Michael Daugherty

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the screenwriter of Superman Returns, see Michael Dougherty.

Michael Daugherty (born April 28, 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa) is an American composer. He comes from a musical family; his father was a dance-band drummer and his four younger brothers are professional musicians.

Daugherty's music is characterized by an interest in American popular culture. He has composed works based on Superman (Metropolis Symphony, 1988-1993, and Bizarro, 1993), Elvis Presley (Elvis Everywhere and Dead Elvis), Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Jackie O, 1997), Niagara Falls (Niagara Falls, 1997, for symphonic band), Liberace (Le Tombeau de Liberace), UFOs (UFO, 1999), and Bells for Stokowski (2001).

Daugherty's music has been widely performed. He has frequently been commissioned, by Evelyn Glennie amongst others. He has received numerous awards for his music.

In 2006, guitarist Manuel Barrueco commissioned and premiered Bay of Pigs from Daugherty for string quartet and guitar. It was premiered by Barrueco and Cuarteto Latinoamericano.

[edit] Bells for Stokowski

The orchestration is for piccolo (doubling on flute), three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two Bb clarinets, bass clarinet, saxophone quartet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four C trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani (five drums), four percussion (vibraphone, glockenspiel, marimba, tubular bells, wind chimes, crotales, cymbals, finger cymbals, triangles, sleigh bells, bell tree, large gong, earth plates, bass drum), two harps, amplified steel string acoustic guitar and strings.

"Bells for Stokowski is a tribute to one of the most influential conductors of the 20th century. As maestro of the Philadelphia Orchestra (1912-36), Leopold Stokowski became famous for interpreting classical music in brilliant new ways. Stokowski boldly conducted American music alongside European traditional and new orchestral repertoire. Stokowski created a sensation by conducting world premieres of avant-garde composers such as Igor Stravinsky and Edgar Varese, and he enraged classical purists with his lavishly Romantic orchestral transcriptions of Bach. Stokowski’s 1940 collaboration with Walt Disney in Fantasia resulted in the first stereophonic recording of an orchestral soundtrack.

In Bells for Stokowski Daugherty imagined Stokowski in Philadelphia visiting the Liberty Bell at sunrise, and listening to all the bells of the city resonate. In keeping with Stokowski’s musical vision, he looked simultaneously to the past and the future of American orchestral concert music, utilizing multiple musical canons, polyrhythms, and counterpoints to achieve a complex timbral layering. In the coda he evokes the famous "Stokowski sound," by making the orchestra resound like an enormous, rumbling gothic organ. In the final chords of Bells for Stokowski, we hear the last echoes of a long legacy of great performances by Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music.[1]