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Biography
Refimprove|date=April 2008 Walter Hamor Piston Jr. , (January 20, 1894 & ndash; November 12, 1976), was an American composer of classical music , music theorist and professor of music at Harvard University whose students included Leroy Anderson , Leonard Bernstein , and Elliott Carter .
Life
Piston was born in Rockland, Maine . His paternal grandfather, a sailor named Antonio Pistone, changed his name to Anthony Piston when he came to America from Genoa , Italy. In 1905, the composer's father Walter Piston Sr. moved with his family to Boston .
Walter Jr. first trained as an engineer at the Mechanical Arts High School in Boston, but he was artistically inclined. Upon graduating in 1912, he proceeded to the Massachusetts Normal Arts School, where he completed a course of study in draftsmanship in 1916.DeVoto 1994.
During the 1910s, Piston made a living playing piano and violin in dance bands and later playing violin in orchestras led by Georges Longy . Pollack 2001. During World War I, Piston joined the U.S. Navy as a band musician, after rapidly teaching himself to play the saxophone; he later stated that, when "it became obvious that everybody had to go into the service, I wanted to go in as a musician". Westergaard 1968, 3. Playing in a service band, Piston taught himself to play most of the wind instruments. "They were just lying around" he later observed, "and no one minded if you picked them up and found out what they could do".Hudson 1976.
Piston was admitted to Harvard University|Harvard in 1920, where he studied counterpoint with Archibald Davison, canon and fugue with Clifford Heilman, advanced harmony with Edward Ballantine , and composition and music history with Edward Burlingame Hill . Piston often worked as an assistant to the various music professors there, and conducted the student orchestra.Pollack 2001; Westergaard 1968, 4.
In 1920, Piston married artist Kathryn Nason (1892–1976), who had been a fellow student at the Normal Arts School.Oja 2011. They remained married until her death in February 1976, a few months before his own.
Upon graduating latin honors|summa cum laude from Harvard, Piston was awarded a John Knowles Paine Traveling Fellowship.Westergaard 1968, 4. He chose to go to Paris, living there from 1924 to 1926.Thomson 1962. At the Ecole Nationale de Musique in Paris, Piston studied composition and counterpoint with Nadia Boulanger , composition with Paul Dukas and violin with George Enescu . His Three Pieces for Flute, Clarinet and Bassoon of 1925 was his first published score.
He taught at Harvard from 1926 until retiring in 1960. His students include Samuel Adler (composer)|Samuel Adler , Leroy Anderson , ArthurBerger , Leonard Bernstein , Gordon Binkerd , Elliott Carter , John Davison (composer)|John Davison , Irving Fine , John Harbison , Karl Kohn , Ellis B. Kohs , Gail Kubik , Billy Jim Layton , Noël Lee , Robert Middleton (composer)|Robert Middleton , Robert Moevs , Conlon Nancarrow , William P. Perry , Daniel Pinkham , Frederic Rzewski , Allen Sapp , Harold Shapero , and Claudio Spies .
In 1936, the Columbia Broadcasting System commissioned six American composers ( Aaron Copland , Louis Gruenberg , Howard Hanson , Roy Harris , William Grant Still and Piston) to write works for CBS radio stations to broadcast.Citation needed|date=November 2009 The following year Piston wrote his Symphony No. 1, and conducted its premiere with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on April 8, 1938.Carter 1946, 374.
Piston's only dance work, The Incredible Flutist , was written for the Boston Pops Orchestra , which premiered it with Arthur Fiedler conducting on May 30, 1938. The dancers were Hans Weiner and his company. Soon after, Piston arranged a concert suite including "a selection of the best parts of the ballet." This version was premiered by Fritz Reiner and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra on November 22, 1940. Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra included the suite in a 1991 RCA Victor CD recording that also featured Piston's Three New England Sketches and Symphony No. 6.Anon. 1991.
Piston studied the twelve-tone technique of Arnold Schoenberg and wrote works using aspects of it as early as the Sonata for Flute and Piano (1930) and the First Symphony (1937). His first fully twelve-tone work was the Chromatic Study on the Name of Bach for organ (1940), which nonetheless retains a vague feeling of key.Pollack 1982, 35, 72–73. Although he employed twelve-tone elements sporadically throughout his career, these become much more pervasive in the Eighth Symphony (1965) and many of the works following it: the Variations for Cello and Orchestra (1966), Clarinet Concerto (1967), Ricercare for Orchestra , Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra (1970), and Flute Concerto (1971). Archibald 1978, 267.
In 1943, the Alice M. Ditson fund of Columbia University commissioned Piston's Symphony No. 2, which was premiered by the National Symphony Orchestra (United States)|National Symphony Orchestra on March 5, 1944 and was awarded a prize by the New York Music Critics' Circle . His next symphony, the Third, earned a Pulitzer Prize for Music|Pulitzer Prize , as did his Symphony No. 7. His Viola Concerto and String Quartet No. 5 also later received Critics' Circle awards.
Piston wrote four books on the technical aspects of music theory which are considered to be classics in their respective fields: Principles of Harmonic Analysis , Counterpoint , Orchestration and Harmony . The last of these went through four editions in the author's lifetime, was translated into several languages, and (with changes and additions by Mark DeVoto ) was still regarded as recently as 2009 as a standard harmony text.Firmino, Bueno, and Bigand 2009, 206.
He died at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts on November 12, 1976.
Works
Ballet
The Incredible Flutist (1938)
Orchestral
symphony|Symphonies
* Symphony No. 1 (Piston)|Symphony No. 1 (1937)
* Symphony No. 2 (Piston)|Symphony No. 2 (1943)
* Symphony No. 3 (Piston)|Symphony No. 3 (1946–47) (commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation)Carter 1946, 375.
* Symphony No. 4 (Piston)|Symphony No. 4 (1950) (composed for the 100th anniversary of the University of Minnesota )Lowe 2002.
* Symphony No. 5 (Piston)|Symphony No. 5 (1954)
* Symphony No. 6 (Piston)|Symphony No. 6 (1955) (composed for the 75th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra )
* Symphony No. 7 (Piston)|Symphony No. 7 (1960)
* Symphony No. 8 (Piston)|Symphony No. 8 (1965)
Suite for Orchestra (1929)
Concerto for Orchestra (1934)
Suite from The Incredible Flutist (The suite from The Incredible Flutist was transcribed for symphonic wind ensemble by MSgt Donald Patterson and recorded by Col. Michael Colburn with "The President's Own" United States Marine Band .US Marine Band, Family Album , 2006. Label: Altissimo& #33; Reference: B000QZSTZ2. See Amazon entry, accessed on 03/03/11 at http://www.amazon.com/Family-Album/dp/B000QZSTZ2/ref=sr_shvl_album_2? ie=UTF8& qid=1299155672& sr=301-2.)
Sinfonietta (1941)
Suite No. 2 for Orchestra (1948)
Serenata for Orchestra (Piston)|Serenata for Orchestra (1957)
Three New England Sketches (1959)
Ricercar e for Orchestra (1967)
Band
Tunbridge Fair , for symphonic band (1950) (Commissioned by the American Bandmasters Association) http://americanbandmasters.org/
Chromatic Study on the Name of BACH motif|BACH (1940)
Choir|Choral
Psalm and Prayer of David (1959)
Books
Principles of Harmonic Analysis . Boston: E. C. Schirmer, 1933.
Harmony . New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1941. Reprint edition (as U.S. War Dept. Education Manual EM 601), Madison, Wisc.: Published for the United States Armed Forces Institute by W. Norton & Co., 1944. Revised ed, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1948. Third ed., 1962. Fourth ed., revised and expanded by Mark DeVoto, 1978. ISBN 0-393-09034-5. 5th edition, revised and expanded by Mark DeVoto ISBN 0-393-95480-3. British editions, London: Victor Gollancz, 1949, rev. ed. 1950 (reprinted 1973), 1959, 3rd ed. 1970, 4th ed. 1982. Spanish translation, as Armonía , rev. y ampliada por Mark DeVoto. Barcelona: Idea Books, 2001. ISBN 84-8236-224-0 Chinese version of the 2nd edition, as ??? He sheng xue , trans. Chenbao Feng and Dunxing Shen. ?? : ??????? : ??????????? Beijing: Ren min yin yue chu ban she : Xin hua shu dian Beijing fa xing suo fa xing, 1956. Revised, ?? : ??????? Beijing: Ren min yin yue chu ban she, 1978.
Counterpoint . New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1947.
Orchestration . New York: Norton, 1955. Russian translation, as '???????????', translation and notes by Constantine Ivanov. Moscow: Soviet Composer, 1990, ISBN 5-85285-014-4.
Notes
Reflist
Sources
Anon. (1991). Liner notes for RCA Victor recording 60798-2-RC.Full|date=September 2010
Anon. (2007). cite web|title=Announcement of Albany Recording of Cello and Piano Duo|publisher=Records International|url= http://www.recordsinternational.com/cd.php? cd=11J086|accessdate=2007-11-18|month=November
cite journal|
journal=The Musical Quarterly|volume=64|number=2 (April)|pages=263–8| last=Archibald|first=Bruce|title=Reviews of Records: 'Walter Piston: Symphony No. 7 , Symphony No. 8 , Louisville Orchestra, Jorge Mester; Walter Piston: Symphony No. 5 , Louisville Orchestra, Robert Whitney; Walter Piston: Concerto for Viola and Orchestra , Paul Doktor, viola, Louisville Orchestra, Robert Whitney; Walter Piston: The Incredible Flutist , Louisville Orchestra, Jorge Mester.'|issn=0027-4631|year= 1978|issue= 2|jstor=741453
cite journal|last=Carter|first=Elliott|authorlink=Elliott Carter|journal=The Musical Quarterly|title=Walter Piston| year=1946|volume=32|issue=3 (July)|pages=354–375, list of works and premieres up to 1946 on pp. 374–5|
DeVoto, Mark (1994). " http://www.tufts.edu/~mdevoto/Piston.pdf Walter Piston, Practical Theorist". (Accessed 03/02/11).
Firmino, Érico Artioli, José Lino Oliveira Bueno, and Emmanuel Bigand. 2009. "Travelling Through Pitch Space Speeds up Musical Time". Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal 26, no. 3 (February): 205–209.
Hudson, Edward (1976). "Walter Piston Dies; Composer Won Two Pulitzers". The New York Times (November 13): 21.
Lowe, Steven (2002). http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp? item_code=8.559162& catNum=559162& filetype=About%20this%20Recording& language=English#| Liner notes to Walter Piston: Symphony No. 4, Capriccio for Harp and String Orchestra, Three New England Sketches . Seattle Symphony Orchestra; Gerard Schwarz, conductor. Naxos CD 8.559162.
Oja, Carol J. (2011). " http://www.americansymphony.org/program_notes/walter-piston-1894-1976 Walter Piston (1894-1976)". American Symphony Orchestra Program Notes (March 29). (Accessed 03/02/11).
cite book|last=Pollack|first=Howard|year=1982|title=Walter Piston|location=Ann Arbor, Mich|publisher=UMI Research Press|isbn=0-8357-1280-X
cite journal|last=Pollack|first=Howard|authorlink=Howard Pollack|title=Review: String Quartets, Nos. 1–5; Quintet for Flute and String Quartet by Walter Piston|doi=10.2307/3051879|volume=5|issue=1 (Spring)|date=1987|pages=119–121|journal=American Music|issn=0734-4392|year=1987|jstor=3051879|last2=Piston|first2=Walter
cite book|last=Pollack|first=Howard|year=1992|title=Harvard Composers: Walter Piston and His Students, from Elliott Carter to Frederic Rzewski|location=Metuchen, N.J.|publisher=Scarecrow Press|isbn=0-8108-2493-0
cite web|last=Pollack|first=Howard|date=2001|title=Piston, Walter (Hamor)|publisher=Grove Music Online|url= http://www.grovemusic.com, Deane Root, editor in chief. (Subscription access). Previously published in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (professor of music)|John Tyrrell . London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001.
last=Stowell|first=Robin|title=The Cambridge Companion to the Violin|year=1992|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=0-521-39923-8|location=Cambridge; New York
Thomson, Virgil (1962). "'Greatest Music Teacher' at 75". Music Educators Journal 49, no. 1 (Sept.–Oct.): 43.
cite journal|last=Westergaard|first=Peter|coauthor=and Walter Piston|date=1968|volume=7|issue=1 (Fall–Winter)|pages=3–17|title=Conversation with Walter Piston|journal=Perspectives of New Music|issn=0031-6016|doi=10.2307/832423|jstor=832423
External links
http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/composer.pl? comp=101 Art of the States: Walter Piston
http://www.schirmer.com/composers/piston_bio.html Official Publisher of Walter Piston: Bio, Works List, Discography, Events and more
PulitzerPrize MusicComposers 1943–1950PulitzerPrize MusicComposers 1951–1975Persondata | NAME = Piston, Walter | ALTERNATIVE NAMES = | SHORT DESCRIPTION = | DATE OF BIRTH = January 20, 1894 | PLACE OF BIRTH = | DATE OF DEATH = November 12, 1976 | PLACE OF DEATH = DEFAULTSORT:Piston, Walter Category:1894 births Category:1976 deaths Category:American classical composers Category:20th-century classical composers Category:Ballet composers Category:People from Rockland, Maine Category:American musicians of Italian descent Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Guggenheim Fellows Category:Pulitzer Prize for Music winners Category:People from Belmont, Massachusetts
