BOOSEY & HAWKES - Key Persons

b. 14 November 1900, Brooklyn, NY d. 2 December 1990, N.Tarrytown, New York Aaron Copland's name is synonymous with American music. It was his pioneering achievement to break free from Europe and create concert music that is characteristically American. In addition to writing such well-loved works as Fanfare for the Common Man, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring, Copland conducted, organized concerts, wrote books on music, and served as an American cultural ambassador to the world. While studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Copland became interested in incorporating popular styles into his music. Upon his return to the US, he advanced the cause of new music through lectures and writings, and organized the famed Copland-Sessions concerts. As America entered first Depression then war, Copland began to speak to the concerns of the average citizen in those times of trouble. His intentions were fulfilled as works from Billy the Kid to Lincoln Portrait to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Appalachian Spring found both popular success and critical acclaim. Aaron Copland was one of the most honored cultural figures in the history of the United States. The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Kennedy Center Award, the National Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences "Oscar", and the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany were only a few of the honors and awards he received. In 1982, the Aaron Copland School of Music was established in his honor at Queens College of the City University of New York. Aaron Copland is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes. Aaron Copland was one of the most honored cultural figures in the history of the United States. The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Kennedy Center Award, the National Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences "Oscar", and the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany were only a few of the honors and awards he received. In addition, he was president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Society of Arts in England; helped found the American Composers Alliance; was an early and prominent member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers; served as director or board member of the American Music Center, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the League of Composers, and other organizations; received honorary doctorates from over 40 colleges and universities. In 1982, the Aaron Copland School of Music was established in his honor at Queens College of the City University of New York. Aaron Copland is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.

Alexander Raskatov was born on 9 March 1953. He studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory in Albert Leman's class until 1978 and subsequently completed a four-year post-graduate course. In the early 1990s he moved to Germany, later to France, where he works as a freelance composer. In 1990 he was composer in residence at Stenton University, in 1998 in Lockenhaus. He has received numerous scholarships and prestigious commissions. Raskatov's refined sound development and concentrated treatment of material reveal influences of Stravinsky and Webern. His numerous vocal works are based on texts of recent Russian poetry (e.g. Blok, Baratynski, Khlebnikov, Brodsky). He was also intensively involved with the Russian Futurists of the 1920s (including Mossolov, Roslavets) and completed some of their surviving fragments. Irina Schnittke entrusted him with the reconstruction of the 9th symphony of her husband, who died in 1998.

Job Titles:

• Leader

b. 30 June 1931, Chicago, IL d. 20 April 2007, Jersey City, NJ

b. 24 September 1914, Warsaw d. 27 October 1991, Twickenham, London Andrzej Panufnik was born in 1914 in Warsaw and grew up in a musical family, beginning to compose at the age of nine. He gained his diploma at the Warsaw State Conservatoire and travelled to Vienna to study conducting with Felix Weingartner, and to Paris and London for further composition studies. At the outbreak of war he returned to Warsaw where he remained throughout the Nazi occupation. Under a pseudonym he wrote patriotic songs, also playing the piano in underground and charity concerts (often piano duets with Witold Lutoslawski). All his compositions were destroyed in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, though he reconstructed three scores in the following years. After the war, Panufnik held conducting positions with the Krakow Philharmonic and the Warsaw Philharmonic, also appearing as a guest conductor with many of the leading European orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Orchestre National, Paris, and the London Philharmonic. In 1950 he was elected vice-chairman, with Arthur Honegger, of the International Music Council of UNESCO; and as head of a Polish cultural delegation to China in 1953, he was personally received by Chairman Mao. In 1954 Panufnik left Poland as a protest against political control over creative artists, resulting in the total supression of his name and music. He settled in England and subsequently gained British nationality. From 1957-59 he was musical director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, his last official position before deciding to concentrate on composing. In 1977, after a 23-year long silence, Panufnik's music was once again heard in Poland, and in 1990 the composer made a momentous return to his native country to conduct a programme of his works to open the Warsaw Autumn Festival. Panufnik's autobiography, Composing Myself, was published in 1987 by Methuen (UK). The composer received a British knighthood in January 1991, and following his death nine months later was awarded a Polish knighthood by President Lech Walesa. Panufnik's oeuvre is dominated by a series of large-scale orchestral works, including commissioned scores for the Boston, Chicago and London Symphony Orchestras. As well as the ten symphonies, his output includes concertos for piano, violin, bassoon and cello, three string quartets, vocal and choral music, works for young people, and transcriptions of old Polish music. Panufnik's compositions have been performed by many leading musical interpreters, including Stokowski, Horenstein, Solti, Ozawa, Previn, Menuhin and Rostropovich. Andrzej Panufnik is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.

Clyne has been commissioned and presented by the world's most dynamic and revered arts institutions, including the Barbican, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic, MoMA, Philharmonie de Paris, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, San Francisco Ballet, and the Sydney Opera House; and her music has opened such events as the Edinburgh International Festival, The Last Night of the Proms, and the New York Philharmonic's 2021-2022 season. Clyne is the recipient of the Hindemith Prize; a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; awards from Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Jerome Foundation; prizes from ASCAP and SEAMUS; and she was nominated for the Times Breakthrough Award. Clyne holds a Bachelor of Music degree with honours from Edinburgh University, studying with Marina Adamia, and a Master of Music degree from Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Julia Wolfe.

b. 18 September 1893, Sydney d. 10 April 1960, London Arthur Benjamin was born in Sydney, Australia, on 18 September 1893 and received his earliest education in Brisbane. Even as a boy, he was determined to pursue his musical training in London, and in 1911 he achieved his aim, studying composition with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and piano with Frederick Cliffe. At the outbreak of war in 1914 Benjamin joined the army, later transferring to the RAF. His wartime service was curtailed when his plane was shot down and he was captured. Demobilised on the return of peace, he travelled home to Australia, where he began to compose in earnest. But he soon found the atmosphere too restrictive, and in 1921 returned to England. Although his First String Quartet (Pastorale Fantasia) was awarded a Carnegie Prize in 1924, Benjamin's reputation was established initially through teaching: in 1926 he took up a professorship of piano at the Royal College of Music, where his students included the young Benjamin Britten. Benjamin's compositions began to make an impact from the early 1930s onwards, particularly with his Violin Concerto (1932) and a comic opera, The Devil Take Her (1931), which enjoyed the championship of Sir Thomas Beecham. In addition to his popular Overture to an Italian Opera (1938), Benjamin composed a number of light-music pieces, and it was one of these, the Jamaican Rumba, published in 1938, that brought him popular acclaim, making him something of a household name - so much so that the Jamaican government assigned him a free barrel of rum a year for his contribution to making the country known. Benjamin was much attracted to writing for the stage, composing a second opera, Prima Donna, in 1933, although it had to wait until 1949 for its premiere. His next essay in the genre was a more serious affair: A Tale of Two Cities, was commissioned by the Arts Council in conjunction with the Festival of Britain and premiered by the BBC in 1953. Three years later a television opera, Mañana, followed, and at his death on 10 April 1960 Benjamin left an unfinished fifth opera, based on Tartuffe; the scoring was completed and the work produced in 1964. Among Benjamin's other notable scores are a symphony, first performed at the Cheltenham Festival in 1948 and recently recorded on the Marco Polo label; Elegy, Waltz and Toccata for viola and orchestra, also a Cheltenham premiere (in 1949), a Concerto quasi una Fantasia for piano and orchestra (1950, recorded by Benjamin's piano student, Lamar Crowson), a Romantic Fantasy for violin, viola and orchestra (premiered by Jascha Heifetz and William Primrose in 1938) and a harmonica concerto for Larry Adler (first performed in 1953). Another work that brought considerable success was the oboe concerto, arranged in 1942 from keyboard sonatas of Domenico Cimarosa, which has succeeded in maintaining a place in the repertoire. Benjamin was equally active as a writer of music for films, beginning in 1934 with The Scarlet Pimpernel, an adaptation of music from the Napoleonic era, and Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, for which Benjamin composed an extended Storm Clouds Cantata. Around a dozen more film scores were to follow between then and 1957, including The Ascent of Everest, one of his most successful. In addition to his composing activities, Benjamin was a conductor of note: he was engaged at the helm of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra for five years (1941-46). Arthur Benjamin is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.

From 2001-04, Barbara Kolb was composer-in-residence in Providence under the auspices of a Meet The Composer New Residencies grant. Her constituents were Festival Ballet Providence, WaterFire Providence, and the Rhode Island Philharmonic. In addition to her creative responsibilities, she founded and directed a new music series, VIBE OF THE VENUE, performing works by Rhode Island composers and invited artists from the U.S. and abroad. Also, in 2004 Barbara was recognized as one of "four outstanding women of the year" presented by the YWCA of greater Providence. In 2005 she was one of three composers to receive a prestigious MacColl/Johnson Fellowship ($25,000), administered by the Rhode Island Foundation in its inaugural year. Also, in 2005 she was the recipient of the 2005 Indiviidual Artist grant in Music Composition awarded by the RI State Council for the Arts. Subsequent RISCA grants in the same category were awarded to her in 2008, 2012, and 2014.

b. 22 November 1913, Lowestoft d. 4 December 1976, Aldeburgh Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, on the east coast of England, on 22 November 1913. Although he was already composing vigorously as a child, he nonetheless felt the importance of some solid guidance and in 1928 turned to the composer Frank Bridge; two years later he went to the Royal College of Music in London, studying with Arthur Benjamin, Harold Samuel and John Ireland. While still a student, he wrote his ‘official' Op. 1, the Sinfonietta for chamber ensemble, and the Phantasy Quartet for oboe and string trio, and in 1936 he composed Our Hunting Fathers, an ambitious song-cycle for soprano and orchestra, which confirmed Britten's virtuosic vocal and instrumental technique. He was already earning his living as a composer, having joined the GPO (Post Office) Film Unit the previous year; the collaboration he began there with the poet W. H. Auden was to prove an important one throughout his career. Britten found himself in the United States at the outset of World War Two and stayed there for three more years, returning to Britain in 1942. In America he produced a number of important works, among them the orchestral Sinfonia da Requiem, the song-cycle Les Illuminations for high voice and strings, and his Violin Concerto. With the opera Paul Bunyan he also made his first essay in a genre that would be particular important to him. Back in Britain, where as a conscientious objector he was excused military service, he began work on the piece that would establish him beyond question as the pre-eminent British composer of his generation - the opera Peter Grimes, premiered to an ecstatic reaction on 7 June 1945. The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra: Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell - a cornerstone of the orchestral repertoire - was first performed in the following year. Indeed, Britten now composed one major work after another, among them the operas The Rape of Lucretia (1946), Albert Herring (1947), Billy Budd (1951), Gloriana (1953), The Turn of the Screw (1954), Noye's Fludde (1957), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960), Owen Wingrave (1970-71) and Death in Venice (1971-73); the Nocturne for tenor and orchestra (1958), the War Requiem (1961-62), a Cello Symphony (1963) for Rostropovich and his orchestral Suite on English Folk Tunes (1974). Britten's importance in post-War British cultural life was enhanced by his founding of the English Opera Group in 1946 and the Aldeburgh Festival two years later. His career as a composer was matched by his outstanding ability as a performer: he was both a refined pianist and a spontaneous and fluent conductor - his Mozart was particularly highly esteemed. Britten's later career was clouded by bouts of ill-health, culminating in heart disease. He never fully recovered from open-heart surgery in 1973, and died on 4 December 1976, at the age of 63, a few months after being appointed a life peer - the first composer ever to know that honour. Benjamin Britten is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

b. 8 January 1924, Harbin, Manchuria d. 31 May 2010, New York Benjamin Lees was born January 8, 1924 and spent his early years in San Francisco, moving to Los Angeles with his family in 1939. Following military service in WWII he attended the University of Southern California. Later he began four years of intensive study, privately, with the composer George Antheil . A Fromm Foundation Award in 1953 and the first of two Guggenheim Fellowships took him to Europe, where he remained for seven years. He taught at the Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore, holding the W.Alton Jones Chair of Composition, the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, and Queens College, New York. His works have been performed by major orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Pittsburg Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo; Major soloists have included pianists Ian Hobson, Emanuel Ax, and Gary Graffman; violinists Henryk Szeryng and Elmar Oliveira; contralto Maureen Forrester; Tokyo String Quartet, Juilliard String Quartet, Budapest String Quartet and Cypress String Quartet. His recorded works include the Concerto for French Horn and Orchestra, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Lorin Maazel; Passacaglia for Orchestra with the Oregon Symphony under James DePreist; theViolin Sonatas 1,2 & 3 with soloist Ellen Orner; Piano Sonata #4, Mirrors, and Fantasy Variations are on Albany Records featuring pianist Ian Hobson; the Piano Concerto #2 with pianist Ian Hobson and the Albany Symphony Orchestra under Alan David Miller; the two-CD album containing the Symphony nos. 2,3 & 5 with the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz led by Stephen Gunzenhauser; the Symphony "Memorial Candles" is on the Naxos label with the Orchestra of the Ukraine and mezzo Kimball Wheeler while the Violin Concerto has been recorded by Elmar Oliveira and the Orchestra of the Ukraine on the Artek label. The Toccata Classics label with pianist Mirian Conti features a retrospective of the composer's piano works from 1947 - 2005 which includes the Six Ornamental Etudes, Toccata, Three Preludes, Sonata Breve, and Odysse y nos.1.2 & 3. His honors include two Guggenheim Fellowships, Sir Arnold Bax Medal,(London), Fulbright Fellowship,(Finland) Copley Foundation Award, and the Composer's Award from the Lancaster (PA) Symphony. He was the first recipient of the Fromm Foundation Award in 1952, and was invited as a guest of the Union of Soviet Composers in 1967. He received a Grammy Nomination in 2004 for his Symphony No.5 in the category Best Classical Composition. Yale University has recently acquired the complete music archive of Benjamin Lees. Manuscripts, sketches, published scores, letters, photographs, articles, commercial and performance CD recordings, and posters and will reside in the Yale Music Library.