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Elliott Schwartz

 
CountryUnited States of America
Date of birth19 January 1936
OccupationComposer

Elliott Schwartz (born 1936, New York City) studied composition with Otto Luening and Jack Beeson at Columbia University (AB 1957, MA '58, Ed.D '62). He also worked privately with Paul Creston. He is the Robert K. Beckwith Professor of Music Emeritus at Bowdoin College, where he taught from 1964 to 2007, including twelve years as department chair; from 1988 to 1992 he also held a half-time Professorship of Composition at The Ohio State University School of Music.

Visiting appointments have included Trinity College of Music, London (1967), the University of California/Santa Barbara (College of Creative Studies, 1970, '73, '74), the University of California/San Diego (Center for Music Experiment, 1978-79), and Distinguished University Visiting Professorship at The Ohio State University (1985-86). In 1993, 1999, 2007 and 2010 he was in residence at Cambridge University (UK) as holder of full-term visiting Fellowships at Robinson College.

He has served as President of the College Music Society, National Chair of the American Society of University Composers (now renamed the Society of Composers, Inc.), Vice-President of the American Music Center, President of the Maine Composers Forum, and board member of the American Composers Alliance. 




Elliott Schwartz is co-editor of the anthology Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, co-author of Music Since 1945, and the author of Electronic Music: A Listener's Guide; The Symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Music: Ways of Listening. He has also written essays and reviews for Perspectives of New Music, The Musical Quarterly, Musical America, Music and Musicians (England), Nordic Sounds (Denmark) and other publications. 
An archival collection of his papers, sketches and other materials was created at the Library of Congress in 2006.

His compositions are published by G.Schirmer-AMP, Lauren Keiser Music, Theodore Presser, ACA, and Carl Fischer. CD recordings of his music can be heard on the New World, Albany, Innova, Capstone, Metier, O.O. Discs, Folkways-Smithsonian, North-South Consonance, and GM labels. Schwartz is a member of BMI. 




Performances of his music include the Minnesota Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, ALEA III (Boston), Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, New York Chamber Soloists, Atlanta Virtuosi, Esbjerg Ensemble (Denmark), Lontano (UK), Spectrum (UK), Kreutzer Quartet (UK), Fibonnacci Sequence (UK), Tivoli Trio (Denmark), and Ensemble Allternance (France). Major festivals and new music series include the Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), "Music of the Americas" series (London), Berkshire Festival (Tanglewood), "Music in Our Time" (New York), De Ijsbreker (Amsterdam, Netherlands), the York and Bath Festivals (Britain), and European Music Week (UNESCO Centre, Paris). Honors and awards include a Dutch Gaudeamus Prize, two Rockefeller Foundation residencies at Bellagio, Italy, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, an NEA Consortium commission, and a McKim Fund commission from the Library of Congress. 



Schwartz's guest appearances include Oxford University, the Royal College of Music, Royal Academy of Music, and Trinity College of Music (UK), the Royal Danish Academies at Aarhus and Copenhagen, Hochschule fur Musik (Cologne, Weimar, and Mannheim/Heidelberg), L’Ecole National du Musique (Saint Germain-en-Laye, France), Atelier Musique de Ville d’Avray (France), Institute for Advanced Musical Studies (Montreux, Switzerland), Tokyo College of Music, Rotterdam and Amsterdam Conservatories (Netherlands), New York University, University of Southern California/Schoenberg Institute, and the University of California (Berkeley, San Diego, Irvine and Santa Barbara campuses). He has presented four radio programs of American music for the BBC, and also been the subject of a 60-minute National Public Radio "Options" program.

Elliott Schwartz