John Corigliano

Gazebo Dances

        John Corigliano is certainly one of the new generation of composers that are equally at home in the theater and the concert stage.   He is a native New Yorker, educated there at Columbia, and worked for WQXR, Columbia Masterworks, and with Leonard Bernstein on the Young People’s Concert series.  He has taught at the Manhattan School, CUNY, and Juilliard.  His compositional style has varied widely during his career, ranging from a conservative, accessible, tonal idiom to aleatoric, experimental, and serial techniques.  He was the recipient of a commission from the Metropolitan Opera that resulted in The Ghosts of Versailles (1991), an opera that makes much use of eighteenth-century musical styles.  He is obviously at home in a variety of musical idioms--you may remember

The Red Violin: Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra

        Films have been accompanied by music almost since their inception, whether adapted from pre-existing compositions, or newly composed.  And from the beginning, for many there has been a somewhat subconscious tendency not quite to accord the genre of original music for the cinema the same artistic respect as that composed for the concert stage.  Only a few moments reflection, however, reminds us of how many of the world’s most respected so-called “classical” composers of the twentieth century have deigned to write for the movies.  It’s almost easier to name those who haven’t than those who have.  Nevertheless, even a partial list is impressive, indeed: Milhaud, Ibert, Shostakovitch, Prokofiev, Copland, Bernstein (Leonard, not Elmer), Philip Glass, Vaughan Williams, Walton--well, y