Era: 20th Century

SCHREKER, Franz

Born in Monaco, March 23, 1878
Died in Berlin, March 21, 1934

Schreker was a conductor, Berlin Conservatory professor, and composer, notably of opera.
Schreker’s style was influenced by late Romanticism as well as by an eclectic mix of early 20^th C. modernist styles, ranging from Impressionism to Expressionism.¹

Pieces

Valse lente (1908)

20th Century Modernist Czech

SCHULHOFF, Erwin

Born in Prague, June 8, 1894
Died in Wülzburg, Aug 18, 1942

Erwin [pronounced “air-vin”] Schulhoff was a Jewish Czech composer and pianist of German descent.
- Schulhoff was a piano prodigy who, upon the recommendation of Dvořák, was encouraged to pursue a musical career. In his formal studies, Schulhoff encountered many established composers of the day and was inspired by everyone from Schumann and Brahms to Debussy and Scriabin. His overall training was varied and thorough, setting Schulhoff up for what should have been a long, fruitful career.
In 1914, Schulhoff was conscripted into the Austrian army, where he spent four years. The experience proved to be one of significant disillusionment for the composer, not only shifting his political sentiment (he soon after became a passionate socialist) but also shifting his musical style.
- Before WWI, Schulhoff wrote in a late romantic style. After his experience on the battlefront, he turned toward Expressionism, Dadaism, and neo-classical style, eventually embracing avant-garde.
  - Fun fact – Schulhoff was one of the first European composers to embrace Jazz.
- Schulhoff wrote many works for unusual combinations, such as Hot Sonata for saxophone and piano, Sonata Erotica for solo voice “imitating coital sighs and cries,” and a concertino for flute, viola, and double bass.
Schulhoff’s tragic demise played a large role in nearly erasing the composer’s music from history. Despite (unsuccessfully) attempting to emigrate to the Soviet Union, Schulhoff was arrested and imprisoned in 1941, eventually being deported to a concentration camp in Wülzburg, Bavaria, where he died only a few months later.²

Learn More
Biography via The OREL Foundation

Pieces

20th Century American

SCHUMAN, William

Image Courtesy of Wise Music Classical

Born in New York, NY, Aug 4, 1910
Died in New York, NY, Feb 15, 1992

Biography

Pieces

New England Triptych

20th Century Late Romantic English

SCOTT, Cyril

Born in Oxton, Cheshire, Sept 27, 1879
Died in Eastbourne, Dec 31, 1970³

Cyril Scott was an incredibly prolific composer and pianist. He composed approximately 400 works during his lifetime, including orchestral music, operas, oratorios, chamber music, choral works, piano works, and songs.
Conductor Eugene Goossens is said to have called Scott “the father of modern British music.”⁴
Scott belonged to the Frankfurt Group, a group of composers who studied with Iwan Knorr at the Hoch Conservatory in the late 1890s. Other group members included Roger Quilter, Henry Balfour Gardiner, Percy Grainger, and Norman O’Neill.
In addition to his work in music, Scott was also a writer, poet, and painter. His literary output includes several volumes of poetry, several unpublished plays, and an autobiography, My Years of Indiscretion.
- In the 1920s, Scott became a follower of the Higher Occultism and also took a keen interest in naturopathy, osteopathy, and homeopathy. Scott subsequently wrote several books and articles related to these topics in addition to his other writings. ⁵
- You can view some of Scott’s watercolor paintings here.

Biography

Pieces

Three Little Waltzes, Op. 58

20th Century Modernist Russian

SCRIABIN, Aleksandr

Born in Moscow, Jan 6, 1872 (O.S. Dec 25, 1871)
Died in Moscow, April 27, 1915 (O.S. April 14, 1915)

Russian composer Aleksandr Scriabin studied composition with Sergey Taneyev and Anton Arensky at the Moscow Conservatory. A few years after graduating, Scriabin taught at the Conservatory himself, a position he held until 1903 when he decided to devote himself to composing full-time.
Scriabin is best known for his orchestral music and piano pieces. His music became increasingly theosophical and modern, and while he had a devoted following of listeners during his lifetime, his music has only undergone proper analysis since the 1960s.⁶
Fun/macabre fact – Scriabin died at the height of his career… from a pimple. The pimple turned into a sore which became septic, killing the composer at the young age of 43.⁷

Biography from the Scriabin Association

Pieces

20th Century Russian

SHOSTAKOVICH, Dmitri

Born in St Petersburg, 1906
Died in Moscow, Aug 9, 1975

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Finnish

SIBELIUS, Jean

Born in Hämeenlinna, Dec 8, 1865
Died in Järvenpää, Sept 20, 1957

Biography from the Swedish Finn Historical Society

Pieces

20th Century Ukrainian

SKORYK, Myloslav

Photograph of Myloslav Skoryk (2015) by Grigory Hansburg, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Born in L’viv, July 13, 1938
Died in Kyiv, June 1, 2020

Skoryk was a Ukrainian composer, teacher, and musicologist.
Skoryk spent much of his childhood in Siberia; his entire family was deported there from 1947⁸, until 1955 (after the death of Stalin). He’s been attending the L’viv Music School for a couple years before the family was deported.
Skoryk studied at the L’viv Conservatory, and at the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers included Dmitri Kabalevsky.
Skoryk was an influential educator who taught at the L’viv Conservatory and Kyiv Conservatory.
During his lifetime, Skoryk was award the title “People’s Artist of Ukraine.”⁹

In Memoriam article from Ukraine World

Short biography from the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine

Pieces

20th Century American

SMITH, Irene Britton

Photo courtesy of Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College Chicago

Born in Chicago, Dec 22, 1907
Died in Chicago, Feb 15, 1999

Irene Britton Smith was a composer and educator of African-American, Crow, and Cherokee descent. Showing musical talent from an early age, Britton studied piano and violin. While she hoped to study music at university, due to financial constraints, Smith pursued a degree in education.
In 1930, Smith began working in the Chicago Public Schools as an elementary school teacher. She would remain a public school teacher for over 40 years, though she never gave up pursuing music on the side.
- In 1943, Smith earned a BM degree from American Conservatory of Music. In 1946, Smith took a sabbatical from teaching to study composition at the Juilliard School with Vittorio Giannini. She completed a MM degree in composition at DePaul University a decade later. Smith even spent a summer in France studying with legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger.
As a composer, Smith wrote 36 works, over half for voice. She admired French neo-classical style, while her favorite composers were Tchaikovsky and Brahms.¹⁰

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic English

SMYTH, Dame Ethel

Portrait of Ethel Smyth by John Singer Sargent

Born in London, April 22, 1858
Died in Woking, May 8, 1944

Name Pronunciation

There is no consensus.

This article (2018) claims that Smyth’s family pronounced the name “Smith,” not “Smythe”

This dissertation (see p. 136) discusses Peter Avis’s theory that it should be pronounced with a long “i” and an unvoiced “th,” like “Forsyth.”

This account also says that Smyth’s friend Sir Thomas Beecham was no use as a source on this issue because he always called her Dame Ethel. (That’s a brilliant way to stay out of the controversy.)

In her autobiography Streaks of Life, Ethel Smyth tells a humorous story in which she seems surprised that a woman pronounces her name to “rhyme with ‘scythe.'”

This except makes me, personally, think it should be pronounced “Smith.”

Biography

Smyth studied music at the Leipzig Conservatory, and privately in Leipzig. Her associates during her time living in Leipzig included Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms.
Smyth was particularly interested in opera. She composed six, including The Wreckers (composed 1902-4).
In 1910-1912, Smyth was romantically involved with suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst, and she became deeply involved in the women’s suffrage movement, including composing the suffrage anthem March of the Women.
Smyth was also a prolific and popular writer, and the author of two memoirs.
From the 1920s onward, Smyth received broader recognition for her work, including being made a Dame of the British Empire. She used her late-career celebrity to support the careers of women in music: for example, she lobbied for women to be hired in professional British orchestras.¹¹

Biography from the British Library

Biography from Exploring Surrey’s Past

Also includes biographical timeline, works list, and access to the The Lewis Orchard Collection at Surrey History Centre.

Pieces

20th Century Venezuelan

SOJO, Vicente Emilio

Born in Guatire, Dec 8, 1887
Died in Caracas, Aug 11, 1974

Sojo was a composer, conductor and musicologist.
As Professor of Music Theory (1921), and later Director (1936), at the Escuela Nacional de Música, Sojo taught most major Venezuelan composers between 1930-1960.
Sojo co-founded the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra in 1930.
In 1982, the Instituto Vicente Emilio Sojo, a musicological institution focused on Venezuelan music, was founded in his honor.¹²
Biography from AllMusic

Pieces

Five Pieces from Venezuela

Late Romantic English

SOMERVELL, Sir Arthur

Born in Windermere, June 5, 1863
Died in London, May 2, 1937¹³

Short biography

Pieces

Violin Concerto in g minor

Late Romantic American

SOUSA, John Philip

Born in Washington, DC, Nov 6, 1854
Died in Reading, PA, March 6, 1932¹⁴

Biography from the United States Marine Band

Pieces

The Stars and Stripes Forever

20th Century Nigerian

SOWANDE, Fela

Photograph of Fela Sowande courtesy of the African Diaspora Music Project

Born in Oyo, May 29, 1905
Died in Ravenna, OH, March 1987

Pronunciation: “FAY-la SHWAHN-de”
IPA: [felə ʃwɑnde]

Sowande was a composer and organist from Nigeria.
Sowande studied in England; he was a fellow of the Royal College of Organists and Trinity College of Music, and he earned his B.Mus. at the University of London.
Sowande worked in Nigeria as a liturgical musician and as musical director of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. Later in life he taught at Howard University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Sowande’s music (especially his sacred music) combines the influence of church music and the composer’s Yoruba heritage.¹⁵

Biography from BlackPast

Biography from African Diaspora Music Project

Short documentary from Singing Cultures

Pieces

African Suite

20th Century Late Romantic British

STANFORD, Sir Charles Villiers

Born in Dublin, Sept 30, 1852
Died in London, March 29, 1924¹⁶

Biography via The Stanford Society

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Swedish

STENHAMMAR, Wilhelm

Born in Stockholm, Feb 7, 1871
Died in Stockholm, Nov 20, 1927

Stenhammar was a Swedish conductor, organist, and pianist. He studied organ and theory with private teachers, but as a composer, he was mostly self-taught.
Fun fact: Stenhammar came from an artistic family that included and architect and composer (his father) a visual artist (his mother), singers (his uncle and aunt), and a choral conductor (his cousin). As a child he was part of a family choir that sang for upper-class families.
Stenhammar was a conductor who held posts directing the Stockholm Philharmonic Society, the Swedish Royal Opera, the New Philharmonic Society, and the Göteborg Orchestral Society.¹⁷

Biography and works list from Swedish Musical Heritage

Pieces

20th Century American

STILL, William Grant

Born in Woodville, MS, May 11, 1895
Died in Los Angeles, Dec 3, 1978

Still studied music at Oberlin College, and also studied composition privately with George Whitefield Chadwick and Edgard Varèse.
Early in his career, Still worked as an arranger for W.C. Handy, Paul Whiteman, Artie Shaw and many jazz artists.
In 1931, the Rochester Philharmonic premiered his Afro-American Symphony, making him the first African-American composer to have a work played by a major American symphony orchestra.
Other firsts in Still’s career:
- He was the first African-American to conduct a major orchestra (the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1936)
- He was the first African-American composer to have an opera premiered by a major opera company (Troubled Island, New York City Opera, March 31, 1949)¹⁸

Biography from William Grant Still Music: organization directed by Still descendants

Pieces

20th Century American English

STOKOWSKI, Leopold

Born in London, April 18, 1882
Died in Nether Wallop, Hants., Sept 13, 1977

Famous for: conductor of Philadelphia Orchestra (1912-36)
Famous for: collaborating with Disney on Fantasia (1940)¹⁹
Stokowski worked to make classical music popular and accessible; for this purpose, made many lush orchestral arrangements of works by Bach (especially Bach’s organ works, because Stokowski was an organist.)²⁰

Pieces

Late Romantic Austrian

STRAUS, Oscar

Born in Vienna, March 6, 1870
Died in Bad Ischl, Jan 11, 1954²¹

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic German

STRAUSS, Richard

Born in Munich, June 11, 1864
Died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Sept 8, 1949²²

Biography

Pieces

20th Century Russian

STRAVINSKY, Igor

Born in Oranienbaum [now Lomonosov], near St Petersburg, 5/June 17, 1882
Died in New York, April 6, 1971²³

Biography

Pieces

20th Century American

STRICKLAND, Lily

Born in Anderson, SC, Jan 28, 1887
Died in Hendersonville, NC, June 6, 1958

Lily Strickland completed her formal training at the Institute of Musical Art in New York (now Julliard).
As a composer, Strickland was consistently inspired by the music of diverse cultures throughout her career.
- Earlier on, she was influenced by Black musical traditions and Native American melodies.
- From 1920-29, Strickland lived in India, where she soon became fascinated with non-Western idioms.
- *Note from Rebecca – I would recommend treading lightly when playing some of Strickland’s pieces. Though she studied the music of these diverse cultures to varying degrees, I can also see arguments made regarding cultural appropriation of these musical traditions.
Strickland wrote about 400 pieces, including operettas, piano pieces, and songs, “Mah Lindy Lou” being the most popular among them.²⁴
In addition to music, Strickland was also a writer, poet, and painter. She wrote numerous scholarly cultural articles, wrote the lyrics to her songs (in addition to standalone sonnets), and painted cover illustrations for many of her compositions.²⁵

Learn more:

Biography (written by the son of Strickland’s first cousin)
Short biography from the South Carolina Encyclopedia

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Czech

SUK, Josef

Born in Křečovice, Jan 4, 1874
Died in Benešov, nr Prague, May 29, 1935

Josef Suk was the child of a choirmaster/ schoolmaster, from whom he learned to play piano, violin, and organ. In 1885 (age 11), Suk entered the Prague Conservatory. He stayed on an extra year after graduation to study composition with Antonín Dvořák, becoming the composer’s favorite pupil.
- Fun fact: in 1898, Suk married Dvořák’s daughter, Otilie (Otilka).
- In 1922, Suk himself became a professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory.
As a composer, Suk was most at home with instrumental music. He was seen by many as Dvořák’s musical successor. His earlier works display qualities of sensuous late romanticism. Following the deaths of his father-in-law in 1904 and his wife in 1905, Suk’s music took a dramatic turn towards more complexity, introspection, and even polytonality.
Unlike many of his Czech predecessors, Suk almost never drew on folk music or literary sources for inspiration.
In addition to composition, Suk led a distinguished international career as a violinist in the Czech Quartet until he retired from performing in 1933.²⁶

Learn More

Biography from Seattle Chamber Music Society

Pieces

Tale of a Winter’s Evening, Op. 9

20th Century French

TAILLEFERRE, Germaine

Born in Parc-St-Maur, near Paris, April 19, 1892
Died in Paris, Nov 7, 1983

Tailleferre was a piano prodigy as well as a composer. She studied at the Paris Conservatory, where she met future fellow-members of Les Six: Auric, Honegger and Milhaud.
Erik Satie discovered Tailleferre’s Jeux de plein air in 1917, and he loved it so much that he called Tailleferre his “musical daughter” and promoted her career.
Tailleferre was the only woman composer in the early 20^th-century group of French composers known as Les Six. She appears in the lower left-hand corner of this famous group portrait of Les Six.
Tailleferre’s works include comic operas, radio and film scores, incidental music, orchestral music, chamber music, songs, and a number of works for children.²⁷

Biography from Wise Music Classical

Pieces

20th Century Japanese

TAKEMITSU, Tōru

Born in Tokyo, Oct 8, 1930
Died in Tokyo, Feb 20, 1996

Takemitsu was an innovative, mostly self-taught Japanese composer whose music blends modernist Western styles Japanese traditional music and instruments.
Takemitsu’s first encounter with Western music came while he was serving as a conscripted member of the Japanese military in WWII: his officer played a recording of a French popular song for a group of conscripts. French music would go on to be a huge influence for Takemitsu, especially the music of Debussy and Messaien.
In the 1950s, Takemitsu and several other composers formed a group called Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop) to explore avant-garde multimedia projects.
Takemitsu’s music began to find audiences outside Japan when Stravinksy heard his Requiem for Strings (composed 1957) in 1959, and declared it a masterpiece.
Takemitsu was also an influential essayist and writer on music.²⁸

Profile on Takemitsu from Schott Music

Guide to Takemitsu’s music from The Guardian

Pieces

20th Century English

TAVENER, Sir John

Born in London, Jan 28, 1944
Died in Dorset, Nov 12, 2013

Tavener studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where his teachers included Lennox Berkeley.
Tavener’s early style is deeply influenced by Messiaen and late Stravinsky (especially Stravinsky’s religious works). After his conversion to the Orthodox Church in the late 1970s, Orthodox liturgical music became a strong influence in his compositions.
Fun fact: Tavener’s early experimental cantata The Whale caught the interest of the Beatles, and it was recorded on their Apple record label. ²⁹

Composer website

Pieces

Funeral Ikos

20th Century Greek

THEODORAKIS, Mikis

Born on Chios, Greece, July 29, 1925
Died in Athens, Sept 2, 2021

Theodorakis studied at the Athens Conservatory, followed by the Paris Conservatory under Olivier Messiaen and Eugène Bigot.
As a composer, Theodorakis wrote symphonies, opera, chamber works, choral works, ballets, songs, and film scores. Within Greece, he is beloved for his contribution to art song (we wrote over 1,000!), and on an international level, he is best known for his film scores (most notably, Zorba the Greek).
Theodorakis was actively involved in politics for all of his adult life.
- During the Greek Civil War, the composer was arrested, exiled, tortured, and barely escaped with his life. However, it was also during this harrowing period that he began writing his first symphony.
- Theodorakis served in the Greek parliament several times as a representative for the Communist Party. During the military coup d’état of 21 April 1967, Theodorakis was arrested and imprisoned (where he continued to compose). Thanks to pressure from famous artists around the world, including Shostakovich, Arthur Miller, and Laurence Olivier, Theodorakis was eventually released in 1970. ³⁰

“His Marxist background and the physical and mental pain he and his fellow leftists had suffered during the Greek civil war gave Theodorakis a sense of moral purpose which infused all his work.”³¹
Grove Music Online

Learn More

Obituary from The Guardian

Pieces

20th Century American

THOMPSON, Randall

Born in New York, NY, April 21, 1899
Died in Cambridge, MA, July 9, 1984

Thompson’s teachers included Ernest Bloch and Francesco Malipiero. He won a Prix de Rome in 1922.³¹
When he was a student at Harvard, Thompson was failed his audition for the Glee Club. Regarding this rejection, Thompson said, “My life has been an attempt to strike back.”³²
Thompson had a long and distinguished teaching career, at institutions including UC Berkeley, the Julliard School (where he taught Leonard Bernstein), and Harvard University.³³
Thompson is best known for his choral works, which include both sacred and secular motets and cantatas, a Requiem, and a Mass. His choral music is often influenced by historical styles, ranging from Renaissance polyphony to American shape-note singing. His oeuvre also includes three symphonies, a radio opera and chamber works.³⁴

Biography from ECS Publishing

Pieces

Alleluia

20th Century American

THOMSON, Virgil

Born in Kansas City, MO, Nov 25, 1896
Died in New York, NY, Sept 30, 1989

In addition to composing, Thomson was an influential and accessible music critic. For many years he was the chief music critic at the New York Herald Tribune.
Thomson was educated at Harvard and also spent time in Paris in the 1920s, where he met Satie, hobnobbed with Les Six and took composition lessons with Nadia Boulanger. He also met Gertrude Stein, who became a good friend and collaborator (he set her texts multiple times, including collaborating on two operas).
Thomson’s mature musical style combines influences from American hymns, 19^th-century dance, and traditional tonality with a dash of diatonic dissonance and polytonality.³⁴

Composer website from the Virgil Thompson Foundation

Pieces

Late Romantic Estonian

TOBIAS, Rudolf

Born in Käina, Hiiumaa Island, May 29, 1873
Died in Berlin, Oct 29, 1918³⁵

Rudolf Tobias was an extremely important figure in the founding of an Estonian classical music tradition. His “Julius Caesar” Overture is considered to be a foundational symphonic work in the emergence of a distinct classical music culture in the country.³⁶
Tobias’s compositional output includes works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, choir, solo piano and organ, and solo voice.³⁷

Biography (translated)

Pieces

“Julius Caesar” Overture

20th Century English

TOMLINSON, Ernest

Born in Rawtenstall, Sept 19, 1924
Died in Lancashire, June 12, 2015³⁸

Biography

Pieces

20th Century Contemporary American

TOWER, Joan

Portrait of Joan Tower by Bernard Mindich, courtesy of Wise Music Classical.

Born in New Rochelle, NY, Sept 6, 1938

Tower studied composition at Bennington College and Columbia University. She has taught at Bard College since 1972.³⁹
Tower’s early works were serialist (influences included Milton Babbit), but since 1976 her work has moved in a more tonal direction.⁴⁰
Major honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship (1977), acknowledgement at the 2009 Kennedy Center Gala for Women in the Arts,⁴¹ and a Grammy award for her one-movement symphonic work Made in America (2008).⁴²

Faculty biography from Bard College

Biography from Wise Music Classical

Pieces

Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, No. 1

20th Century Spanish

TURINA, Joaquín

Born in Seville, Dec 9, 1882
Died in Madrid, Jan 14, 1949

Joaquín Turina was a Spanish composer and pianist who was a contemporary (and friend) of Manuel de Falla, who both followed in the footsteps of Albéniz and Granados regarding their substantial enrichment of Spanish classical music around the turn of the century.
- *This isn’t to say that these four composers were alike musically, but rather all played an essential role in developing 20th-century Spanish music in their own unique way.
In 1905, Turina moved to Paris to study piano with Moritz Moszkowski and composition with Vincent d’Indy.
As a composer, Turina wrote across multiple genres, including orchestral music, chamber music, songs, piano pieces, and works for stage. His music is infused with his Andalusian roots, while his time spent in France also significantly colored his writing. Compared to his Spanish contemporaries, Turina was the most driven to write European music in the conventional major forms.
- For example/ Fun fact – Turina was the only one of the four major 20th-century Spanish composers mentioned above to write a symphony (Sinfonía sevillana).⁴⁰

Learn More

Biography from Hyperion Records

Pieces

20th Century English

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, Ralph

Born in Down Ampney, Gloucs., Oct 12, 1872
Died in London, Aug 26, 1958⁴¹

“[Vaughan Williams] was a composer of great originality who was nevertheless perennially curious about the music of others.”⁴²

Biography from the Vaughan Williams Society

20th Century Brazilian

VILLA-LOBOS, Heitor

Born in Rio de Janeiro, March 5, 1887
Died in Rio de Janeiro, Nov 17, 1959⁴³

Villa-Lobos had a highly successful international career as a composer and was incredibly prolific in his 6+ decades of writing music.
He received his initial musical training from his father, who was adamant about exposing Villa-Lobos to a wide variety of classical music during his upbringing; however, it was Brazil’s popular idioms that intrigued Villa-Lobos the most during his youth. These idioms would heavily influence the formation of Villa-Lobos’s compositional voice going forward.
As a composer, Villa-Lobos was essentially self-taught and endlessly curious about the everchanging musical landscape at the turn of the century and beyond. Consequently, his music embodies a wide variety of experiments in style and language.⁴⁴

Biography from Naxos

Pieces

20th Century English

VINTER, Gilbert

Image courtesy of Discogs

Born in Lincoln, May 4th, 1909
Died in Tintagel, Oct 10th, 1969

Gilbert Vinter was a composer, conductor, bassoonist, and educator. He was best known for his works for brass and military band.
As a child, Vinter worked his way up to head chorister at Lincoln Cathedral. He subsequently studied bassoon and composition at the Royal Academy of Music.
- Vinter would also later teach at the institution.⁴⁵

Biography from the Lincoln School (where Vinter was an alumnus)

Pieces

Hunter’s Moon

20th Century American

WALKER, George

Photograph of George Walker courtesy of the composer's website

Born in Washington, DC, June 27, 1922
Died in Montclair, NJ, Aug 23, 2018

Walker studied at Oberlin, Eastman, and Curtis. His teachers included Nadia Boulanger, Rudolf Serkin, and Robert Casadesus.⁴⁶
- Walker began studying at Oberlin at the age of 14, becoming the institution’s youngest student.
- Walker was also the first Black student to earn a doctorate at Eastman in 1956.⁴⁷
Walker had a distinguished academic career; his longest appointment was at Rutgers University from 1969-92.⁴⁸
- The stability Walker found in academia paved the way for greater capacity to compose. However, it came at a cost. He had originally pursued a career as a concert pianist but found consistent work too hard to come by due to institutional racism.⁴⁹
Among his many professional honors, George Walker was the first African-American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1996 for his vocal and orchestral piece Lilacs.⁵⁰
As a composer, Walker wrote most extensively for string instruments, though his oeuvre also includes concertos for trombone and piano, piano sonatas, sinfonias, brass and wind quintets, song cycles, and more.
Walker cannot easily be associated with other composers because his music is so distinctive. He wrote each piece to be unique, without any resemblance to a previous work.
- He also frequently quoted spirituals, Jazz, and folk music in his works, but only with incredible subtlety.⁵¹