Joseph Schwantner
Joseph Schwantner (born 1943 in Chicago) is an American composer. He played classical guitar and wrote jazz pieces as a young man, used serial methods in his early works, and later built a style around orchestral colour and timbre, with a large role for percussion. His orchestral piece Aftertones of Infinity, premiered in 1979 by Lukas Foss and the American Composers Orchestra, won that year's Pulitzer Prize. He studied at the American Conservatory in Chicago with Bernard Dieter (BM 1964) and at Northwestern University with Alan Stout and Anthony Donato (MM 1966, DM 1968).
Paula Robison, Ransom Wilson, Carol Wincenc, Solisti New York, Alasdair Neale, Brian Zeger, Douglas Webster, Robert Beaser, Paul Schoenfield, Joseph Schwantner
FlutesIn 1986, three composers and three flutists met in a novel commissioning project supported by a National Endowment Consortium Commissioning Grant. Flutists Ransom Wilson, Carol Wincenc, and Paula Robison, each a longtime supporter and performer of new music, asked Joseph Schwantner, Paul Schoenfield, and Robert Beaser to write new works for flute and orchestra. On this recording, each solo artist presents the orchestral work composed for him or her, as well as a flute and piano "encore" by the s…
Aftertones of Infinity, Chiaroscuro, Into Eclipse
Of the three composers recorded here, it is Jacob Druckman (b 1928) who has changed the most in his approach to composition. After years of involvement with serial techniques, it was in Windows (1972) that he began to readmit elements of the musical past into his work.
The titles of Druckman's works—Incenters, Windows, Aureole, Prism—often display an interest in visual or spatial concepts. In Chiaroscuro, scored for a fairly large orchestra, including electric piano and electric organ, he set o…