William Duckworth

William Duckworth (born 1943) is an American composer who also is an author, educator and Internet pioneer. He has written more than 200 pieces of music and is credited with the composition of the first postminimal piece of music, The Time Curve Preludes (1977-1978), for piano. His other notable compositions include Thirty-One Days (1987), for alto saxophone, and Southern Harmony (1980-1981), a choral work which uses certain features of shape note singing. Duckworth is a Professor of Music at Bucknell University. Nora Farrell, his wife, runs Monroe Street Music, which publishes many of his pieces. In recent years, Duckworth has concentrated on releasing music at his Cathedral Web site and has shifted much of his attention from music composed for traditional acoustic instruments to electronic music which utilizes world music influences and invites active participation from the listener.

Biography

William Duckworth was born in North Carolina in 1943. He obtained a bachelor's degree in music from East Carolina University, then master's and doctorates in music education from the University of Illinois at Urbana. He studied composition under composer Ben Johnston and wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the notation of composer John Cage. (Duckworth's music publishing and record company, Monroe Street Music, is named after the street in New York City where Cage lived and worked.)

Work as a Composer

Duckworth has written more than 200 pieces of music. His best-known compositions include "The Time Curve Preludes," 24 short pieces for piano which critic and composer Kyle Gann has described as the first work of postminimalism, and "Southern Harmony," which consists of 20 pieces for an eight-part chorus and employs features of shape note singing and minimalism. Other works include "Mysterious Numbers," written for chamber orchestra, "Imaginary Dances," for solo piano, and "Simple Songs About Sex and War," written in collaboration with poet Hayden Carruth.

Books

Duckworth is the author of:

• Theoretical Foundations of Music 1978 with Edward Brown
• Talking Music: Conversations With John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers 1995 (ISBN 0-306-80893-5)
• A Creative Approach to Music Fundamentals 1981 (ISBN 0-534-09420-1)
• 20/20: 20 New Sounds of the 20th Century 1999 (ISBN 0-02-864864-1)
• Virtual Music: How the Web Got Wired for Sound 2005 (ISBN 0-415-96675-2)

He is the editor of :

• Sound and Light: La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela 1996 (ISBN 0-8387-5346-9).

He is the co-editor of :

• John Cage at Seventy-Five 1989.

He wrote the forward to:

• Jazz: American Popular Music by Thom Holmes (2006).

Career in Education

Duckworth is a professor and former chairman of the Department of Music at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Penn. A 1992 profile in "Rolling Stone" magazine described him as a "hip, bright, innovative teacher."

Internet Activities

Much of Duckworth's recent music was composed and performed as part of Cathedral. Conceived in 1996 and launched on June 10, 1997, Cathedral is a work in music and art which depicts five "mystical moments in time": The building of the Great Pyramid in Giza, the building of Chartres Cathedral, the 19th century Native American Ghost Dance movement, the detonation of the atomic bomb, and the creation of the World Wide Web. More recently, Cathedral has served as the site for the distribution of "The iPod Opera 2.0: The Myth of Orpheus, the Chronicler and Eurydice," podcast in 26 episodes as MP3 and QuickTime video files. The video episodes may be downloaded and played on many different kinds of computer systems, including Apple OS, Windows and Linux computers, while the MP3 files may be downloaded and burned as an audio disk. The completion of the podcast in February 2007 was timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the first performance of Monteverdi's "Orfeo," an early opera.

Cathedral features an instrument called the PitchWeb, which allows anyone with a computer to play along with the Cathedral Band when the band is performing live over the Internet. Duckworth plays the PitchWeb on a laptop computer when the band performs live.

Cathedral was conceived during a conversation Duckworth had with his wife, Nora Farrell, a software designer who specializes in music and publishing web applications. Farrell collaborated with Duckworth on Cathedral and elements of it such as "The iPod Opera 2.0." As a member of the Cathedral Band, she edits the PitchWeb contributions by outside musicians.

A chapter in Duckworth's 2005 book, Virtual Music: How the Web Got Wired for Sound, discusses the Cathedral site.

External links

• William Duckworth
• Lovely Music Artist: William Duckworth
• THE UNIVERSITY OF AKRON BIERCE LIBRARY: Composer Archives: William Duckworth
• William E. Duckworth, Music Department -- Bucknell University
• Cathedral
• Interview with Duckworth about Cathedral
• Monroe Street Music
• Kyle Gann discusses Duckworth

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