George Perle
Play Radio
Listen to George Perle Radio,
featuring artists like Ralph Shapey, Roger Sessions, Ernst Krenek, James Dillon and more…
-
Search on Spotify
Yes, it scrobbles! Learn more
1,021 plays (80 listeners)
George Perle (born May 6, 1915 in Bayonne, New Jersey; died January 23, 2009 in Manhattan) is a composer and music theorist. A student of Ernst Krenek, Perle composes with a technique of his own devising called “twelve-tone tonality,” which is different from, but related to, twelve-tone technique (Perle, 1992). Perle’s former student Paul Lansky describes it thus: “Basically this creates a hierarchy among the notes of the chromatic scale so that they are all referentially related to one or two pitches which then function as a tonic note or chord in tonality.
The system similarly creates a hierarchy among intervals and finally, among larger collections of notes, ‘chords.’ The main debt of this system to the 12-tone system lies in its use of an ordered linear succession in the same way that a 12-tone set does” (Chase 1992, p.587).
Perle’s first musical experience was an encounter with Chopin’s Étude in F minor, played by an aunt.
The New York Times obituary by Allan Kozinn notes that in an interview in 1985, he said, “It literally paralyzed me. I was extraordinarily moved and acutely embarrassed at the same time, because there were other people in the room, and I could tell that nobody else was having the same sort of reaction I was.”
In 1968 Perle cofounded the Alban Berg Society with Igor Stravinsky and Hans F. Redlich, who had the idea (according to Perle in his letter to Glen Flax of 4/1/89). In 1986 Perle was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize for his Fourth Wind Quintet.
Perle’s first musical experience was an encounter with Chopin’s Étude in F minor, played by an aunt.
The New York Times obituary by Allan Kozinn notes that in an interview in 1985, he said, “It literally paralyzed me. I was extraordinarily moved and acutely embarrassed at the same time, because there were other people in the room, and I could tell that nobody else was having the same sort of reaction I was.”
In 1968 Perle cofounded the Alban Berg Society with Igor Stravinsky and Hans F. Redlich, who had the idea (according to Perle in his letter to Glen Flax of 4/1/89). In 1986 Perle was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize for his Fourth Wind Quintet.
Shouts:
1 shout
Top Albums
Top Listeners
-
B4AfterWebRadio
Top Listener
Recent Activity
-
postcontemp added George Perle to postcontemp’s library. September 2011
-
Bubimann tagged George Perle with klassik, klassische musik and rip. July 2011
-
blackless tagged George Perle with ‘contemporary classical’. June 2011
-
blackless added George Perle to blackless’s library. June 2011
-
AristideKlopbk tagged George Perle with george perle, us composers and musique contemporaine. May 2011
-
AristideKlopbk added George Perle to AristideKlopbk’s library. May 2011
-
Seavas tagged George Perle with ‘a cashiers point of view’. April 2011
-
Wulfenlord created the German wiki page for George Perle. March 2011
-
MC_OK, sonorobject and JoshCIVM added George Perle to their libraries. December 2010
-
MC_OK tagged George Perle with ‘avant-garde’. December 2010
More Information
- Links
- Labels
