Henry Brant

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Henry Brant (September 15, 1913 – April 26, 2008) was a California-based composer of art music based on spatialization and aleatoric techniques.

Brant developed the concept of spatial music (music where also the spatial factor is significant) originally seen in antiphonal music in the late renaissance and early baroque [1]. He is best known for his compositions Verticals Ascending (conceptually based on the architecture of the Watts Towers in Los Angeles) and Horizontals Extending. Brant won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2002 for his composition Ice Field. In addition to composing, he plays the violin, flute, tin whistle, percussion, piano, and organ and frequently includes parts in his large works for himself to play.

Brant was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada of American parents in 1913, Henry Brant began composing at the age of eight, and studied first at the McGill Conservatorium (1926-29) and then in New York City (1929-34). He composed and conducted for radio, film, ballet, and jazz groups. Starting in the late 40s, he taught at Columbia University, the Juilliard School and, for 24 years, Bennington College. Since 1981, he has made his home in Santa Barbara, California. He was an orchestrator for many Hollywood productions including the Elizabeth Taylor movie Cleopatra (1963), working with composer Alex North.

Henry Brant is America’s foremost composer of acoustic spatial music. The planned positioning of performers throughout the hall, as well as on stage, is an essential factor in his composing scheme and a point of departure for a radically expanded range and intensity of musical expression. Brant’s mastery of spatial composing technique enables him to write textures of unprecedented polyphonic and/or polystylistic complexity while providing maximum resonance in the hall and increased clarity of musical detail for the listener. His catalogue now comprises over 100 spatial works.

Recent premieres include Wind, Water, Clouds & Fire, for 4 choirs and instrumentalists, commissioned by Present Music and premiered on November 19, 2004 at The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Tremors, for 4 singers and 16 instrumentalists, commissioned by the Getty Research Institute, premiered on June 4, 2004, at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Tremors was repeated in a Green Umbrella concert at LA’s New Disney Hall on November 1, 2004. Ghosts & Gargoyles, a concerto for flute solo with flute orchestra, for New Music Concerts, Toronto had its premiere on May 26, 2002. Ice Field, for large orchestral groups and organ, was commissioned by Other Minds for a December 2001 premiere by the San Francisco Symphony.

In the mid 1950’s Brant felt that “single-style music…could no longer evoke the new stresses, layered insanities, and multi-directional assaults of contemporary life on the spirit.” In keeping with Brant’s belief that music can be as complex and contradictory as everyday life, his larger works often employ multiple, contrasting performing forces, as in Meteor Farm (1982) for symphony orchestra, large jazz band, two choruses, West African drum ensemble and chorus, South Indian soloists, large Gamelan ensemble, percussion orchestra and two Western solo sopranos. Brant’s spatial experiments have convinced him that space exerts specific influences on harmony, polyphony, texture and timbre. He regards space as music’s “fourth dimension,” (after pitch, time and timbre). Brant continues to experiment with new combinations of acoustic timbres, even creating entire works for instrumental family groups of a single timbre: Orbits for 80 trombones, Ghosts & Gargoyles for 9 flutes, and others for multiple trumpets and guitars. This predilection for ensembles of a single tone quality dates from Angels and Devils (1932). Brant does not use electronic materials or permit amplification in his music.

A member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters, Brant was awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Music for Ice Field (2001). He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships and was the first America composer to win the Prix Italia. Among other honors are Ford Foundation, Fromm Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and Koussevitzky awards and the American Music Center’s Letter of Distinction. The Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel has acquired Brant’s complete archive of original manuscripts including over 300 works (1998). In conjunction with Brant’s 85th birthday concert, Wesleyan University conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts (1998).

He died on April 26, 2008 in Santa Barbara, California, aged 94.