Home > Earle Brown

Brown was born in Lunenburg, Massachusetts. His early musical background was in jazz. Intent on an aeronautical career, he studied engineering and mathematics at Northeastern University (1944-5) before joining the Army Air Corps. Subsequently, he attended the Schillinger School of Music, Boston (1946-50), and studied the trumpet and composition privately. His encounter with the work of Jackson PollockJackson Pollock ( January 28, 1912 August 11, 1956) was an influential American artist and a major force in the abstract expressionism movement. He was born in Cody, Wyoming, and later moved to New York in 1929, where he studied under Thomas Hart Benton. and Alexander CalderAlexander Calder ( July 22 1898 November 11 1976), also known as Sandy Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing the mobile. In addition to mobile and stabile sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, and was particularly influential to his developing musical aesthetic. After moving to Denver (1950-52), he painted, taught the Schillinger method and explored various compositional techniques. At Cage's invitation, he travelled to New York to work on the Project for Music for Magnetic Tape, the results of which included Octet I (1952-3). This studio experience proved valuable in his later roles as an editor and recording engineer for Capitol RecordsCapitol Records is a major United States-based record label, now part of the EMI Music Group. The company was founded by the songwriter Johnny Mercer in 1942. History Mercer founded Capitol Records with the financial help of movie producer Buddy DeSylva a (1955-60) and as the director of artists and repertoire, and producer for Mainstream-Time Records' Contemporary Sound series (1960-73).

Through Cage and Tudor, Brown was brought to the attention of the European avant garde. BoulezPierre Boulez (born March 26, 1925) is a conductor and composer of classical music. He was born in Montbrison, France. He initially studied mathematics at Lyon before pursuing music at the Paris Conservatoire under Olivier Messiaen and Andree Vaurabourg ( was helpful in establishing contacts with publishers, performers and orchestras; later a strong relationship developed with MadernaBruno Maderna ( 1920- 1973) was an Italian composer of 20th century music. Together with Luciano Berio, he founded the Studio di Fonologia Musicale of the RAI ( Radiotelevisione Italiana) in 1955. One of his most famous works was Quadrivium for large orch. Beginning in 1956, Brown visited Europe on numerous occasions: he lectured at DarmstadtDarmstadt is a city in the Bundesland (federal state) of Hesse in Germany. Its population is estimated (2003) at 137,900. The city is located to the south of the conjoined metropolitan areas of Frankfurt and Wiesbaden. History Darmstadt was first mentione (notably in 1964-5) and received several commissions, including those for Penthatis (Domaine Musical, 1957-8), Available Forms I (City of Darmstadt, 1961) and Available Forms II (Rome Radio Orchestra, 1962). His notational and structural innovations were widely copied; as Feldman noted: "I think he's been ripped off more than any of us, in an overt way" (1989). Later European distinctions included appointments as composer-in-residence with the Künstler Programm, West Berlin (1970-71), and the Rotterdam Philharmonic OrchestraThe Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (RPHO) is a Dutch symphony orchestra based in Rotterdam. It is considered the second most important orchestra in the country after Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra. It was founded in 1918 by several musicians as a p (1974), visiting professor at the BaselBasel ( English traditionally: Basle [ba:l], German: Basel ['ba:z@l], French Bale [ba:l], Italian Basilea [bazi'lE:a]) is Switzerland's third most populous city (188,000 inhabitants in the canton of Basel-City as of 2004; but 690,000 inhabitants in the co Conservatory (1974-5) and guest conductor with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra (1963-5) and Saarbrücken RSO (1981).

Brown also received recognition in America. He held the W. Alton Jones chair of composition and was composer-in-residence at the Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore (1968-73), where he was awarded an honorary DMus in 1970. His visiting or guest appointments included positions at SUNY, Buffalo (1975), the California Institute of the Arts (1973-83), Yale University (1980–81), the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music ( 1986) and the Aspen and Tanglewood music festivals (each on several occasions). In addition, he served as director of the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University and programming director of the Fromm Weeks of New Music at Aspen, Colorado (1985-90). Among his numerous honours are a Guggenheim Fellowship (1965-6), an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1972), a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation (Cross Sections and Color Fields, 1972-5), the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award (1977), a Letter of Distinction from the AMC (1996) and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art's John Cage Award for Music (1998).

Brown's music uses aleatoric techniques, in addition to a related method which he called " open form." In open form, he would notate extended sections of a work which could be ordered at the player's discretion; for example, in his Twenty-Five Pages, each of the 25 pages could be rearranged and played in whatever order suited the performer. He also conceived his music as being ordered in space; in some sense he was trying to match the aesthetic used by Calder in his famous mobiles. In addition he often used graphical notation, sometimes mixing graphical and traditional notation in the same work. Texturally, he often used large blocks of sound, and large colorful clusters, in what could be seen as a visual analogue of Mark Rothko's canvases.

Brown died in Rye, New York.