Arthur Berger (composer) facts for kids

Arthur Victor Berger (born May 15, 1912 – died October 7, 2003) was an American composer and music critic. He was known for his unique style of music.

Biography

Early Life and Education

Arthur Berger was born in New York City. He went to New York University for his college studies. During this time, he joined a group called the Young Composer's Group.

Later, he studied at Harvard University with a teacher named Walter Piston. He also traveled to Paris, France, where he studied at the Sorbonne and with the famous music teacher Nadia Boulanger. He was able to do this thanks to a special scholarship called a Paine Fellowship.

Teaching and Writing Career

After his studies, Berger taught music for a short time at Mills College and Brooklyn College. He also worked as a music critic, writing about music for newspapers. He worked at the New York Sun and then for a longer time at the New York Herald Tribune.

In 1953, he left newspaper work to teach at Brandeis University. He became a very respected professor there. Some of his students included Gustav Ciamaga and Richard Wernick. Even after he retired, he sometimes taught at the New England Conservatory.

Contributions to Music

Arthur Berger helped start a music magazine called Perspectives of New Music in 1962. He was also elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971.

He wrote the first book about another famous American composer, Aaron Copland. Berger also came up with some important musical terms, like octatonic scale and pitch centricity. These terms help explain how music is organized.

Arthur Berger passed away in Boston, Massachusetts, when he was 91 years old.

Musical Works

Berger's Musical Style

Arthur Berger's music often explored how different musical notes relate to each other, both played at the same time (vertical) and one after another (horizontal). He was influenced by other great composers like Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and Anton Webern.

In the 1940s, he wrote pieces that were in a style called neoclassical. Two examples are Serenade Concertante (1944) and Three Pieces for Strings (1945). In the 1950s, he started using a technique called twelve-tone technique, which is a way of organizing all twelve notes of the musical scale.

Later in his career, his music moved away from strict serialism. However, he continued to use groups of notes called 'tone clusters' where notes might be played an octave apart.

Important Compositions

Music critic George Perle praised Arthur Berger's music. He said Berger had a "keen and sophisticated musical intellect." Perle especially liked Berger's String Quartet, saying that its sounds, textures, rhythms, and form all came from the way Berger used pitch (the highness or lowness of notes).

Some of Arthur Berger's well-known works include:

• Ideas of Order
• Polyphony
• Quartet for Winds – This piece was described by another critic, Virgil Thomson, as one of the best pieces for wind instruments in modern music.
• String Quartet (1958)
• Five Pieces for Piano (1969)
• Septet (1965–66)

Arthur Berger was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is often grouped with other composers in what is called the "Boston school" of music. This group included composers like Lukas Foss and Irving Fine.