William Flanagan (August 14, 1923 – September 1, 1969) was an American

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

of the mid-twentieth century.

Biography

Flanagan was a great admirer of

Maurice Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In ...

, David Diamond,Rorem, N. "Flanagan, William." New Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 2d ed. Macmillan, 2001 and

Aaron Copland Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...

, who became something of a mentor to Flanagan. His best work was in the realm of vocal music. Although little known today, as well as unsuccessful and undervalued in his time,Gussow, Mel. ''Edward Albee: A Singular Journey''. Applause Books, 2000. a number of his brief vocal compositions, including ''Horror Movie'' and ''The Upside-Down Man'', have been recorded. He is best known today as having been the long-time lover of playwright

Edward Albee Edward Franklin Albee III ( ; March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) was an American playwright known for works such as ''The Zoo Story'' (1958), '' The Sandbox'' (1959), ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'' (1962), '' A Delicate Balance'' (1966) ...

, with whom he wrote an opera after ''

Bartleby, the Scrivener "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of ''Putnam's Magazine'' and reprinted with minor text ...

''. He composed music for the 1960 premiere of Albee's play '' The Sandbox'' as well as Albee's adaptations ''The Ballad of the Sad Cafe'' (1963 from the ''

Carson McCullers Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, ''The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter'' (1940), explores the spiritual isolation of misfits ...

'' and ''Malcolm'' (1966, from the ''

James Purdy James Otis Purdy (July 17, 1914 March 13, 2009) was an American novelist, short-story writer, poet, and playwright who, from his debut in 1956, published over a dozen novels, and many collections of poetry, short stories, and plays. His work ha ...

'' novel). In 1963 Albee wrote one act of ''The Ice Age'', a libretto for Flanagan, but the opera was never completed. Gussow, Mel. Edward Albee: A Singular Journey, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999, p. 184. Flanagan committed suicide in 1969, after which Copland eulogized him in a memorial concert given by Albee and

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. Althou ...

. At the concert, Albee "announced that he was planning to open a writers' colony in Montauk to be called the William Flanagan Memorial Creative Persons Center. Some of Flanagan's scores and papers are in the William Flanagan Papers collection at the

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, is located in Manhattan, New York City, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side, between the Metro ...

.New York Library for the Performing Arts. Music Division. William Flanagan Papers. JPB 82-79

Musical Style

Flanagan was "an unappreciated conservative in a time of artistic upheaval". His compositional technique and musical preferences were molded in the 1930s and 1940s; he did not make the fashionable transition to serialism.Flanagan, W. Program notes from Songs and Cycles by William Flanagan. Franklin Lakes, NJ: Destro Records, 1968. He said, in his program notes, "Since I'd spent the Forties being brainwashed in the historically inevitable 'musical direction' of Stravinsky's neoclassicism, I had agonized over my apparently glandular inability to Go In The Right Direction." He went on to express relief that, when Neo-classicism suddenly gave way to "dodecaphony," that he had done neither, and was not trapped within the trends. " iswarm music and cool intellect" were influenced most by Copland and Diamond.Rorem, N. "Flanagan." Music and People. pp. 89-98. New York, 1968 Flanagan was best known for songs. Rorem describes Flanagan's compositional style thus: "Today, with a volume of symphonic and chamber works to his credit, Flanagan still thinks of music as 'sung'". Flanagan himself considered his songwriting style to be "'not just prosodized icdeclamation, but...a bona fide lyric utterance'". Flanagan "was passionately concerned with language and felt that American composers would never fully realize themselves until they came to grips with native inflection. Ned Rorem, in his New Grove's article on Flanagan, says that Flanagan was "directly responsible for the oral style in the early plays of his close friend Edward Albee". In his book Music and People, Ned Rorem described Flanagan's musical style: "Flanagan yearns...for the more easy communicative style that ripened in America nearly twenty years ago (in the 1940s) .... Flanagan's musical 'birth' is of that time, and in growing he has remained faithful to its premise, if not to the specific mannerisms of the period".

Grants and Commissions

* 2 Grants from the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

* Grant and commission from the

New York City Opera The New York City Opera (NYCO) is an American opera company located in Manhattan in New York City. The company has been active from 1943 through 2013 (when it filed for bankruptcy), and again since 2016 when it was revived. The opera company, du ...

for The Ice Age. * Commission from the

Detroit Symphony Orchestra The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) is an American orchestra based in Detroit, Michigan. Its primary performance venue is Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center in Detroit's Midtown neighborhood. Jader Bignamini is the current music d ...

for a work celebrating its 50th anniversary (Narrative for Orchestra, 1963). * Commission from the Clarion Music Society. * Commission from the Thorne Foundation for a piece for voice and orchestra, performed at a festival celebrating the move of the

Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most el ...

to its new location (1963?). * Nominated for the

Pulitzer Prize for Music The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted i ...

, 1968. * Grant from 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 ...

, 1968.

References

External links

* Allmusic Entry {{DEFAULTSORT:Flanagan, William 1923 births 1969 suicides 20th-century American composers 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century classical composers 20th-century LGBT people American classical composers American male classical composers LGBT classical composers American LGBT musicians

Biography

Musical Style

Grants and Commissions

Further reading

References

External links