Eric Salzman is an American composer

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...

, author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, impresario

Impresario

An impresario is a person who organizes and often finances concerts, plays or operas; analogous to a film producer in filmmaking, television production and an angel investor in business...

, music critic, and record producer

Record producer

A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...

.

After studying composition with Morris Mawner at the New York High School of Music and Art (1949–51), he continued his studies at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 (BA 1954), where his teachers included Jack Beeson

Jack Beeson

Jack Beeson was an American composer. He was known particularly for his operas, the best known of which are Lizzie Borden, Hello Out There! and The Sweet Bye and Bye.-Biography:...

, Otto Luening

Otto Luening

Otto Clarence Luening was a German-American composer and conductor, and an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music....

 and Vladimir Ussachevsky

Vladimir Ussachevsky

Vladimir Kirilovitch Ussachevsky was a composer, particularly known for his work in electronic music.-Biography:...

. He pursued postgraduate work at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 (MFA 1956) with Milton Babbitt

Milton Babbitt

Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.-Biography:...

 and Roger Sessions

Roger Sessions

Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic, and teacher of music.-Life:Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendent of Samuel Huntington, a signer of...

. A Fulbright Fellowship (1956–8) enabled him to study with Goffredo Petrassi

Goffredo Petrassi

Goffredo Petrassi was an Italian composer of modern classical music, conductor, and teacher. He is considered one of the most influential Italian composers of the twentieth century.-Life:...

, Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

 and Luigi Nono

Luigi Nono

Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...

 in Europe.

In 1958 he returned to the USA and began a career as a music critic, writing for the New York Times (1958–62), 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...

(1962–6) and Stereo Review

Stereo Review

Stereo Review was an American magazine first published in 1958 by Ziff-Davis with the title HiFi and Music Review. It was one of a handful of magazines then available for the individual interested in high fidelity. Throughout its life it published a blend of record and equipment reviews, articles...

(from 1966); he won the Sang Prize for Criticism in the Fine Arts in 1969. From 1975 to 1990 he produced and directed over two dozen recordings (mainly for the Nonesuch label), several of which received Grammy Award

Grammy Award

A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

 nominations; these feature works by composers such as Weill

Weill

Weill is an educational institution affiliated with Cornell University, named after Sanford I. Weill and may refer to:* Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology, research institute located on Cornell University's Ithaca, NY campus...

, Partch and Bolcom, as well as his own music. From 1984 to 1991 he was editor of the Musical Quarterly. He served as co-founder and artistic director of the American Music Theatre Festival, Philadelphia (1982–93). He currently is the Associate Artistic Director at the Center for Contemporary Opera

Center for Contemporary Opera

The Center for Contemporary Opera is a professional opera company based in New York City, and a member of OPERA America. The company focuses on producing and developing new opera and music theater works and reviving rarely seen American operas written after the second World War...

.

His teaching appointments have included positions at Queens College, CUNY (1966–8), the Institute for Studies in American Music (Brooklyn, New York) and 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...

 (from 1982 to ?).

Salzman's compositions include "Nude Paper Sermon" and a series of music theater pieces, notably the opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 Civilization and its Discontents (with Michael Sahl), which won the 1980 Italia Prize and has been recorded for Nonesuch

Nonesuch Records

Nonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Warner Bros. Records.-Company history:Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to produce "fine records at the same price as a trade paperback", which would be half the price of a normal LP...

. He is the author of Twentieth Century Music: An Introduction (Prentice-Hall, 1967; 4th edition, 2001) which has become a widely-used textbook in university courses on modern music. He also published an essay on the new music-theater movement, "Music-Theater Defined: It's ...Well...Um..."

Sources

• James P. Cassaro. The New Grove Dictionary of Opera
  New Grove Dictionary of Opera
  The New Grove Dictionary of Opera is an encyclopedia of opera, considered to be one of the best general reference sources on the subject. It is the largest work on opera in English, and in its printed form, amounts to 5,448 pages in four volumes....
  
  , edited by Stanley Sadie (1992), ISBN 0-333-73432-7 and ISBN 1-56159-228-5
• The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, by John Warrack and Ewan West (1992), ISBN 0-19-869164-5
• Randel, Don, ed. The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music. Cambridge: Belknap, 1996, p. 781.