This List of members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Music shows the members of one of the three departments of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
.
After being nominated by current members, new members are selected in two elections, the first by the department they join (Art, Literature or Music). Candidates who receive the most votes in their own department are then voted on by the entire membership.
(List as of November 2006)
A
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John Coolidge Adams
John Coolidge Adams (born February 15, 1947) is an American composer and conductor whose music is rooted in minimalism. Among the most regularly performed composers of contemporary classical music, he is particularly noted for his operas, which a ...
, 1997
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Samuel Adler, 2001
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T.J. Anderson, 2005
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Dominick Argento
Dominick Argento (October 27, 1927 – February 20, 2019) was an American composer known for his lyric operatic and choral music. Among his best known pieces are the operas '' Postcard from Morocco'', '' Miss Havisham's Fire'', ''The Masque of An ...
, 1980
B
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Robert Beaser
Robert Beaser (born May 29, 1954, Boston, Massachusetts) is an American composer.
Biography
Beaser was brought up in a non-musical family. His father was a physician and mother was a chemist. He grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, where he dist ...
, 2004
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William Bolcom
William Elden Bolcom (born May 26, 1938) is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, a Grammy Award, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America. He ...
, 1993
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Martin Boykan
Martin Boykan (April 12, 1931 – March 6, 2021) was an American composer known for his chamber music as well as music for larger ensembles.
Biography
Boykan was born in New York City. He studied composition first with Walter Piston at Harvard ...
, 2011
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Martin Bresnick, 2006
C
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Chou Wen-chung
Chou Wen-chung (; July 28, 1923 – October 25, 2019) was a Chinese American composer of contemporary classical music. He emigrated in 1946 to the United States and received his music training at the New England Conservatory and Columbia Univer ...
, 1982
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John Corigliano, 1991
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George Crumb, 1975
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Sebastian Currier
Sebastian Currier (born March 16, 1959) is an American composer of music for chamber groups and orchestras. He was also a professor of music at Columbia University from 1999 to 2007.
Life
Currier was born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, and was ra ...
, 2016
D
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Mario Davidovsky
Mario Davidovsky (March 4, 1934 – August 23, 2019) was an Argentine-American composer. Born in Argentina, he emigrated in 1960 to the United States, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He is best known for his series of compositions ca ...
, 1982
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David Del Tredici
David Walter Del Tredici (born March 16, 1937) is an American composer. He has won a Pulitzer Prize for Music and is a former Guggenheim and Woodrow Wilson fellow. Del Tredici is considered a pioneer of the Neo-Romantic movement. He has also be ...
, 1984
F
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Carlisle Floyd
Carlisle Sessions Floyd (June 11, 1926September 30, 2021) was an American composer primarily known for his operas. These stage works, for which he wrote the librettos, typically engage with themes from the American South, particularly the Post ...
, 2001
G
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Philip Glass, 2003
H
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John Harbison
John Harris Harbison (born December 20, 1938) is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works.
Life
John Harris Harbison was born on December 20, 1938, in Orange, New Jersey, to the historian Elmore Harris Harbi ...
, 1992
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Stephen Hartke, 2009
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Karel Husa
Karel Husa (August 7, 1921 – December 14, 2016) was a Czech-born classical composer and conductor, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Music and 1993 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. In 1954, he emigrated to t ...
, 1994
J
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, 2012
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Ben Johnston, 2018
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Betsy Jolas
Elizabeth Jolas (born 5 August 1926) is a Franco-American composer.
Biography
Jolas was born in Paris in 1926. Her mother, the American translator Maria McDonald, was a singer. Her father, the poet and journalist Eugene Jolas, founded and edited ...
, 1983
K
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Aaron Jay Kernis
Aaron Jay Kernis (born January 15, 1960) is a Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning American composer serving as a member of the Yale School of Music faculty. Kernis spent 15 years as the music advisor to the Minnesota Orchestra and as Dir ...
, 2011
L
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David Lang, 2014
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Paul Lansky, 2016
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Tania León
Tania León (born May 14, 1943) is a Cuban-born American composer of both large scale and chamber works. She is also renowned as a conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations.
Early years and education
She was born Tania Justina Leó ...
, 2010
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Fred Lerdahl
Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl (born March 10, 1943, in Madison, Wisconsin) is the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, and a composer and music theorist best known for his work on musical grammar and co ...
, 2010
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George E. Lewis, 2018
P
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Tobias Picker
Tobias Picker (born July 18, 1954) is an American composer, artistic director, and pianist, noted for his orchestral works ''Old and Lost Rivers'', ''Keys To The City'', and ''The Encantadas'', as well as his operas ''Emmeline'', ''Fantastic Mr. ...
, 2012
R
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David Rakowski
David Rakowski (born June 13, 1958, St. Albans, Vermont) is an American composer and typeface designer. He studied under such composers as Robert Ceely, John Heiss, Milton Babbitt, Peter Westergaard, Paul Lansky, and Luciano Berio. In 2006, he w ...
, 2016
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Shulamit Ran
Shulamit Ran ( he, שולמית רן; born October 21, 1949, in Tel Aviv, Israel) is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York City at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music. Her Symphony (1990) won her th ...
, 2003
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Bernard Rands
Bernard Rands (born 2 March 1934 in Sheffield, England) is a British-American contemporary classical music composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna ...
, 2004
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Steve Reich, 1994
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Ned Rorem
Ned Rorem (October 23, 1923 – November 18, 2022) was an American composer of contemporary classical music and writer. Best known for his art songs, which number over 500, Rorem was the leading American of his time writing in the genre. Althoug ...
, 1979
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Christopher Rouse, 2002
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Frederic Rzewski
Frederic Anthony Rzewski ( ; April 13, 1938 – June 26, 2021) was an American composer and pianist, considered to be one of the most important American composer-pianists of his time. His major compositions, which often incorporate social an ...
, 2009
S
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Joseph Schwantner
Joseph Clyde Schwantner (born March 22, 1943, Chicago, Illinois) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, educator and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 2002. He was awarded the 1970 Charles Ives Prize.
Schwantne ...
, 2002
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Alvin Singleton
Alvin Singleton (born December 28, 1940; Brooklyn, New York) is a composer from the United States. Born and raised in New York City, he received his music education from New York University (B.A.), studying with Hall Overton and Charles Wuorinen, ...
, 2014
T
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Augusta Read Thomas
Augusta Read Thomas (born April 24, 1964) is an American composer and professor.
Biography
Thomas studied composition with Oliver Knussen at Tanglewood; Jacob Druckman at Yale University; Alan Stout and Bill Karlins at Northwestern University ...
, 2009
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Joan Tower
Joan Tower (born September 6, 1938)http://www.schirmer.com/default.aspx?TabId=2419&State_2872=2&ComposerId_2872=1605 Biography on Schirmer is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by ''The New York ...
, 1998
W
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Melinda Wagner
Melinda Jane Wagner (born 1957 in Philadelphia) is a US composer, and winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in music. Her undergraduate degree is from Hamilton College. She received her graduates degrees from University of Chicago and University of P ...
, 2017
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Julia Wolfe
Julia Wolfe (born December 18, 1958) is an American composer and professor of music at New York University. According to ''The Wall Street Journal'', Wolfe's music has "long inhabited a terrain of its own, a place where classical forms are re ...
, 2017
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Charles Wuorinen, 1985
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Yehudi Wyner, 1999
Z
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Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich ( ; born April 30, 1939) is an American composer, the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her early works are marked by atonal exploration, but by the late 1980s, she had shifted to a postmodernist, n ...
, 1992
Deceased members
{, class="sortable wikitable"
, -
!!Name !!Life !! Elected
, -
,
Stephen Sondheim
, 1930–2021
, 1983
See also
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List of members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Art
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External links
List of members of Department of Music of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Music, List of members of
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