13 Facts About Henry Brant

Henry Dreyfuss Brant was a Canadian-born American composer.

Henry Brant was born in Montreal, to American parents, in 1913.

Henry Brant played violin, flute, tin whistle, piano, organ, and percussion at a professional level and was fluent with the playing techniques for all of the standard orchestral instruments.

Henry Brant was represented in Cowell's anthology by an essay on oblique harmony, an idea which presaged some of the techniques used in his mature spatial compositions.

Thereafter Henry Brant composed, orchestrated, and conducted for radio, film, ballet, and jazz groups.

Henry Brant helped with the orchestration of North's score for 2001, and due to North's stress-induced muscle spasms, Henry Brant had to conduct the recording session for the film score.

From 1981, Henry Brant made his home in Santa Barbara, California.

Henry Brant identified the origins of the concept in the antiphonal music of the late renaissance and early baroque, in the antiphonal use of four brass ensembles placed in the corners of the stage in the Requiem of Hector Berlioz and, most importantly, in works of Charles Ives, in particular The Unanswered Question.

Henry Brant was America's foremost composer of acoustic spatial music.

Henry Brant regarded space as music's "fourth dimension,".

Henry Brant is perhaps best known for his compositions Verticals Ascending and Horizontals Extending.

Henry Brant won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2002 for his composition Ice Field.

Henry Brant received two Guggenheim Fellowships, in 1946 and 1955, and was the first American composer to win the Prix Italia.