Time's Encomium - Charles Wuorinen

 

Time's Encomium

Charles Wuorinen

Time's Encomium

For Synthesized & Processed Synthesized Sound

Realized at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, New York

Coordinator: Teresa Sterne

Art Direction: William S. Harvey

Cover Design: Hess and/or Antupit

Nonsuch Records STEREO H-71225

1969

From the back cover: Born in New York in 1938, Charles Wuorinen received degrees from Columbia University, numbering among his teachers Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and Jack Beeson. Since 1964 he has been a member of Columbia's music faculty and is now an Assistant Professor; he has also been a visiting professor at Princeton University and the New England Conservatory.

As composer, Wuorinen has to date produced an extraordinarily wide range of works, including symphonies and other orchestral pieces, choral and vocal music, opera, solo instrumental and chamber works, and tape and electronic music (for both synthesizer and computer). A number of these have been issued in recordings on the Golden Crest,, Composers Recordings, Cambridge and Advance labels.

Wuorinen has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, among them the Lili Boulanger Memorial Award, BMI-SCA Awards, Bearns, Alice M. Ditson, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and commissions from the Ford Foundation. Berkshire Music Center, Koussevitzky, and Fromm Music Foundations; and he has been honored by the American Academy of Arts & Letters.

In conjunction with his other activities, Mr. Wuorinen has held directorial and advisory positions for various distinguished organizations, such as the American Composers Alliance. Composers Recordings, I.S.C.M., Independent Electronic Music Center, and American Society of University Composers. He has written on musical subjects for Perspectives of New Music. The New York Times, and other publications, and appears frequently as performer of contemporary works by himself and by fellow composers.

From Billboard - August 23, 1969: Nonesuch's highly successful commissioned series of avant-garde music has another fascinating electronic work in "Time's Encomium (for synthesized and processed synthesized sound)" by the highly regarded Charles Wuorinen. Either side can be played first or by itself: side one, slow and severe, or side two, complex and rapidly unfolding.