30 Facts About Charles Wuorinen

Charles Peter Wuorinen was an American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City.

Charles Wuorinen's work was termed serialist but he came to disparage that idea as meaningless.

Charles Wuorinen was born on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City.

Charles Wuorinen's father, John H Wuorinen, the chair of the history department at Columbia University, was a noted scholar of Scandinavian affairs, who worked for the Office of Strategic Services, and wrote five books on his native Finland.

Charles Wuorinen began composing at age 5 and began piano lessons at 6.

Charles Wuorinen was active as a singer and pianist with the choruses at the Church of the Heavenly Rest and the Church of the Transfiguration, and was the rehearsal pianist for the world premiere of Carlos Chavez's opera Panfilo and Lauretta at Columbia University during the spring of 1957.

From 1952 to 1956 Charles Wuorinen was president of the Trinity School Glee Club.

Charles Wuorinen was awarded the Bearns Prize three times, the BMI Student Composers Award four times, and the Lili Boulanger Award.

Charles Wuorinen was a fellow at the Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East for several years.

Many early professional performances of Charles Wuorinen's compositions took place on the Music of Our Time series at the 92nd Street Y run by violinist Max Pollikoff.

Many of Charles Wuorinen's works were premiered by The Group, including Chamber Concerto for Cello and the Chamber Concerto for Flute.

Charles Wuorinen was appointed to instructor at Columbia in 1964 and promoted to assistant professor in 1969, the year he received an Ingram Merrill Foundation grant; during this period, he was visiting lecturer at the New England Conservatory, Princeton University, the University of Iowa, and the University of South Florida.

The 1970s were a particularly fruitful period for Charles Wuorinen, who taught at the Manhattan School of Music from 1971 to 1979.

The New Jersey Percussion Ensemble had performed and recorded Charles Wuorinen's composition "Ringing Changes" in collaboration with the Group for Contemporary Music prior to the Percussion Symphony, setting the stage for this challenging larger-scale work.

Charles Wuorinen was composer in residence with the San Francisco Symphony from 1984 to 1989.

Between 2008 and 2012, Charles Wuorinen composed the opera Brokeback Mountain, based on Annie Proulx's short story of the same name and with a libretto adapted by Proulx.

On September 7,2019, Charles Wuorinen suffered a fall that caused a subdural hematoma.

Charles Wuorinen wrote more than 270 pieces, including the operas Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Brokeback Mountain.

Charles Wuorinen has been described as totally committed to twelve-tone composition, with Schoenberg, late Stravinsky, and Babbitt as primary influences.

Much of Charles Wuorinen's music is technically complex, requiring extreme virtuosity by the performer, including wide leaps, extreme dynamic contrasts, and rapid exchange of pitches.

Charles Wuorinen lectured at universities in the United States and abroad, and served on the faculties of Columbia, Princeton, and Yale Universities, the University of Iowa, the University of California-San Diego, the Manhattan School of Music, the New England Conservatory, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Rutgers University.

Charles Wuorinen wrote the introduction to Joan Peyser's To Boulez and Beyond.

Charles Wuorinen was criticized as intolerant and hostile in his writings toward people with differing views on music.

Question: People say that you [Charles Wuorinen] are a serialist, you write atonal, difficult, thorny music.

Charles Wuorinen was active as a performer, a pianist and a conductor of his own works as well as other 20th-century repertoire.

Charles Wuorinen conducted the American, and later the West Coast, premieres of Morton Feldman's monodrama Neither.

Charles Wuorinen resided in New York City and the Long Valley section of Washington Township, Morris County, New Jersey.

Charles Wuorinen was married to his longtime partner and manager, Howard Stokar.

Charles Wuorinen died in New York on March 11,2020, aged 81, as a result of injuries sustained in a fall the preceding September.

Charles Wuorinen's students include Arthur Russell, Robert Bonfiglio, Michael Daugherty, Aaron Jay Kernis, Peter Lieberson, Tobias Picker, Kenneth Lampl and James Romig.