Lukas Foss

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Lukas Foss (born Lukas Fuchs, August 15, 1922 in Berlin, Germany) is an American composer, conductor, pianist, and professor. He studied with Julius Goldstein. He moved to Paris in 1933 where he studied piano with Lazare Lévy, composition with Noël Gallon, orchestration with Felix Wolfes, and flute with Louis Moyse. In 1937 he moved to America and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, with Sergei Koussevitzky during the summers from 1939 to 1943 at the Berkshire Music Center, and, as a special student, composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale University from 1939 to 1940.

Foss was appointed professor of music at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1953, replacing Arnold Schoenberg. While there he founded the Improvisation Chamber Ensemble. He founded the Center for Creative and Performing Arts in 1963 while at the University at Buffalo. From 1981 to 1986, he was conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. He has been Professor of Music, Theory, and Composition at Boston University since 1991. His notable students include Claire Polin and Rocco Di Pietro.

He is grouped in the "Boston school" along with Arthur Berger, Irving Fine, Alexei Haieff, Harold Shapero, and Claudio Spies.

Contents

[edit] Works for Solo Piano

Foss's solo piano music forms a relatively small part of his composition output. Still, it demonstrates, as a whole, his lighter, neoclassical stylistic practice and associated techniques. This repertoire spans a 50-year period from 1938 to 1988 and includes eight works:

1. Grotesque Dance (1938) 2. Four Two-Voiced Inventions (1938) 3. Passacaglia (1941) 4. Fantasy Rondo (1946) 5. Prelude in D (1951) 6. Scherzo Ricercato (1953) 7. Solo (1981) 8. For Lenny [Variation on New York, New York] (1988)

The piece that stands apart from this largely neoclassical repertoire is Solo (1981), a hybrid minimalist and twelve-tone work employing as a guiding technical principle the gradual transformation of several pitch collections. At the conclusion of Solo, these pitch collections change from serial to tonal, effecting a remarkable surprise.

The world-premiere recording of Foss's complete extant piano works was released in 2002 by the Sonatabop.com recording label based in Milwaukee. This recording was completed in honor of Foss's 80th birthday; the project was conceived by pianist Daniel Beliavsky (b. 1978), who in collaboration with producers Donald Sipe (the owner and head of Sonatabop.com as well as Omicronarts.com) and Yuri Beliavsky recorded the repertoire in the summer of 2002.[1] It should be noted that Naxos's release of Foss's complete piano works dates from early 2005, over two years after Sonatabop's recording. Despite this chronology, Naxos inserted a false claim into the CD materials that its release is the first.[2] Several reviews make note of this discrepancy, including one by John France on the British music site MusicWeb-International, and one by Peter Grahame Woolf on another British site, Musical Pointers. These reviews may be read at:

[1] [2]

[edit] Orchestral and Chamber Works

His early works are neoclassical in style, using controlled improvisation and chance procedures with the twelve tone technique and serialism, while his later works are polystylistic.

Works (selected)
title movements date notes
1. Piano Concerto Number 1
  1. Allegro
  2. Andante
  3. Allegro
 1943 Originally a clarinet concerto, rewritten for piano and orchestra.
2. String Quartet Number 1 1947
3. Piano Concerto Number 2
  1. Allegro sostenuto
  2. Adagietto
  3. Allegro vivace
 1949-1951, revised 1952 Modeled after Beethoven's Emperor Concerto.
4. The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County opera in two scenes premiered
18 May 1950
Indiana University		 libretto by Jean Karsavina, based on the short story by Mark Twain [3]
5. Griffelkin opera in three acts premiered
6 November 1956
NBC television		 libretto by A. Reed after H. Foss
6. Time Cycle 1960
7. Introductions and Goodbyes a nine minute opera premiered
5 May 1960		 libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti [4]
8. Echoi 1963
9. Baroque Variations
  1. On a Handel Larghetto
  2. On a Scarlatti Sonata
  3. On a Bach prelude "Phorion"
 1967
10. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird 1978
11. Elegy for Anne Frank 1989 Composed to commemorate 60th birthday anniversary of Anne Frank. Includes optional narration.
12. Renaissance Concerto 1990

[edit] Notable Students

[edit] Personal

  • Wife: Cornelia Brendel Foss, artist/painter; born in Berlin in 1931, married in 1951.[3]
  • Son: Christopher Brendel Foss, advertising executive.
  • Daughter: Eliza Foss Turino, actress.
  • Professional Honorary Member, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity

[edit] References

  1. ^ Daniel Beliavsky
  2. ^ FOSS: Works for Solo Piano (Complete) recommended cd collection, cd review and cd details
  3. ^ Passenger list of the S.S. Volendam, port of New York, 21 September 1939. Passenger list of the S.S. Mauretania, port of New York, 15 October 1951. Revisiting 'The Prairie', The New Yorker, July 23, 2007.

[edit] External links

[edit] Listening

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