Robert Erickson (March 7, 1917 – April 24, 1997) 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 ...

Education

Erickson was born in

Marquette, Michigan Marquette ( ) is a city in Marquette County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 20,629 at the 2020 United States Census, which makes it the largest city in the Upper Peninsula. Marquette serves as the seat of government of Marquett ...

. He studied with

Ernst Krenek Ernst Heinrich Krenek (, 23 August 1900 – 22 December 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including ''Music Here and Now'' (1939), a study ...

from 1936 to 1947: "I had already studied—and abandoned—the twelve tone system before most other Americans had taken it up." He influenced notable students

Morton Subotnick Morton Subotnick (born April 14, 1933) is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his 1967 composition '' Silver Apples of the Moon'', the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. He was one of the foun ...

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 Cente ...

Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for it ...

, Louise Spizizen, Betty Ann Wong, and

Paul Dresher Paul Joseph Dresher (born January 8, 1951 in Los Angeles) is an American composer. Dresher received his B.A. in music from the University of California, Berkeley and his M.A. in composition from the University of California, San Diego, where he st ...

. He is the author of ''The Structure of Music: A Listener's Guide'', which he claimed helped him overcome a "

contrapuntal In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...

obsession",Erickson, Robert. Quoted in ''Robert Erickson: Sierra & Other Works'' (1991 CRI CD 616). Liner notes by

Alan Rich Alan Rich (June 17, 1924 – April 23, 2010) was an American music critic who served on the staff of many newspapers and magazines on both coasts. Originally from Brookline, Massachusetts, he first studied medicine at Harvard University before tur ...

, music critic, ''

Los Angeles Daily News The ''Los Angeles Daily News'' is the second-largest-circulating paid daily newspaper of Los Angeles, California. It is the flagship of the Southern California News Group, a branch of Colorado-based Digital First Media. The offices of the ''Dai ...

. and ''Sound Structure in Music'' (1975), an important early attempt to systematically study timbre in music.

Career

Teaching

He taught at the College of St. Catherine in

Saint Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (abbreviated St. Paul) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County, Minnesota, Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississip ...

San Francisco State College San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...

, the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, and the

San Francisco Conservatory The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) is a private music conservatory in San Francisco, California. As of 2021, it had 480 students. History The San Francisco Conservatory of Music was founded in 1917 by Ada Clement and Lillian Hodg ...

. With composer Will Ogdon, he founded the music department at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

(UCSD) in 1967: "We decided we wanted a department where composers could feel at home, the way scholars feel at home in other schools." While there he met faculty performers such as bassist

Bertram Turetzky Bertram Jay Turetzky (born February 14, 1933) is a contemporary American double bass (contrabass) soloist, composer, teacher, and author of ''The Contemporary Contrabass'' (1974, 1989), a book that looked at a number of new and interesting ways o ...

, trumpeter Edwin Harkins, flutist Bernhard Batschelet, and singer Carol Plantamura: "I could go to Bert, or Ed, with something I'd written down and ask 'Hey, can you do this?' And I'd get an immediate answer. It was a fabulous time for cross-feeding." He also helped start the

San Francisco Tape Music Center The San Francisco Tape Music Center, or SFTMC, was founded in the summer of 1962 by composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick as a collaborative, "non profit corporation developed and maintained" by local composers working with tape recorders a ...

. Pauline Oliveros, among others, praises his teaching:

As a composer

Erickson was one of the first American composers to create

tape music Jack Dangers (born John Stephen Corrigan, 11 January 1965) is an English electronic musician, DJ, producer, and remixer best known for his work as the primary member of Meat Beat Manifesto. He lives in San Francisco. Career Prior to founding ...

: "If you get right down to the bottom of what composers do, I think that what composers do now and have always done is to compose their environment in some sense. So I get a special little lift about working with environmental sounds." He also has used invented instruments such as stroking rods, used in ''Taffy Time'', ''Cardinitas 68'', and ''Roddy'' (electronic tape composition), tube drums, used in ''Cradle'', ''Cradle II'', and ''Tube Drum Studies'', and the Percussion Loops Console designed with Ron George, used in ''Percussion Loops''. Many UCSD faculty performers appear on his 1991

CRI CRI or CRi may refer to: Organizations * Canadian Rivers Institute, for river sciences, University of New Brunswick * Cancer Research Institute, New York, US * Centro de Relaciones Internacionales (International Relations Center), Universidad N ...

release ''Robert Erickson: Sierra & Other Works'' (CD 616), playing works written for and with them: #''Kryl'' (1977), Harkins, named after the travelling cornet player

Bohumir Kryl Bohumir Kryl (May 3, 1875 – August 7, 1961) was a Czech-American financial executive and art collector who is most famous as a cornetist, bandleader, and pioneer recording artist, for both his solo work and as a leader of popular and Bohemian ...

. The piece from time to time creates a

hocket In music, hocket is the rhythmic linear technique using the alternation of notes, pitches, or chords. In medieval practice of hocket, a single melody is shared between two (or occasionally more) voices such that alternately one voice sounds wh ...

between the singing and playing. #''Ricercar À 3'' (1967), Turetzky. For bass soloist live and on two tape tracks. #''Postcards'' (1981), Carol Plantamura and lutenist Jürgen Hübscher #''Dunbar's Delight'' (1985), timpanist Dan Dunbar. Virtuoso solo piece for timpani. #''Quoq'' (1978), flutist

John Fonville John Fonville is a flutist and composer. Fonville specializes in extended techniques on the flute, especially microtonality, and performs on instruments including a complete set of quarter tone ( Kingma system) flutes.Finnegans Wake ''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish literature, Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. It has been called "a work of fiction whi ...

''. #''Sierra'' (1984), baritone Philip Larson,

SONOR Ensemble SONOR was UCSD's Resident Contemporary Music Ensemble. Performing between 1977 and 2006, the group presented 37 concerts. Members included UCSD Faculty such as Philip Larson, Edwin Harkins, Carol Plantamura, János Négyesy, John Fonville, Robert ...

conducted by Thomas Nee. Commissioned by

Thomas Buckner Thomas Buckner (born 1941) is an American baritone vocalist specializing in the performance of contemporary classical music and improvised music. In his work, he utilizes a wide range of extended (non-traditional) vocal techniques. Buckner als ...

. He also has an album ''Pacific Sirens'' on

New World Records New World Records is a record label that was established in 1975 through a Rockefeller Foundation grant to celebrate America's bicentennial (1976) by producing a 100-LP anthology, with American music from many genres.Stuart Dempster Stuart Dempster (born July 7, 1936 in Berkeley, California) is a trombonist, didjeridu player, improviser, and composer. Biography After Dempster completed his studies at San Francisco State College, he was appointed assistant professor at th ...

. The piece uses baroque imitation as well as singing, whistling, fanfares, slides, and other

extended technique In music, extended technique is unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional methods of singing or of playing musical instruments employed to obtain unusual sounds or timbres.Burtner, Matthew (2005).Making Noise: Extended Techniques after Exper ...

Recognition and awards

He received several

Yaddo Yaddo is an artists' community located on a estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.". On March ...

fellowships in the fifties and sixties, 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 1966, a

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 ...

fellowship, was elected as a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the Institute for Creative Arts of the University of California in 1968, and his string quartet ''Solstice'' won the 1985 Friedham Award for Chamber Music. There are two books about Erickson's life and music: ''Thinking Sound Music: The Life and Work of Robert Erickson'' by Charles Shere and ''Music of Many Means: Sketches and Essays on the Music of Robert Erickson'' by Robert Erickson and John MacKay.

Illness, death and final works

He suffered from a wasting muscle disease,

polymyositis Polymyositis (PM) is a type of chronic inflammation of the muscles (inflammatory myopathy) related to dermatomyositis and inclusion body myositis. Its name means "inflammation of many muscles" ('' poly-'' + '' myos-'' + '' -itis''). The inflam ...

, and was bedridden and in pain for fifteen years before his death; his final work was ''Music for Trumpet, Strings, and Tympani'' (1990). He died in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

, California, aged 80.

Recordings

*''American Classics - A Continuum Portrait Vol 9 - Erickson: Recent Impressions, Songs, High Flyer, Summer Music.'' Naxos 8.559283 *''Robert Erickson: Pacific Sirens.'' New World Records 80603 *''Robert Erickson: Kryl, Ricercar, Postcards, Dunbars Delight.'' CRI 616 *''Robert Erickson: Auroras.'' New World Records 80682 *''Robert Erickson: Complete String Quartets.'' New World Records 80753 *''Robert Erickson: Duo, Fives, Quintet, Trio''. New World Records 80808

Bibliography

* Erickson, Robert. 1975.
Sound Structure in Music
'. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. . * Erickson, Robert. 1988. "Composing Music". ''

Perspectives of New Music ''Perspectives of New Music'' (PNM) is a peer-reviewed academic journal specializing in music theory and analysis. It was established in 1962 by Arthur Berger and Benjamin Boretz (who were its initial editors-in-chief). ''Perspectives'' was first ...

'' 26, no. 2 (Summer): 86–95. * Erickson, Robert, and John MacKay. 1995. ''Music of Many Means: Sketches and Essays on the Music of Robert Erickson''. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. * MacKay, John. 1988. "On the Music of Robert Erickson: A Survey and Some Selected Analyses". ''

'' 26, no. 2 (Summer): 56–85. * Reynolds, Roger. 1988. "Wonderful Times". ''Perspectives of New Music'' 26, no. 2 (Summer): 44–55. * Shere, Charles. 1995. ''Thinking Sound Music: The Life and Work of Robert Erickson''. Berkeley: Fallen Leaf Press. * Shere, Robert. 2001. "Erickson, Robert". ''

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...

'', ed.

Stanley Sadie Stanley John Sadie (; 30 October 1930 – 21 March 2005) was an influential and prolific British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the '' Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (1980), which was publ ...

and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.

References

External links

University of Akron Bierce Library Smith Archives Composer Profile: Robert EricksonClassicToday.com Review of Pacific Sirens by Robert Erickson
Artistic quality: 8, Sound quality: 9.
Dunbar's Delight
Review of ''Sierra & Other Works'' by Elliott Schwartz, American Music, Fall, 1998 *[

February 27, 1988

MSS 96
Special Collections & Archives
University of California San Diego Library.

Listening

* two works by the composer: ''General Speech'' (1969) and ''East of the Beach'' (1980) {{DEFAULTSORT:Erickson, Robert 1917 births 1997 deaths 20th-century classical composers 20th-century American composers 20th-century American male musicians American classical composers American male classical composers Pupils of Ernst Krenek Pupils of Roger Sessions University of California, Berkeley faculty University of California, San Diego faculty