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David Lang (composer)

 

 
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David Lang (composer)
 
 
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David Lang (born January 8, 1957 in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles

Los ?ngeles is the Capital of the Biob?o Province, in the municipality of the same name, in Regions of Chile VIII , in the center-south of Chile....
, California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
) is an American
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 composer living in New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
. He was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music
Pulitzer Prize for Music

The Pulitzer Prize for Music was first awarded in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer did not call for such a prize in his will, but had arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year....
 for The Little Match Girl Passion

Biography
Lang holds degrees from Stanford University
Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private university research university located in Stanford, California, California, United States....
, the University of Iowa
University of Iowa

The University of Iowa is a public university research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees....
, and Yale University
Yale University

Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, Yale is the Colonial Colleges institution of higher education in the United States and is a member of the Ivy League....
 (DMA, 1989). His teachers have included Donald Jenni, Richard Hervig, Jacob Druckman
Jacob Druckman

Jacob Druckman was an USA composer born in Philadelphia. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Druckman studied with Vincent Persichetti, Peter Mennin, and Bernard Wagenaar....
, Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze is a German composing well known for his left-wing political convictions. He left Germany for Italy in 1953 because of a perceived intolerance towards his politics and homosexuality....
, and Martin Bresnick
Martin Bresnick

Martin Bresnick is a composer of contemporary classical music. As a professor at Yale, he has been a widely influential teacher of contemporary composition....
.

His first recognition came from the BMI Foundation
BMI Foundation

The BMI Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit organization founded in 1985 by executives of Broadcast Music Incorporated for the purpose of "encouraging the creation, performance and study of music through awards, scholarships, internships, grants, and commissions." Additionally, the Foundation makes grants annually to other not-for-profit musica...
's Student Composer Awards in 1980 and 1981. Together with Julia Wolfe
Julia Wolfe

Julia Wolfe is an United States composer. She was born in Philadelphia and works in New York. Wolfe's music is rhythmically vigorous and often clangorously dissonant....
 and Michael Gordon
Michael Gordon (composer)

Michael Gordon is an American composer and co-founder of the Bang on a Can festival and ensemble. His music is associated with the genres of totalism and post-minimalism....
, Lang co-founded Bang on a Can
Bang on a Can

Bang on a Can is a multi-faceted musical organization based in New York City. It was founded in 1987 by three United States composers who remain its artistic directors: Julia Wolfe, David Lang , and Michael Gordon ....
 in 1987.

In 2002 he was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.

In 2008 he joined the Yale School of Music
Yale School of Music

The Yale School of Music is one of the twelve Professional Schools at Yale University.In November 2005, an anonymous donation of $100 Million allowed students in the school of music to study for free....
 composition faculty.






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Encyclopedia


David Lang (born January 8, 1957 in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles

Los ?ngeles is the Capital of the Biob?o Province, in the municipality of the same name, in Regions of Chile VIII , in the center-south of Chile....
, California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
) is an American
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 composer living in New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
. He was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music
Pulitzer Prize for Music

The Pulitzer Prize for Music was first awarded in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer did not call for such a prize in his will, but had arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year....
 for The Little Match Girl Passion

Biography


Lang holds degrees from Stanford University
Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private university research university located in Stanford, California, California, United States....
, the University of Iowa
University of Iowa

The University of Iowa is a public university research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees....
, and Yale University
Yale University

Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, Yale is the Colonial Colleges institution of higher education in the United States and is a member of the Ivy League....
 (DMA, 1989). His teachers have included Donald Jenni, Richard Hervig, Jacob Druckman
Jacob Druckman

Jacob Druckman was an USA composer born in Philadelphia. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Druckman studied with Vincent Persichetti, Peter Mennin, and Bernard Wagenaar....
, Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze is a German composing well known for his left-wing political convictions. He left Germany for Italy in 1953 because of a perceived intolerance towards his politics and homosexuality....
, and Martin Bresnick
Martin Bresnick

Martin Bresnick is a composer of contemporary classical music. As a professor at Yale, he has been a widely influential teacher of contemporary composition....
.

His first recognition came from the BMI Foundation
BMI Foundation

The BMI Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit organization founded in 1985 by executives of Broadcast Music Incorporated for the purpose of "encouraging the creation, performance and study of music through awards, scholarships, internships, grants, and commissions." Additionally, the Foundation makes grants annually to other not-for-profit musica...
's Student Composer Awards in 1980 and 1981. Together with Julia Wolfe
Julia Wolfe

Julia Wolfe is an United States composer. She was born in Philadelphia and works in New York. Wolfe's music is rhythmically vigorous and often clangorously dissonant....
 and Michael Gordon
Michael Gordon (composer)

Michael Gordon is an American composer and co-founder of the Bang on a Can festival and ensemble. His music is associated with the genres of totalism and post-minimalism....
, Lang co-founded Bang on a Can
Bang on a Can

Bang on a Can is a multi-faceted musical organization based in New York City. It was founded in 1987 by three United States composers who remain its artistic directors: Julia Wolfe, David Lang , and Michael Gordon ....
 in 1987.

In 2002 he was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.

In 2008 he joined the Yale School of Music
Yale School of Music

The Yale School of Music is one of the twelve Professional Schools at Yale University.In November 2005, an anonymous donation of $100 Million allowed students in the school of music to study for free....
 composition faculty.

Works


Lang's music is informed by modernism
Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century....
, minimalism
Minimalist music

Minimalist music is an originally American genre of experimental music or Downtown music named in the 1960s based mostly in consonance and dissonance, steady pulse , stasis and slow transformation, and often reiteration of musical phrase or smaller units such as Figure , Motif , and Cell ....
, and rock
Rock music

Rock music is a loosely defined genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the mid 1950's. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rhythm and blues, country music and other influences....
 - and can perhaps be best described as post-minimalist or totalism
Totalism (music)

In music, totalism is a term for a style of art music that arose in the 1980s and '90s as a developing response to minimalism - parallel to postminimalism, but generally among a slightly younger generation, born in the 1950s....
. His music can be in turn comic, abrasive, and soothing, and it usually retains elements of conceptualism
Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional Aesthetics and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called Installation art, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions....
. He sometimes gives his concert pieces strange and even iconoclastic titles such as Eating Living Monkeys (1985) and Bonehead (1990).

He was a major contributor to the music performed by the Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet

Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California....
 in Requiem for a Dream
Requiem for a Dream

Requiem for a Dream is a 2000 film adaptation of the Requiem for a Dream . The novel was written by Hubert Selby, Jr.; the film adaptation was directed by Darren Aronofsky, and starred Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans....
 being the arranger in studio. He is also well known for his work with Édouard Lock
Édouard Lock

?douard Lock is a Canada dance choreographer and the founder of the Canada dance group, La La La Human Steps.?douard Lock immigrated to Canada as a young child, settling in Montreal with his parents....
 and La La La Human Steps
La La La Human Steps

La La La Human Steps is a leading Qu?b?cois contemporary dance group in Canada, known for its energetic, acrobatic style that often involves fast-paced and athletic physical contact....
.

Collaborative works


In 1999 he collaborated with composers Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon and librettist/illustrator Ben Katchor
Ben Katchor

Ben Katchor is an United States cartoonist. His comic strip Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer paints an evocative picture of a slightly surreal, historical New York City with a decidedly Jewish sensibility....
 in the composition of the "comic strip opera" The Carbon Copy Building. The production won an Obie Award
Obie Award

The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards bestowed by The Village Voice newspaper to theater artists in New York City....
 for Best New American Production. Lang, Wolfe and Gordon subsequently collaborated on the 'oratorio' Lost Objects, the recording of which was released in summer 2001 (Teldec New Line). Their next collaborative project was Shelter, a multi-media work with librettist Deborah Artman,for the Scandinavian vocal group Trio Mediaeval and the German ensemble musikFabrik
Musikfabrik

musikFabrik is a contemporary music ensemble located in Cologne , Germany....
, which was performed in Germany and the U.S. in 2005.

The Difficulty of Crossing a Field


Also in 1999, Lang based his opera The Difficulty of Crossing a Field on a short story by Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an United States editorialist, journalist, short story and satirist. Today, he is best known for his short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and his satirical dictionary, The Devil's Dictionary....
, about an Alabama planter
Plantation

A plantation is usually a large farm or Estate , especially in a tropical or semitropical country, like Brazil or Nicaragua on which cotton, tobacco, lice coffee, sugar cane and the like are cultivated, usually by resident laborers....
 named Williamson who purportedly vanished while walking across a field in 1854. (Bierce's story reoccurs in urban-legend
Urban legend

An urban legend, urban myth, or urban tale is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories thought to be factual by those circulating them....
 form, in which, coincidentally, the vanished man is often given the name David Lang
Unexplained disappearances

Unexplained disappearance is a term describing the disappearance of objects, animals or people without apparent reason or cause. Often such disappearances are assumed, by some, to have supernatural or paranormal explanations....
.)

Pulitzer Prize


Lang was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in music for his piece The Little Match Girl Passion, composed in 2007. . The piece, based on Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen , also known as simply H. C. Andersen ); was a Denmark author and poet, most famous for his fairy tales. Among his best-known stories are "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "Thumbelina", "The Little Match Girl", "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Red Shoes "....
's fable "The Little Match Girl
The Little Match Girl

"The Little Match Girl" is a fairy tale by Denmark poet and author Hans Christian Andersen about a girl who dies selling matches on a winter New Year's Eve....
" and inspired by Bach's St. Matthew Passion
Matthäuspassion

The St. Matthew Passion , BWV 244, is a musical composition written by Johann Sebastian Bach for solo voices, double choir and double orchestra, with libretto by Picander ....
, was co-commissioned by the Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City located at 881 Seventh Avenue , occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street , two blocks south of Central Park....
 Corporation and The Perth Theater and Concert Hall and premiered on October 25, 2007 in Zankel Hall in New York City. Tim Page of the Washington Post wrote that "I don't think that I've ever been so moved by a new...composition as I was by David Lang's The Little Match Girl Passion, which is unlike any music I know."

Recorded works


Lang's music has been released on the Argo
Argo

In Greek mythology, the Argo was the ship on which Jason and the Argonauts sailed from Iolcus to retrieve the Golden Fleece....
/Decca
Decca Records

Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 in music by Edward Lewis . Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; later the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
, BMG
BMG

Bertelsmann Music Group, , was a division of Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Sony Corporation of America on October 1, 2008....
, Cantaloupe Music
Cantaloupe Music

Cantaloupe Music is a record label founded in March 2001 in music "created by the founders of Bang on a Can for music between the cracks", those founders being composers Michael Gordon , David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, and Bang on a Can Managing Director Kenny Savelson....
, Chandos
Chandos

Chandos may refer to:...
, CRI
CRI

CRI is a three letter acronym that may stand for:...
, Naxos Records, Point
Point

Point can refer to:...
, and Sony Classical labels. His solo albums for Cantaloupe include "The Passing Measures" (2001) with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group is a chamber orchestra based in Birmingham, England. BCMG specialises in the performance of Contemporary classical music....
, "Child" (2003) played by Sentieri Selvaggi, and "Elevated" (2005) featuringing performances by Audrey Riley
Audrey Riley

Audrey Riley trained at the Guildhall School of Music with Leonard Stehn and was a cello for Virginia Astley from 1983 to 1986 and a one-time auxiliary member of The Family Cat....
 and A Change of Light, and Lisa Moore. His music has also been represented on recordings by Icebreaker
Icebreaker (band)

Icebreaker is a United Kingdom-based new music ensemble founded by James Poke and John Godfrey . The group have established themselves as one of the UK's leading new music interpreters....
, So Percussion
So Percussion

So Percussion is an American percussion quartet based in New York City.Composed of Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, and Eric Beach, the group is well known for recording and touring internationally and for its work with composers such as Steve Reich, David Lang, Paul Lansky, Martin Bresnick, Steven Mackey, Fred Frith, Evan Zipo...
, Bang on a Can
Bang on a Can

Bang on a Can is a multi-faceted musical organization based in New York City. It was founded in 1987 by three United States composers who remain its artistic directors: Julia Wolfe, David Lang , and Michael Gordon ....
 All Stars and Evan Ziporyn
Evan Ziporyn

Evan Ziporyn is an United States of America composer of post-minimalism music and music for Balinese gamelans. He plays the clarinet, bass clarinet, and metallophone, borrowing from classical music, avant-garde, and jazz....
. His scores are published by Red Poppy Music (available from G. Schirmer
G. Schirmer

G. Schirmer Inc. is a classical music publishing company based in New York, NY, in the USA.Schirmer publishes sheet music for sale and rental, including opera and orchestral scores, band and wind ensemble parts, chorus and chamber music....
, Inc.)

Recordings

  • Are You Experienced (1992)
  • The Passing Measures (2001)
  • Child (2003)
  • Elevated (2005)
  • Pierced (2008)


Listening

  • from NPR, April 7, 2008
  • BBC story about a memorial chapel and Lang's piece


Film

  • New York Composers: Searching for a New Music (1997). Directed by Michael Blackwood. Produced by Michael Blackwood Productions, in association with Westdeutscher Rundfunk. New York, New York: Michael Blackwood Productions.


External links