Wallingford Constantine Riegger (April 29, 1885 – April 2, 1961) was a prolific American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 music composer, well known for orchestral and modern dance music, and film scores. He was born in Albany, Georgia

Albany, Georgia

Albany is a city in and the county seat of Dougherty County, Georgia, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. It is the principal city of the Albany, Georgia metropolitan area and the southwest part of the state. The population was 77,434 at the 2010 U.S. Census, making it the...

, but lived much of his life in New York City

New 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...

.
He is noted for being one of the first American composers to use a form of twelve-tone technique

Twelve-tone technique

Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...

.

Life

Riegger was born in 1885 to Ida Wallingford and Constantine Riegger. After his father's lumber mill burned down in 1888, his family moved to Indianapolis

Indianapolis

Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...

, and later to Louisville

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

, finally settling in New York in 1900. A gifted cellist

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

, he graduated from the first graduating class of the Institute of Musical Art, later known as the Juilliard School

Juilliard School

The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...

, in 1907, after studying under Percy Goetschius

Percy Goetschius

Percy Goetschius won international fame in the teaching of the theory of composition.-Life:Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Goetschius was the piano pupil of Robert E. H. Gehring, a prominent teacher of that era. Goetschius was the organist of the Second Presbyterian Church from 1868–1870 and of the...

. He continued his studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 for three years. After returning in 1910, he married Rose Schramm, with whom he later had three daughters, in 1911. For a time, he returned to Germany and accepted various conducting positions, but this was interrupted by the joining of America in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 in 1917, after which he moved back to America. From 1918 to 1922, he taught music theory

Music theory

Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...

 and violoncello at Drake University

Drake University

Drake University is a private, co-educational university located in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. The institution offers a number of undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as professional programs in law and pharmacy. Today, Drake is one of the twenty-five oldest law schools in the country....

. During the greater part of the time from 1930 to 1956, he continued publishing music and taught at various universities in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, notably the Institute of Musical Art and Ithaca College

Ithaca College

Ithaca College is a private college located on the South Hill of Ithaca, New York. The school was founded by William Egbert in 1892 as a conservatory of music. The college has a strong liberal arts core, but also offers several pre-professional programs and some graduate programs. The college is...

. In 1957, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee

House Un-American Activities Committee

The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...

, which was investigating Communism in the musical world. In 1958, Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

 honored him by conducting his Music for Orchestra with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. He died in New York in 1961 when he tripped over the leashes of two fighting dogs, resulting in a fall and a head injury from which he did not recover despite treatment.

His students included Alan Stout

Alan Stout (composer)

Alan Burrage Stout is an American composer of contemporary classical music.He studied at Johns Hopkins University and at the Peabody Conservatory. His instructors included Henry Cowell, Wallingford Riegger, John Verrall, and Vagn Holmboe, the latter at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark for...

 and Merton Brown

Merton Brown

Merton Brown was a composer who studied with Wallingford Riegger and Carl Ruggles. He often collaborated with choreographers including former Martha Graham dancer Matti Haim, José Limón, and Thomas Hewitt....

.

Musical style

Riegger was known for his use of a twelve-tone system, related to that of Schoenberg. He became familiar with the technique through Schoenberg's American student Adolph Weiss. However, he did not use it in all of his compositions and his usage varied from that of Schoenberg, for example in not always using rows with twelve tone and not using transposed forms of the rows. Riegger's Dance Rhythms, for example, did not use these techniques. Aside from Schoenberg, Riegger was also significantly influenced by his friends Henry Cowell

Henry Cowell

Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...

 and Charles Ives

Charles Ives

Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...

. Along with Cowell, Ives, Carl Ruggles

Carl Ruggles

Charles "Carl" Sprague Ruggles was an American composer of the American Five group. He wrote finely crafted pieces using "dissonant counterpoint", a term coined by Charles Seeger to describe Ruggles' music...

, and John J. Becker

John J. Becker

John Joseph Becker was an American composer of contemporary classical music. He is grouped together with Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Henry Cowell, and Wallingford Riegger as a member of the "American Five" composers of "ultra-modern" music.The John J...

, Riegger was a member of the group of American modernist composers known as the "American Five

American Five

The American Five was a group of modernist American composers consisting of Charles Ives, John J. Becker, Wallingford Riegger, Henry Cowell, and Carl Ruggles. It was known for its modernist and often dissonant compositions which broke away from European compositional styles to create a distinctly...

".

Early period

Early on in his career as a composer, the style of his compositions was markedly different from that of his later work, which mostly used the twelve-tone system. His compositions, following those of Goetschius, were somewhat romanticist

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

.

Later period

Starting in the mid 1930's, Riegger began to write contemporary dance

Contemporary dance

Contemporary dance is a genre of concert dance that employs compositional philosophy, rather than choreography, to guide unchoreographed movement...

 music

Dance music

Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...

. Later, as his career progressed, he began to use Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique more and more often, though he did occasionally revert to his earlier styles. From 1941 on, he focused almost solely on instrumental music, and his Symphony No. 3 received the New York Music Critics' Circle Award and a Naumburg Foundation Recording Award.

Selected works

Orchestral

• Fantasy and Fugue, Op. 10 (1930)
• Dichotomy, Op. 12 (1931)
• Consummation, Op. 31 (1939)
• Passacaglia and Fugue, Op. 34a (1942)
• Symphony No. 1 (1944)
• Symphony No. 2 (1945)
• Symphony No. 3, Op. 42 (1946–1947, revised 1960)
• Music for Orchestra, Op. 50 (1958)
• Suite for Younger Orchestras, Op. 56 (1953)
• Romanza for string orchestra, Op. 56a (1953); Lullaby from the Suite for Younger Orchestras
• Dance Rhythms, Op. 58 (1954)
• Overture, Op. 60 (1955)
• Preamble and Fugue, Op. 61 (1955)
• Symphony No. 4, Op. 63 (1956)
• Festival Overture, Op.68 (1957)
• Quintuple Jazz, Op. 72 (1958)
• Sinfonietta, Op. 73 (1959)
• Canon and Fugue for string orchestra

Concert band and wind ensemble

• Ballet for Band, Op. 18 (1935)
• Passacaglia and Fugue, Op. 34 (1942)
• Processional, Op. 36 (1943)
• Music for Brass Choir, Op.45 (1949)
• Prelude and Fugue, Op.52 (1953)
• Dance Rhythms, Op. 58a (1954); original for orchestra

Concertante

• Elegy for cello and orchestra (1916)
• Concerto for piano with wind quintet, Op. 53 (1953)
• Variations for piano and orchestra, Op. 54 (1952–1953)
• Variations for violin and orchestra, Op. 71 (1959)
• Introduction and Fugue for cello and concert band, Op. 74 (1960)

Chamber music

• Elegy for viola and piano (1915)
• Piano Trio, Op. 1 (1919)
• Revery for cello (or viola) and piano (1920)
• Lullaby for cello (or viola) and piano (1922)
• Study in Sonority for 10 violins or any multiple thereof, Op. 7 (1927)
• Suite for flute solo, Op. 8 (1929)
• String Quartet No. 1, Op.30 (1938–1939)
• Duos for Three Woodwinds for flute, oboe, clarinet, Op. 35 (1944)
• Sonatina for violin and piano, Op. 39 (1948)
• String Quartet No. 2, Op.43 (1948)
• Piano Quintet, Op. 47 (1951)
• Woodwind Quintet, Op. 51 (1952)
• Variations for violin and viola (soli or in choirs), Op. 57 (1956)
• Etudes for clarinet solo (1957)
• String Quartet No. 3 (1957)
• Movement for 2 trumpets, trombone and piano, Op. 66
• Introduction and Fugue for 4 cellos or cello orchestra, Op. 69 (1962)

Piano

• Blue Voyage, Rhapsody, Op. 6 (1927)
• New Dance for 2 pianos (1932)
• The Cry for piano 4-hands, Op. 22 (1935)
• Four Tone Pictures (1939)
• New and Old, Op. 38 (1944)
• Petite Étude, Op. 62 (1956)
• Evocation for piano 4-hands, Op. 17
• Scherzo for 2 pianos
• Skip to My Lou, Duet for 2 pianos
• The Galway Piper, Duet for 2 pianos
• The Harold Flammer Duet Album, Folk Songs arranged for piano 4-hands

Vocal

• La Belle Dame sans Merci (setting of John Keats
  John Keats
  John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
  
  ' poem, for two sopranos, contralto, tenor, violin, viola, cello, double bass, oboe (English horn), clarinet and French horn; premiered 19 September 1924, at the 7th Berkshire Festival of Chamber Music)