(b New York, 12 Jan 1926; d Buffalo, 3 Sept 1987). American composer. He studied with Riegger and Wolpe and from 1950 was closely associated with Cage; he also gained much from contact with New York painters. In 1972 he joined the faculty of the State University of New York, Buffalo. His consistent concern was with quiet, pure and open-textured music, sometimes elastically notated (as in the Projection series of 1950-51) but more often fully written out. The Viola in my life series (1970-71) and Rothko Chapel (1971) are the best known of his works. Several later pieces are extremely long, for example the First String Quartet (1979) which lasts c 100 minutes and the Second (1983), intended to last six hours.

The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.