music.wikisort.org - Composer

Benjamin Aaron Boretz[1] (born October 3, 1934) is an American composer and music theorist.[2]

Life and work

Benjamin Boretz was born in Brooklyn, New York to Abraham Jacob Boretz and Leah (Yullis) Boretz. He graduated with a degree in music from Brooklyn College in 1954, studied composition with Tadeusz Kassern, and later studied composition at Brandeis University with Arthur Berger and Irving Fine, with Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Music Festival and School, with Lukas Foss at UCLA, and with Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions at Princeton University. Boretz was one of the first composers to work with computer-synthesized sound (Group Variations II, 1970–72). In the late 1970s and 1980s he converged his compositional and pedagogical practices in a project of real-time improvisational music-making, culminating in the formation at Bard College of the music-learning program called Music Program Zero, which flourished until 1995. He has written extensively on musical issues, as critic, theorist, and musical philosopher, from the perspective of a practicing composer. His earliest (1970) large-scale music-intellectual essay was the book-length "Meta-Variations, Studies in the Foundations of Musical Thought," which addresses the epistemological questions involved in the cognition and composition of music, and propounds a radically relativistic/individualistic/ontological reconstruction of the musical creative process. Later, in 1978, his text composition "Language, as a Music, Six marginal Pretexts for Composition" engaged questions of the origin and nature of language and meaning as they might be conceived from the perspective of music.

Boretz has taught in the music departments of a number of American universities, including Brandeis, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Princeton University, University of Chicago, NYU, Columbia University, University of Michigan, Bard College, UC Santa Barbara, Evergreen College, and University of Southampton (UK, as a visiting Fulbright Professor). See: List of music students by teacher: A to B#Benjamin Boretz.

Boretz is a co-founder, with Arthur Berger, of the composers' music journal Perspectives of New Music[3] and in 1988 founded (with Elaine Barkin and J. K. Randall) Open Space (publications, recordings, scores) and, in 1999, The Open Space magazine (with Mary Lee A. Roberts), which he edits with Dorota Czerner, Tildy Bayar, Jon Forshee, Dean Rosenthal, and Arthur Margolin. He was principal music critic for The Nation from 1962 to 1970.[4]

He has two children, Avron and Nina.

Recordings

Boretz's work as composer and writer is available on CDs, DVDs, and print books issued by Open Space Publications, a cooperative formed by Boretz with Elaine Barkin and J. K. Randall.

Principal Compositions

Principal writings (published)

Books:

• Language, as a music. Six marginal pretexts for composition. for speaker, prerecorded tape, and piano (1978). Lingua Press, 1980
• Talk: If I am a musical thinker. (1980) Station Hill Press, 1984
• Music Columns from The Nation, 1962–70; selected and edited, and with an introduction by, Elaine Barkin. Open Space Publications, 1988
• Meta-Variations. Studies in the Foundations of Musical Thought. (1970) Open Space Publications, 1994
• Being About Music. Textworks 1960-2003 (with J. K. Randall). Volume 1: 1960-1978; Volume II: 1978-2003. Open Space Publications, 2003
• Inside in...outside out. Edited by Tildy Bayar. Introduction by David Lidov. Afterwords by Charles Stein, John Rahn, Joshua Banks Mailman, Jon Forshee, Robert Morris (composer), Arthur Margolin and Scott Gleason, Dorota Czerner. Open Space Publications, 2020

Articles published: in journals: The Open Space Magazine; Musical America; Musical Quarterly; Harper's; The Nation; Perspectives of New Music; Journal of Philosophy; Cimaise; the London Magazine; Journal of Music Theory; Contemporary Music Newsletter; Proceedings of the American Society of University Composers; Proceedings of the International Musicological Society; News of Music; in books: Perspectives on Contemporary Music Theory (W. W. Norton); Perspectives on Musical Aesthetics (W. W. Norton).

References

External links

• Open Space: The Open Space Magazine

Wikiquote has quotations related to Benjamin Boretz.

На других языках

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[de] Benjamin Boretz

Benjamin Boretz (* 3. Oktober 1934) ist ein US-amerikanischer Komponist und Musikpädagoge, -theoretiker und -kritiker.

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- [en] Benjamin Boretz

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