Benjamin Boretz


Benjamin Aaron Boretz is an American composer and music theorist.

Life and work

Benjamin Boretz was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Abraham Jacob Boretz and Leah Boretz. He graduated with a degree in music from Brooklyn College in 1954, studied composition with Tadeusz Kassern, and later studied composition at Brandeis University with Arthur Berger and Irving Fine, with Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Music Festival and School, with Lukas Foss at UCLA, and with Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions at Princeton University. Boretz was one of the first composers to work with computer-synthesized sound. In the late 1970s and 1980s he converged his compositional and pedagogical practices in a project of real-time improvisational music-making, culminating in the formation at Bard College of the music-learning program called Music Program Zero, which flourished until 1995. He has written extensively on musical issues, as critic, theorist, and musical philosopher, from the perspective of a practicing composer. His earliest large-scale music-intellectual essay was the book-length "Meta-Variations, Studies in the Foundations of Musical Thought," which addresses the epistemological questions involved in the cognition and composition of music, and propounds a radically relativistic/individualistic/ontological reconstruction of the musical creative process. Later, in 1978, his text composition "Language, as a Music, Six marginal Pretexts for Composition" engaged questions of the origin and nature of language and meaning as they might be conceived from the perspective of music.
Boretz has taught in the music departments of a number of American universities, including Brandeis, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Princeton University, University of Chicago, NYU, Columbia University, University of Michigan, Bard College, UC Santa Barbara, Evergreen College, and University of Southampton.
Boretz is a co-founder, with Arthur Berger, of the composers' music journal Perspectives of New Music and in 1988 founded Open Space and, in 1999, The Open Space magazine, which he edits with Dorota Czerner, Tildy Bayar, Jon Forshee, Dean Rosenthal, and Arthur Margolin. He was principal music critic for The Nation from 1962 to 1970.
He has two children, Avron and Nina.

Recordings

Boretz's work as composer and writer is available on CDs, DVDs, and print books issued by , a cooperative formed by Boretz with Elaine Barkin and J. K. Randall.

Principal Compositions

  • Concerto Grosso for String Orchestra
  • Two Holy Sonnets of John Donne
  • Nocturne for String Orchestra
  • Partita for Piano
  • Leda and the Swan for alto voice, 2 cellos, flute
  • Divertimento for chamber ensemble
  • Violin Concerto
  • Overture to "Jezebel"
  • String Quartet
  • 2 musics for lukas foss
  • Donne Songs for soprano and piano
  • Group Variations I for chamber orchestra
  • Group Variations II for computer
  • Liebeslied, for a pianist alone
  • for solo piano
  • Language, as a music / six marginal pretexts for composition for speaker, piano, prerecorded tape
  • Passage, for Roger Sessions at 80 for piano
  • Converge for ensemble
  • Talk: If I am a musical thinker
  • Elie: The Dance
  • forM
  • to open I
  • please think
  • to open II
  • Invention
  • 30 Inter/Play realtime sound sessions
  • ONE, eight pianosolo soundsessions
  • The River Between
  • Sugar, Free
  • Lament for Sarah
  • Scores for Composers
  • Dialogue for JKR
  • Kivapiece, for and about John Silber
  • The Purposes and Politics of Engaging Strangers
  • gendermusic for computer
  • music/consciousness/gender
  • echoic/anechoic
  • Black /Noise I
  • Black /Noise III
  • Music, as a Music for chamber orchestra
  • I/O for two speakers
  • O for piano
  • O for electric guitar
  • Ainu Dreams
  • Postlude
  • Downtime for piano and electronic percussion
  • The Memory of All That. A Holy Sonnet of John Donne for Milton Babbitt
  • Qixingshan for String Quartet
  • Caves
  • St. Andrews' Night
  • fireflies
  • With respect to George for vibraphone solo
  • for piano
  • Fantasy on an improvisation by Jim Randall for the Cygnus Ensemble
  • Looking for images by Linda Cassidy
  • One on One for solo clarinet
  • A Question, A Rose for violin alone

    Principal writings (published)

Books:
  • Language, as a music. Six marginal pretexts for composition. for speaker, prerecorded tape, and piano. Lingua Press, 1980
  • Talk: If I am a musical thinker. Station Hill Press, 1984
  • Music Columns from The Nation, 1962–70; selected and edited, and with an introduction by, Elaine Barkin. Open Space Publications, 1988
  • Meta-Variations. Studies in the Foundations of Musical Thought. Open Space Publications, 1994
  • Being About Music. Textworks 1960-2003. Volume 1: 1960-1978; Volume II: 1978-2003. Open Space Publications, 2003
  • Inside in...outside out. Edited by Tildy Bayar. Introduction by David Lidov. Afterwords by Charles Stein, John Rahn, Joshua Banks Mailman, Jon Forshee, Robert Morris, Arthur Margolin and Scott Gleason, Dorota Czerner. Open Space Publications, 2020
Articles published: in journals: The Open Space Magazine; Musical America; Musical Quarterly; Harper's; The Nation; Perspectives of New Music; Journal of Philosophy; Cimaise; the London Magazine; Journal of Music Theory; Contemporary Music Newsletter; Proceedings of the American Society of University Composers; Proceedings of the International Musicological Society; News of Music;
in books: Perspectives on Contemporary Music Theory ; Perspectives on Musical Aesthetics.