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Robert Erickson
Robert Erickson (March 7, 1917 – April 24, 1997) was an American modernist composer and influential music teacher. He was one of the first American composers to explore the twelve tone technique and to compose tape music.
Erickson was born in Marquette, Michigan. He learned both piano and violin as a child, and studied composition with Ernst Krenek at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, graduating in 1943. He returned to Hamline after three years in the US Army, and earned a Master of Arts in music in 1947.
He taught at the College of St. Catherine in Saint Paul, Minnesota, San Francisco State College, the University of California, Berkeley, and chaired the composition department of the San Francisco Conservatory from 1957 to 1966. With composer Will Ogdon, he founded the music department at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 1967: "We decided we wanted a department where composers could feel at home, the way scholars feel at home in other schools." While there he met faculty performers such as bassist Bertram Turetzky, trumpeter Edwin Harkins, flutist Bernhard Batschelet, and singer Carol Plantamura: "I could go to Bert, or Ed, with something I'd written down and ask 'Hey, can you do this?' And I'd get an immediate answer. It was a fabulous time for cross-feeding."
His notable students are Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Louise Spizizen, Ramón Sender, Loren Rush, Betty Ann Wong, Terry Jennings, Allen Strange, and Paul Dresher. Many of these composers became interested in improvisation under Erickson’s influence.
Oliveros, among others, praises his teaching:
Robert Erickson was my principal composition teacher from 1954-60 and my professional mentor. His teaching was notable for supporting me to work in my own way as he did with all his students. His attitude in teaching composition was devoid of sexism or racism. He was ethical. His delight was helping others to be creative and professional in composition what ever [sic] the style. Erickson was skillful in drawing out the best abilities of his students. He was tireless in his investigation of music and had a wealth of advice and pointers to relevant musical resources—always useful and specific. His guidance was invaluable to me and to my peers (all male). None of us sounded alike in our compositions even though we liked and admired each other's work.
Erickson was one of the first American composers to compose twelve tone system music ("I had already studied—and abandoned—the twelve tone system before most other Americans had taken it up.") and to create tape music: "If you get right down to the bottom of what composers do, I think that what composers do now and have always done is to compose their environment in some sense. So I get a special little lift about working with environmental sounds." He also has used invented instruments such as stroking rods, used in Taffy Time, Cardinitas 68, and Roddy, tube drums, used in Cradle, Cradle II, and Tube Drum Studies, and the Percussion Loops Console designed with Ron George, used in Percussion Loops.
Many University of California San Diego faculty performers appear on his 1991 CRI release Robert Erickson: Sierra & Other Works (CD 616), playing works written for and with them:
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Robert Erickson
Robert Erickson (March 7, 1917 – April 24, 1997) was an American modernist composer and influential music teacher. He was one of the first American composers to explore the twelve tone technique and to compose tape music.
Erickson was born in Marquette, Michigan. He learned both piano and violin as a child, and studied composition with Ernst Krenek at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, graduating in 1943. He returned to Hamline after three years in the US Army, and earned a Master of Arts in music in 1947.
He taught at the College of St. Catherine in Saint Paul, Minnesota, San Francisco State College, the University of California, Berkeley, and chaired the composition department of the San Francisco Conservatory from 1957 to 1966. With composer Will Ogdon, he founded the music department at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 1967: "We decided we wanted a department where composers could feel at home, the way scholars feel at home in other schools." While there he met faculty performers such as bassist Bertram Turetzky, trumpeter Edwin Harkins, flutist Bernhard Batschelet, and singer Carol Plantamura: "I could go to Bert, or Ed, with something I'd written down and ask 'Hey, can you do this?' And I'd get an immediate answer. It was a fabulous time for cross-feeding."
His notable students are Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Louise Spizizen, Ramón Sender, Loren Rush, Betty Ann Wong, Terry Jennings, Allen Strange, and Paul Dresher. Many of these composers became interested in improvisation under Erickson’s influence.
Oliveros, among others, praises his teaching:
Robert Erickson was my principal composition teacher from 1954-60 and my professional mentor. His teaching was notable for supporting me to work in my own way as he did with all his students. His attitude in teaching composition was devoid of sexism or racism. He was ethical. His delight was helping others to be creative and professional in composition what ever [sic] the style. Erickson was skillful in drawing out the best abilities of his students. He was tireless in his investigation of music and had a wealth of advice and pointers to relevant musical resources—always useful and specific. His guidance was invaluable to me and to my peers (all male). None of us sounded alike in our compositions even though we liked and admired each other's work.
Erickson was one of the first American composers to compose twelve tone system music ("I had already studied—and abandoned—the twelve tone system before most other Americans had taken it up.") and to create tape music: "If you get right down to the bottom of what composers do, I think that what composers do now and have always done is to compose their environment in some sense. So I get a special little lift about working with environmental sounds." He also has used invented instruments such as stroking rods, used in Taffy Time, Cardinitas 68, and Roddy, tube drums, used in Cradle, Cradle II, and Tube Drum Studies, and the Percussion Loops Console designed with Ron George, used in Percussion Loops.
Many University of California San Diego faculty performers appear on his 1991 CRI release Robert Erickson: Sierra & Other Works (CD 616), playing works written for and with them: