 1962 by Arthur Berger and Benjamin Boretz , making it the second-oldest music-theory journal now published in the United States .Perspectives was a Princeton-based journal...
, which he edited until 1964. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 1971. He wrote the first book on Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
(reprinted 1990, Da Capo Press), and coined the terms octatonic scale
Octatonic scale
An octatonic scale is any eight-note musical scale. Among the most famous of these is a scale in which the notes ascend in alternating intervals of a whole step and a half step, creating a symmetric scale...
and pitch centricity in his "Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky". He died in in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Massachusetts, age 91.
Works
His works show a preoccupation with vertical and horizontal musical space (see pitch spacePitch space
In music theory, pitch spaces model relationships between pitches. These models typically use distance to model the degree of relatedness, with closely related pitches placed near one another, and less closely related pitches placed farther apart. Depending on the complexity of the relationships...
). His musical influences include Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, and later Anton Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
. In the forties he composed neoclassical works including Serenade Concertante (1944) and Three Pieces for Strings (1945), and embraced the twelve-tone technique in the fifties. His later works moved away from serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
but continued to use tone cluster 'cells' whose pitch class
Pitch class
In music, a pitch class is a set of all pitches that are a whole number of octaves apart, e.g., the pitch class C consists of the Cs in all octaves...
es are displaced by octave
Octave
In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...
s. George Perle
George Perle
George Perle was a composer and music theorist. He was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. Perle was an alumnus of DePaul University...
has described his "keen and sophisticated musical intellect" and praised "his serial music [for being] as far removed from current fashionable trends as his diatonic music was a few years ago." Perle further praises his String Quartet: "in the quartet, as in Berger's earlier works, and in most of the great music of our Western heritage, timbre, texture, dynamics, rhythm, and form are elements of a musical language whose syntax and grammar are essentially derived from pitch relations. If these elements never seem specious and arbitrary, as they do with so many of the dodecaphonic productions that deluge us today from both the left and right, it is precisely because of the authenticity and integrity of his musical thinking at this basic level."
His works include Ideas of Order, Polyphony, Quartet for Winds, described by Thomson as "one of the most satisfactory pieces for winds in the whole modern repertory", String Quartet (1958), Five Pieces for Piano (1969) and Septet (1965-66). He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Berger is grouped in the "Boston school" along with Lukas Foss
Lukas Foss
Lukas Foss was a German-born American composer, conductor, and pianist.-Music career:He was born Lukas Fuchs in Berlin, Germany in 1922. His father was the philosopher and scholar Martin Fuchs...
, Irving Fine
Irving Fine
Irving Gifford Fine was an American composer. Fine's work assimilated neo-classical, romantic and, later, serial elements...
, Alexie Haieff, Harold Shapero
Harold Shapero
Harold Samuel Shapero is an American composer.-Early years:Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, Shapero and his family later moved to nearby Newton. He learned to play the piano as a child, and for some years was a pianist in dance orchestras. With a friend, he founded the Hal Kenny Orchestra, a swing-era...
, and Claudio Spies
Claudio Spies
Carlos Claudio Spies is a Chilean-American composer.Born in Santiago, Chile, of German-Jewish parents, Spies completed primary and secondary education in Santiago in 1941, when he passed the Bachillerato...
.
Further reading
- Anderson, E. Ruth. Contemporary American Composers. A Biographical Dictionary, 2nd edition, G. K. Hall, 1982.
- Butterworth, Neil. A Dictionary of American Composers, Garland, 1984.
- Coppock, Jane. A Conversation with Arthur Berger. Perspectives of New Music. 17, 1 (1978), p. 40-67.
- Cummings, David M.; McIntire, Dennis K. (Ed.). International who's who in music and musician's directory. In the classical and light classical fields, 12th edition 1990/91, International Who's Who in Music 1991.
- Gordon, Stewart. A History of Keyboard Literature. Music for the Piano and its Forerunners, Schirmer Books, 1996.
- Jones, Pamela. A Bibliography of the Writings of Arthur Berger. Perspectives of New Music. 17, 1 (1978), p. 83-89.
- Jones, Robert Frederick. A List of Works by Arthur Berger. Perspectives of New Music. 17, 1 (1978), p. 90-91.
- Lister, Rodney. Arthur Berger. The Progess of a Method, American Music, 13-1, 1995, p. 56-95.
- Lyman, Darryl. Great Jews in Music, J. D. Publishers, 1986.
- Northcott, Bayan. Arthur Berger. An Introduction at 70., Musical Times, 123 (1982), S. 323-326.
- Pollack, Howard Joel. Harvard composers. Walter Piston and his students, from Elliott Carter to Frederic Rzewski, Scarecrow Press, 1992.
- Press, Jaques Cattell (Ed.). Who's who in American Music. Classical, 1st edition. R. R. Bowker, 1983.
- Silver, Sheila. Pitch and registral distribution in Arthur Berger's music for piano., Perspectives of New Music. 17, 1 (1978), p. 68-76.
- Sadie, Stanley; Hitchcock, H. Wiley (Ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of American Music. Grove's Dictionaries of Music, 1986.
External links
- Arthur Berger Official Website
- Art of the States: Arthur Berger
- Arthur Berger papers in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
- The online music review La Folia has an article about Berger: Remembering Arthur Berger
- Arthur Berger, Composer and Music Critic, Is Dead at 91, The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, October 10, 2003 (retrieved January 31, 2010)