Biography
Joseph Schwantner stands among the most distinguished American composers active at the close of the twentieth century and the opening decades of the twenty-first. His distinctions encompass a Pulitzer Prize for Aftertones of Infinity, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and repeated awards from the National Endowment for the Arts. Commissions have come from the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, and numerous additional ensembles. New Morning for the World, completed in 1982 as a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., belongs to the most frequently programmed and widely recognized works for narrator and orchestra written since Copland's Lincoln Portrait. Election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters occurred in 2002.
Schwantner entered the world on March 22, 1943, in Chicago. His professional journey opened modestly when he played tuba in the high school orchestra, yet he was already writing original guitar music and creating jazz-band arrangements. He enrolled at Chicago's American Conservatory for study with Bernard Dieter. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1964, he pursued graduate training at Northwestern University and earned both master's and doctoral degrees there. Teaching positions at Pacific Lutheran University and Ball State University preceded his appointment to the Eastman School of Music faculty in 1970.
Although his early formation occurred within the high-serialist tradition, Schwantner discarded that idiom in the mid-1970s in favor of a vividly colored, harmonically lush, and fundamentally tonal language that he often termed pantonal. Music from the seventies and eighties typically displayed dense, somber brass textures, abrupt polyrhythmic shifts, and hypnotic ostinati. One recurring device produces "ringing sonorities" by means of forceful attacks that are then abruptly damped yet allowed to linger. These effects mirror the imagery of such titles as Wild Angels of the Open Hills for soprano, flute, and harp (1977), Aftertones of Infinity for orchestra (1978), and From a Dark Millennium for wind ensemble (1980). Additional color derives from nonstandard instruments such as crystal glasses, water gongs, and bowed cymbals. In the 1990s his idiom occasionally ventured into disorienting atonal or loosely serial territory while juxtaposing massive, overpowering tonal blocks and continued to investigate novel timbres in the Percussion Concerto (1994), the Evening Land Symphony (1995), and In Memories Embrace (1996). Retirement from Eastman took place in 1999; Schwantner then joined the Yale University faculty as professor of composition and remained there until 2002, the year of his election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
The League of American Orchestras and Meet the Composer named Schwantner the second composer chosen for the Ford Made in America consortium in 2007. Chasing Light ..., the resulting score, received its premiere the following year and had been heard in every state by 2010. Giancarlo Guerrero conducted the Nashville Symphony in a Naxos recording issued in 2011 that presented several Schwantner works, among them Chasing Light ... and the Percussion Concerto with Christopher Lamb as soloist; the concerto recording earned the participants a Grammy Award. Schwantner has remained active in the twenty-first century through master classes and continued composition, issuing more than twenty new scores that include Angelfire for amplified violin and orchestra (2002), The Awakening Hour for wind ensemble (2017), and a Violin Concerto (2021). The last-named piece commemorates Gerard Schwarz's retirement from the Seattle Symphony music directorship and was introduced that year by violinist Yevgeny Kutik with Leonard Slatkin leading the Detroit Symphony.
Schwantner entered the world on March 22, 1943, in Chicago. His professional journey opened modestly when he played tuba in the high school orchestra, yet he was already writing original guitar music and creating jazz-band arrangements. He enrolled at Chicago's American Conservatory for study with Bernard Dieter. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1964, he pursued graduate training at Northwestern University and earned both master's and doctoral degrees there. Teaching positions at Pacific Lutheran University and Ball State University preceded his appointment to the Eastman School of Music faculty in 1970.
Although his early formation occurred within the high-serialist tradition, Schwantner discarded that idiom in the mid-1970s in favor of a vividly colored, harmonically lush, and fundamentally tonal language that he often termed pantonal. Music from the seventies and eighties typically displayed dense, somber brass textures, abrupt polyrhythmic shifts, and hypnotic ostinati. One recurring device produces "ringing sonorities" by means of forceful attacks that are then abruptly damped yet allowed to linger. These effects mirror the imagery of such titles as Wild Angels of the Open Hills for soprano, flute, and harp (1977), Aftertones of Infinity for orchestra (1978), and From a Dark Millennium for wind ensemble (1980). Additional color derives from nonstandard instruments such as crystal glasses, water gongs, and bowed cymbals. In the 1990s his idiom occasionally ventured into disorienting atonal or loosely serial territory while juxtaposing massive, overpowering tonal blocks and continued to investigate novel timbres in the Percussion Concerto (1994), the Evening Land Symphony (1995), and In Memories Embrace (1996). Retirement from Eastman took place in 1999; Schwantner then joined the Yale University faculty as professor of composition and remained there until 2002, the year of his election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
The League of American Orchestras and Meet the Composer named Schwantner the second composer chosen for the Ford Made in America consortium in 2007. Chasing Light ..., the resulting score, received its premiere the following year and had been heard in every state by 2010. Giancarlo Guerrero conducted the Nashville Symphony in a Naxos recording issued in 2011 that presented several Schwantner works, among them Chasing Light ... and the Percussion Concerto with Christopher Lamb as soloist; the concerto recording earned the participants a Grammy Award. Schwantner has remained active in the twenty-first century through master classes and continued composition, issuing more than twenty new scores that include Angelfire for amplified violin and orchestra (2002), The Awakening Hour for wind ensemble (2017), and a Violin Concerto (2021). The last-named piece commemorates Gerard Schwarz's retirement from the Seattle Symphony music directorship and was introduced that year by violinist Yevgeny Kutik with Leonard Slatkin leading the Detroit Symphony.