“Mario Davidovsky, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who opened up new vistas in chamber music by pairing live acoustic instruments with electronics, died on Friday at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan,” writes Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim in Friday’s (8/30) New York Times. “He was 85…. Beginning in 1963 with ‘Synchronisms No. 1’ for flute and tape, he coaxed electronic sounds into partnership with traditional instruments to create musical pas-de-deux that were full of mystery and drama.… In the late 1970s, Mr. Davidovsky shifted his focus back to purely acoustic music…. Above all, Mr. Davidovsky would say, composition was an ethical act. That was a point he argued passionately as a teacher, especially as mentor to the participants in the Composers Conference, a new-music summer program he headed from 1968 until his death, which is now held at Brandeis University…. In 1958 … Mr. Davidovsky … met Milton Babbitt … who was on the cusp of forming the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City…. From 1981 to 1994 Mr. Davidovsky directed the Electronic Music Center. He taught at the University of Michigan, the Manhattan School of Music and Yale University, and served on the faculties of the City College of New York, Columbia University and Harvard.”
Posted September 4, 2019
