22 November 1925, Queens, NY – 21 June 2015, Boston, MA
American composer, conductor, horn player, and educator
Works for Brass Ensemble
- Symphony for Brass and Percussion, Op. 16 (1949) for brass ensemble
- Music for Brass Quintet (1961)
- Double Quintet for Wind and Brass Quintets (1961)
- Diptych for Brass Quintet and Concert Band (1964)
- Diptych for Brass Quintet and Orchestra (1964)
- Little Brass Music (1967) for brass quintet
- Brass Quintet No. 2 (1993)
- Concerto Festivo for Brass Quintet and Orchestra (1994)
- Bright and Sassy (1997) for brass ensemble
- Fanfare for Four Trumpets and Four Trombones
Biography
Gunther Schuller began his professional life as a horn player in both the jazz and classical worlds, working as readily with Miles Davis and Gil Evans as with Toscanini; he was principal horn of the Cincinnati Symphony from age sixteen and later of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra until 1959.
In the 1950s he began a conducting career focusing largely on contemporary music, and thereafter conducted most of the major orchestras of the world in a wide range of works, including his own. He was central in precipitating a new stylistic marriage between progressive factions of jazz and classical, coining the term “Third Stream” and collaborating in the development of the style with John Lewis, the Modem Jazz Quartet, and others.
An educator of extraordinary influence, he has been on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and Yale University; he was, for many years, head of contemporary music activities (succeeding Aaron Copland) as well as a director of the Tanglewood Music Center and served as President of the New England Conservatory. He has published several books and recently embarked on the writing of his memoirs.
In the late 1970s he started the GunMar and Margun music publishing companies and later the GM Recordings label (the GunMar/ Margun catalogs are now part of G. Schirmer/Music Sales/AMP). Composition had a continual central presence in Schuller’s musical life: he wrote more than 180 works dating back to the beginning of his career when, at age nineteen, he was soloist in his own Horn Concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Eugene Goosens. His works range from solo works to concertos, symphonies, and opera, and many fall outside of any genre (for which reason there can be no such thing as a brief and comprehensive overview of his output).
One of his first works performed by a major orchestra was his Symphony for Brass, first performed in 1949 by Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic; his Symphony No. 3, “In Praise of Winds” (1981) is also for wind ensemble. Schuller’s advocacy of other composers through performance, publishing, recording, teaching and administration had been as unflagging in its energy and scope as his pursuit of his own musical expression as performer, conductor, and composer.