Benjamin Burwell Johnston Jr. (March 15, 1926 – July 21, 2019) was an American

contemporary music Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included se ...

composer, known for his use of

just intonation In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals as whole number ratios (such as 3:2 or 4:3) of frequencies. An interval tuned in this way is said to be pure, and is called a just interval. Just intervals (and ...

. He was called "one of the foremost composers of

microtonal music Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones— intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of ...

" by Philip Bush and "one of the best non-famous composers this country has to offer" by

John Rockwell John Sargent Rockwell (born September 16, 1940) is an American music critic, dance critic and arts administrator. According to ''Grove Music Online'', "Rockwell brings two signal attributes to his critical work: a genuine admiration for all k ...

Biography

Johnston was born in Macon, Georgia, and taught composition and theory at the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Unive ...

from 1951 to 1986, before retiring to North Carolina. During his time teaching, he was in contact with

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

figures such as John Cage, La Monte Young, and

Iannis Xenakis Giannis Klearchou Xenakis (also spelled for professional purposes as Yannis or Iannis Xenakis; el, Γιάννης "Ιωάννης" Κλέαρχου Ξενάκης, ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde ...

. Johnston's students have included

Stuart Saunders Smith Stuart Saunders Smith (born 16 March 1948) is an American composer and percussionist. After having studied composition and music theory at three music institutions, Smith is currently based in Vermont, United States, with his wife Sylvia. He h ...

Neely Bruce (Frank) Neely Bruce (born January 21, 1944) is an American composer, conductor, pianist, and scholar of American music. He is the composer of over 800 works including three full-length operas. Currently, he is John Spencer Camp Professor of Music a ...

, Thomas Albert, Michael Pisaro,

Manfred Stahnke Manfred Stahnke (born 30 October 1951) is a German composer and musicologist from Hamburg. He writes chamber music, orchestral music and stage music. His music makes extensive use of microtonality. He plays piano and viola. Life Manfred Stahnke wa ...

, and Kyle Gann. He also considered his practice of just intonation to have influenced other composers, including James Tenney and Larry Polansky. In 1946 he married dance band singer Dorothy Haines, but they soon divorced. In 1950 he married artist Betty Hall, who died in 2007. Johnston began as a traditional composer of

art music Art music (alternatively called classical music, cultivated music, serious music, and canonic music) is music considered to be of high phonoaesthetic value. It typically implies advanced structural and theoretical considerationsJacques Siron, ...

before working with

Harry Partch Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century co ...

. He helped the senior musician to build instruments and use them in the performance and recording of new compositions. Partch then arranged for Johnston to study with

Darius Milhaud Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions ...

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was r ...

. In 1952, Johnston met Cage, who invited him to come to New York to study with him in the summer. Though Johnston decided he did not have sufficient time to prepare for such studies, he did go to New York for several weeks and assisted, along with

Earle Brown Earle Brown (December 26, 1926 – July 2, 2002) was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems. Brown was the creator of "open form," a style of musical construction that has influenced many composers since� ...

, in the production of Cage's eight-track tape composition, '' Williams Mix''. Later, in 1957 and 1959, he studied with Cage, who encouraged him to follow his desires and use traditional instruments rather than electronics or newly built instruments. Unskilled in carpentry and finding electronics unreliable, Johnston struggled with how to integrate microtonality and conventional instruments for ten years. He also struggled with how to integrate microtones into his compositional language through a slow process of many stages. However, since 1960 Johnston had almost exclusively used a system of microtonal notation based on the rational intervals of just intonation, what Gann describes as a "lifelong allegiance" to "microtonality". Johnston also studied with Burrill Phillips and

Robert Palmer Robert Allen Palmer (19 January 1949 – 26 September 2003) was an English singer and songwriter. He was known for his powerful, soulful voice and wikt:sartorial, sartorial elegance, and his stylistic explorations, combining Soul music, so ...

. Johnston composed music for multiple productions by the E.T.C. Company of La MaMa, Wilford Leach and John Braswell's company-in-residence at

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (La MaMa E.T.C.) is an Off-Off-Broadway theatre founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, African-American theatre director, producer, and fashion designer. Located in Manhattan's East Village, the theatre began in th ...

in the East Village of Manhattan. His most significant work was '' Carmilla'', which the company performed as part of their

repertory A repertory theatre is a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation. United Kingdom Annie Horniman founded the first modern repertory theatre in Manchester after withdrawi ...

throughout the 1970s. He also composed music for the company's production of ''Gertrude'', a

musical Musical is the adjective of music Music is generally defined as the The arts, art of arranging sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Exact def ...

about the life of

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West (Pittsburgh), Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, Calif ...

. His other works included the orchestral work ''Quintet for Groups'' (commissioned by the

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra based in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1880 by Joseph Otten as the St. Louis Choral Society, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) is the second-oldest professional symphony or ...

), ''Sonnets of Desolation'' (commissioned by the Swingle Singers), the ''

Sonata for Microtonal Piano ''Sonata for Microtonal Piano'' is a sonata for specifically microtonally tuned piano by Ben Johnston written in 1964 (see also just intonation). When the movements are played in an alternate order the piece is titled ''Grindlemusic''. The piece ...

'' (1964), and the '' Suite for Microtonal Piano'' (1977). Johnston completed ten string quartets. The Kepler Quartet recorded all ten of his string quartets for New World Records, finishing in April 2016 just after the composer's 90th birthday. Johnston said: He has received many honors, including a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1959, a grant from the National Council on the Arts and the Humanities in 1966, two commissions from the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

, and the Deems Taylor Award. In 2007, the American Academy of Arts and Letters honored Johnston for his lifetime of work. His ''Quintet for Groups'' won the SWR Sinfonieorchester prize at the 2008 Donaueschinger Musiktage.

Heidi Von Gunden Heidi C. Von Gunden is a musicologist and Associate Professor of Composition-Theory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has written books on the music of Ben Johnston, Pauline Oliveros, Lou Harrison, and Vivian Fine. The boo ...

wrote a monograph on the composer, and Bob Gilmore edited the composer's complete writings, which were published as ''"Maximum Clarity" and Other Writings on Music'' by the University of Illinois Press. A three-part

oral history Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people w ...

covering all stages of his career is housed at the

Oral History of American Music Oral History of American Music (OHAM), founded in 1969, is an oral history project and archive of audio and video recordings consisting mainly of interviews with American classical and jazz musicians. It is a special collection of the Irving S. G ...

through

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

. Johnston died from complications of

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

in Deerfield, Wisconsin, on July 21, 2019.

Music

He is best known for extending

's experiments in

tuning to traditional instruments through his system of notation. Johnston's compositional style is eclectic. He uses serial processes, folk song idioms (

string quartet The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinist ...

s 4, 5, and 10), repetitive processes, traditional forms like fugue and variations, and intuitive processes. His main goal "has been to reestablish just intonation as a viable part of our musical tradition". According to Mark Swed, "ultimately, what Johnston has done, more than any other composer with roots in the great American musical experiments of the '50s and '60s, is to translate those radical approaches to the nature of music into a music that is immediately apprehensible"., quoted in . Most of Johnston's later works use a large number of pitches, generated through just-intonation procedures. In these works, he forms melodies based on an "

otonal ''Otonality'' and ''utonality'' are terms introduced by Harry Partch to describe chords whose pitch classes are the harmonics or subharmonics of a given fixed tone (identity), respectively. For example: , , ,... or , , ,.... Definition ...

" eight-note just-intonation scale made from the 8th through 15th partials of the harmonic series, or its "utonal" inversion. He then gains new pitches by using common-tone transpositions or inversions. Many of his works also feature an expansive use of just intonation, using high prime limits. His String Quartet No. 9 uses intervals of the harmonic series as high as the 31st partial. He uses "potentially hundreds of pitches per octave," in way that is "radical without being avant-garde," and not for the creation of "as-yet-unheard dissonances," but in order to, "return... to a kind of musical beauty," which he perceives as diminished in Western music since the adoption of

equal-temperament An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system, which approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into equal steps. This means the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same, whi ...

. "By the beginning of the 1980s he could say of his elaborately microtonal ''String Quartet no. 5''... 'I have no idea as to how many different pitches it used per octave'". Johnston's early efforts in just composition drew heavily on the accomplishments of post- Webern serialism. His 7-limit String Quartet No. 4 "Amazing Grace", was commissioned by the Fine Arts Music Foundation of Chicago, and was first recorded by the Fine Arts Quartet on Nonesuch Records in 1980 (then reissued on Gasparo as GS205). His String Quartet No. 4, perhaps Johnston's best-known composition, has also been recorded by the Kronos Quartet. The Kepler Quartet (Sharan Leventhal, Eric Segnitz, Brek Renzelman, and Karl Lavine) also recorded the piece for New World Records, as part of a complete 10-quartet series documenting Johnston's entire cycle of string quartets. The Third Quartet was premiered as part of this series by the Concord String Quartet at Alice Tully Hall at

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...

, on March 15, 1976, the composer's fiftieth birthday.

Staff notation

Beginning in the 1960s, Johnston had proposed an approach to notating music in just intonation (JI), redefining the understanding of conventional symbols (the seven "white" notes, the sharps and flats) and adding further accidentals, each designed to extend the notation into higher prime limits. Johnston‘s method is based on a diatonic C major scale tuned in JI, in which the interval between D (9/8 above C) and A (5/3 above C) is one Syntonic comma less than a Pythagorean perfect fifth 3:2. To write a perfect fifth, Johnston introduces a pair of symbols representing this comma, + and –. Thus, a series of perfect fifths beginning with F would proceed C G D A+ E+ B+. The three conventional white notes A E B are tuned as Ptolemaic major thirds (5:4, Ptolemy's intense diatonic scale) above F C G respectively. Johnston introduces new symbols for the septimal ( & ), undecimal ( & ), tridecimal ( & ), and further prime extensions to create an accidental-based exact JI notation for what he has named "extended just intonation". Though "this notation is not tied to any particular diapason" and "what remains constant are the ratio relations between pitches", "most of his works utilize A = 440 as the tuning note", making C 264 Hertz. Thus, a string quartet is tuned C-, G-, D-, A, E.

Recordings

* 2016: ''Ben Johnston: String Quartets Nos. 7, 8 & 6, Quietness'' – Kepler Quartet ( New World Records CD-80730) ** String Quartet No. 7 ** String Quartet No. 8 ** String Quartet No. 6 **"Quietness" (string quartet and voice) * 2014: ''Ben Johnston: Ruminations'' – Eclipse String Quartet, John Schneider (voice, microtonal guitar), Karen Clark (voice), Jim Sullivan (clarinet), Sarah Thornblade (violin) (MicroFest Records CD-5) **"The Tavern" **"Revised Standards" **"Parable" * 2011: ''Ben Johnston: String Quartets Nos. 1, 5 & 10'' – Kepler Quartet ( New World Records CD-80693) ** String Quartet No. 5 ** String Quartet No. 10 ** String Quartet No. 1, "Nine Variations" * 2008: ''On Track: Commissions Vol. 2''. – New Century Saxophone Quartet (Alanna Records ACD-6006, Pittsburgh) ** Includes Johnston's "O Waly Waly Variations" * 2006: ''Ben Johnston: String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4 & 9'' – Kepler Quartet ( New World Records CD-80637) ** String Quartet No. 9 **''Crossings'': String Quartet No. 3 **''Crossings: The Silence'' **''Crossings'': String Quartet No. 4, "Amazing Grace" ** String Quartet No. 2 * 2005: ''Susan Fancher: Ponder Nothing'' ( Innova Records) ** Includes Johnston's "Ponder Nothing" * 2002: ''Cleveland Chamber Symphony. Vol. 1, 2 & 3'' (Troppe Note Records) ** Includes Johnston's "Songs of Loss" * 1997: '' Phillip Bush: Microtonal Piano'' ( Koch International Classics 3-7369-2-H1) ** Includes Johnston's Suite for Microtonal Piano ** Includes Johnston's Sonata for Microtonal Piano ** Includes Johnston's "Saint Joan" * 1996: ''Michael Cameron: Progression'' (Ziva Records) ** Includes Johnston's "Progression" * 1993: ''Ponder Nothing: Chamber Music of Ben Johnston'' ( New World Records 80432-2) ** Septet for woodwinds, horn, and strings **"Three Chinese Lyrics" **"Gambit:" **"Five Fragments" ** Trio **"Ponder Nothing" * 1995: ''The Stanford Quartet'' (Laurel Records) ** Includes Johnston's String Quartet No. 9 * 1976: ''Sound Forms for Piano'' (

LP record The LP (from "long playing" or "long play") is an analog sound storage medium, a phonograph record format characterized by: a speed of rpm; a 12- or 10-inch (30- or 25-cm) diameter; use of the "microgroove" groove specification; and ...

, New World Records NW-203) ** Includes Johnston's Sonata for Microtonal Piano * 1995: '' The Kronos Quartet: Released'' ( compilation, Nonesuch Records) ** Includes Johnston's String Quartet No. 4, "Amazing Grace" * 1993: ''Urban Diva'' – Dora Ohrenstein (soprano),

Mary Rowell Mary Rowell is an American violinist based in New York City. In 1998 Rowell co-founded the string quartet ETHEL. She retired from the group in 2011 but continues to be very active in the downtown New York music community, where she is known as an ...

(violin), Phillip Bush (keyboards), Bill Ruyle and Jason Cirker (percussion), John Thompson (electric bass) (Emergency Music, Composers Recordings Incorporated CD-654) ** Includes Johnston's "Calamity Jane to Her Daughter" * 1987: ''White Man Sleeps'' – Kronos Quartet (

Elektra Electra was a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in Greek mythology. Electra or Elektra may also refer to: Greek mythology *Electra (Pleiad), one of the Pleiades * Electra, one of the Danaids, daughter of Danaus and Polyxo * Electra (Oc ...

/ Nonesuch 79163-2) ** Includes Johnston's String Quartet No. 4, "Amazing Grace" * 1984: '' New Swingle Singers and New Vocal Workshop'' (

Composers Recordings, Inc. Composers Recordings, Inc. (CRI) was an American record label dedicated to the recording of contemporary classical music by American composers. It was founded in 1954 by Otto Luening, Douglas Moore, and Oliver Daniel, and based in New York City. ...

) **Includes Johnston's "Sonnets of Desolation" **Includes Johnston's "Visions and Spels" * 1983: ''The New World Quartet'' (

) ** Includes Johnston's String Quartet No. 6 * 1980: ''The Fine Arts Quartet'' ( Nonesuch Records) ** Includes Johnston's String Quartet No. 4, "Amazing Grace" * 1979: ''Music from the University of Illinois'' (

) ** Includes Johnston's Duo for flute and contrabass * 1970: ''Carmilla: A Vampire Tale'' (

Vanguard Records Vanguard Recording Society is an American record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York City. It was a primarily classical label at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, but also has a catalogue of recordings by a nu ...

) * 1969: ''John Cage &

Lejaren Hiller Lejaren Arthur Hiller Jr. (February 23, 1924, New York City – January 26, 1994, Buffalo, New York)Lejaren ...

– HPSCHD/ Ben Johnston – String Quartet No. 2.'' (

, Nonesuch Records H-71224) * 1969: ''The Contemporary Contrabass -'' Bertram Turetzky, contrabass (

, Nonesuch Records H-71237) ** Includes Johnston's "Casta*" * 1968: ''New Music Choral Ensemble'' – Kenneth Gaburo, conductor (

, Ars Nova/Ars Antiqua Records AN1005) ** Includes Johnston's "Ci-Git Satie"

Footnotes

References

* * * * * * *

. *Maltz, Richard Steven. 1991. "Microtonal Techniques in Charles Ives' ''Three Quarter-Tone Pieces for Two Pianos'', Harry Patch's ''And nthe Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma'', and Ben Johnston's Fourth String Quartet". PhD thesis. University of South Carolina. *Ratliff, Phillip. 2002. "How Sweet the Sound". ''Living Music'' 18, no. 1 (Fall): 8–9. * Schneider, John (ed.) 2007. "Ben Johnston at Eighty". ''1/1: The Journal of the Just Intonation Network'' 12, no. 3 (Johnston birthday volume). *Shinn, Randall. 1977. "Ben Johnston's Fourth String Quartet". ''

'' 15, no. 2 (Spring-Summer): 145–173. * Stahnke, Manfred. 2015. "Ben Johnston: Microtonal Piano Sonata. Klavierstimmung als Fessel und Freiheit – Anmerkungen zu Ben Johnstons Sonata for Microtonal Piano". '' MusikTexte'' 144, (February): 87-. * Taylor, Mark R. 2002.
Ben Johnston: Suite; Sonata; ''Saint Joan''. Phillip Bush (piano); Koch International Classics 3-7369-2-H1; Ben Johnston: ''Chamber Music''. Music Amici. New World Records 80432-2
. ''

Tempo In musical terminology, tempo ( Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (ofte ...

'', new series, no. 220 (April): 54–55. (, accessed 1 April 2009.) * Zimmerman, Walter. 2020. ''Desert Plants – Conversations with 23 American Musicians'', Berlin: Beginner Press in cooperation with Mode Records (originally published in 1976 by A.R.C., Vancouver). The 2020 edition includes a cd featuring the original interview recordings with

Larry Austin Larry Don Austin (September 12, 1930 – December 30, 2018) was an American composer noted for his electronic and computer music works. He was a co-founder and editor of the avant-garde music periodical '' Source: Music of the Avant Garde''. Aus ...

, Robert Ashley, Jim Burton, John Cage, Philip Corner, Morton Feldman,

Philip Glass Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism, being built up from repetitive ...

Joan La Barbara Joan Linda La Barbara (born June 8, 1947) is an American vocalist and composer known for her explorations of non-conventional or "extended" vocal techniques. Considered to be a vocal virtuoso in the field of contemporary music, she is credited wi ...

, Garrett List,

Alvin Lucier Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr. (May 14, 1931 – December 1, 2021) was an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University in M ...

, John McGuire, Charles Morrow, J.B. Floyd (on Conlon Nancarrow),

Pauline Oliveros Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Ce ...

, Charlemagne Palestine, Ben Johnston (on

Steve Reich Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, ...

, David Rosenboom, Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, and La Monte Young.

External links

Ben Johnston at Plainsound Music Edition"A New Dissonance"
: video interviews with Johnston, blog entries, documentary footage of rehearsals of String Quartet No. 10 by the Kepler Quartet
Ben Johnston at UNC (Greensboro) symposium
: autobiographical lecture describing his early music influences and his interest in microtonal music and just intonation
Johnston's page on La MaMa Archives Digital Collections

Listening

*''Casta Bertram'', Bertram Turetzky (NonesuchRecords, 1969
FLAC and liner notesMP3
*String Quartet No. 2,

Composers Quartet The Composers String Quartet was a string quartet best known for performances of new works by contemporary composers, including quartets by Elliott Carter and Ruth Crawford Seeger. Carter's Fourth Quartet was dedicated to the Composers Quartet, w ...

(Nonesuch, 1969
FLAC and liner notesMP3
*String Quartet no. 6, New World Quartet (

Composers Recordings Inc. Composers Recordings, Inc. (CRI) was an American record label dedicated to the recording of contemporary classical music by American composers. It was founded in 1954 by Otto Luening, Douglas Moore, and Oliver Daniel, and based in New York Cit ...

, 1983
liner notesMP3: click on "Johnston 01.mp3"
*''Sonnets of Desolation'', New Swingle Singers and New Vocal Workshop (

, 1984
liner notesMP3: click on "Johnston 02.mp3"
*''Visions and Spels'', New Swingle Singers and New Vocal Workshop (

, 1984
liner notesMP3: click on "Johnston 03.mp3" for part 1; click on "Johnston 04.mp3" for part 2
{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnston, Ben 1926 births 2019 deaths 20th-century classical composers 21st-century classical composers American male classical composers American classical composers Twelve-tone and serial composers Just intonation composers Writers from Macon, Georgia Musicians from Macon, Georgia Mills College alumni University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty Pupils of Robert Moffat Palmer Pupils of Darius Milhaud Pupils of Harry Partch 21st-century American composers Experimental Music Studios alumni 20th-century American composers Deaths from Parkinson's disease Neurological disease deaths in Wisconsin Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters