Described by New York Times critic John Rockwell as one of the best non-famous composers this country has to offer, Ben Johnston reconceives familiar idioms--ranging from jazz to Southern hymns--using just intonation. Johnston studied with Darius Milhaud, Harry Partch, and John Cage, and is best known for his String Quartet No. 4, a complex series of variations on Amazing Grace. This volume reveals he is also a truly literate composer, who writes and speaks about music with eloquence and charm. Maximum Clarity and Other Writings on Music spans forty years and brings together forty-one of...

This engaging book is the first biography of one of the great ""originals"" of American classical music. It provides a full portrait of Harry Partch (1901-1974), a composer, theorist, and creator of musical instruments whose life and works were marginalized and unconventional, yet who had an enormous influence on later experimental composers.

Claude Vivier's haunting and expressive music has captivated audiences around the world. But the French-Canadian composer is remembered also because of the dramatic circumstances of his death: he was found murdered in his Paris apartment at the age of thirty-four. Given unrestricted access to Vivier's archives and interviews with Vivier's family, teachers, friends, and colleagues, musicologist and biographer Bob Gilmore tells here the full story of Vivier's fascinating life, from his abandonment as a child in a Montreal orphanage to his posthumous acclaim as one of the leading composers of...