“Alan Stout once was hailed as one of Chicago’s most important classical composers,” writes John von Rhein in Saturday’s (1/3) Chicago Tribune. “Stout, who died … Thursday, at age 85, was … a respected and prolific composer whose works have been performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, [and] spent the bulk of his career as a professor of music composition at Northwestern University, from 1963 until his retirement several decades later. He also was active in the Chicago area as a scholar, pianist and conductor. For decades an important voice in Chicago new music, Stout was among the generation of composers whose works defined the postwar modernist aesthetic.” The Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered Stout’s Symphony No. 2 in 1968, “one of four Stout works the orchestra performed. Georg Solti led the world premieres of his Symphony No. 4 (1971), commissioned for the CSO’s 80th season, and ‘George Lieder’ (1972). Chorus director Margaret Hillis introduced his evening-length ‘Passion’ in 1975.… Born in 1932 in Baltimore, Stout received his musical education at the Peabody Institute.… He completed formal studies in composition and Swedish at the University of Washington in 1959.… His own students included … composers Augusta Read Thomas and Joseph Schwantner…. Stout left no known survivors.”
Posted February 8, 2018
