QUINCY PORTER (b. New Haven CT, February 7, 1897 - d. Bethany CT, November 12, 1966) was a respected composer and educator whose work demonstrates a consistent integrity.
Although his compositional style remained fundamentally tonal and conservative throughout his career, Porter's use of chromatic counterpoint is highly inventive and his music continues to sound fresh to this day. Chief among his musical compositions are nine string quartets, which remain one of the most substantial bodies of American works in the genre. Other works include two symphonies, a viola concerto (1948), a harpsichord concerto (1959), incidental music for several Shakespeare plays, and a Concerto Concertante for two pianos and orchestra, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1954.
A direct descendant of the Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards, Porter was born into an old New England family. The son and grandson of Yale professors, he studied at Yale with Horatio Parker, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in 1919 and Bachelor of Music in 1921. He later studied with Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris and Ernst Bloch at the Cleveland Institute for Music where he was appointed to the faculty in 1922. While in Cleveland, he was the violist in the de Ribaupierre Quartet which premiered Bloch's Quintet No. 1 for Piano and Strings. He returned to Paris for three years on a Guggenheim Fellowship (1928-1931).
After returning to the United States, he taught at Vassar and was Dean of the New England Conservatory from 1938 to 1946, leaving NEC after being appointed a full professor at Yale University until his retirement in 1965. Porter was awarded the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medal in 1943, the same year he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. His writings include...
In addition to co-founding the American Music Center, Porter was active in the early years of the Yaddo Artists Colony and Music Festival, and was a co-founder of the American Recording Society.
Several of Porter's musical compositions, including his Harpsichord Concerto, are currently available on CD. Unfortunately, there are no recordings of his string quartets currently in print. In late 1998, Koch International Classics released a CD recording featuring Porter's unpublished manuscripts for violin and piano.
|
||||
|
||||
First Person Sections:
·Personal & Musical
Backgrounds ofthe
Founders
·The Pre-History of
the Center
·The Center Opens
·The Center's Difficult
First Years
·Great Teachers and
Music
Education
·The State of Music in
the United States
·What is
American Music?
·On Other Composers
and Other Forms
of Music
·Later History of the
AmericanMusic Center
·Advice for Today's
Composers
·Press Release
Announcing the Opening
of the Center
Biographies:
·Marion Bauer
(1882 - 1955)
·Aaron Copland
(1900 - 1990)
·Howard Hanson
(1896 - 1981)
·Harrison Kerr
(1897 - 1978)
·Otto Luening
(1900 - 1996)
·Quincy Porter
(1897 - 1966)
