Richard Wernick (born January 16, 1934) in Boston, Massachusetts is an American composer. He is best known for his composition Visions of Terror and Wonder, which won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
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Wernick began his musical studies playing the piano at age 11. His high school music theory teacher took notice of his abilities, and introduced him to Irving Fine, who was teaching composition at Brandeis University. [1] Wernick went on to complete his undergraduate studies at Brandeis, where he studied composition with Fine, Harold Shapero and Arthur Berger. He also studied at Tanglewood with Ernst Toch, Aaron Copland, and Boris Blacher and at Mills College with Leon Kirchner. Wernick studied conducting with Leonard Bernstein and Seymour Lipkin. [2]
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Wernick worked as a film and television composer.[2] His output during this time includes the film score for the short comedy A Bowl of Cherries.[3]
Wernick spent much of his career as a composition professor, teaching at SUNY Buffalo and the University of Chicago. However, his longest tenure was at the University of Pennsylvania, from 1968 to 1996.[2] His notable students include Daniel Dorff, Gerald Levinson, Philip Maneval, Ingrid Arauco, and Stephen Jaffe. David Patrick Stearns of The Philadelphia Inquirer considered Wernick's time at University of Pennsylvania, especially during the 1970s, to represent the height of his compositional influence.[4]
In 1983, Riccardo Muti selected Wernick to be the contemporary music advisor to the Philadelphia Orchestra. His role as advisor was to assist Muti in identifying new works for the Philadelphia Orchestra to perform, with a stated emphasis on American composers.[5] He held this position until 1989, though he continued to advise Muti as a special consultant until the end of Muti's tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1993.[6]
Wernick won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his composition Visions of Terror and Wonder. He won Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards in 1986 (first place, tie with Bernard Rands), 1991 (first place), and 1992 (second place). He has also received awards from the Ford, Guggenheim and Naumburg foundations.[2][6] (See also List of Awards below.)
Wernick lives outside of Philadelphia with his wife, bassoonist Bea Wernick.
Wernick has described his style as one that attempts to find common ground with an audience:
My expectation is that I’m not writing down to an audience, but I’m not trying to write above their heads. I’m not writing to an audience which is illiterate and I’m not writing to an audience which is technically educated in music, but I do write for an audience that I assume has experience in listening to music and is willing to at least meet me halfway. So I’ll go halfway to meet them."[7]
As such, critics have sometimes identified his style as more audience-accessible, particularly when compared to more strictly serialist composers of the 20th century.[8] More recently, however, some critics have emphasized the modernist characteristics of his style, calling him a "modernist holdout against prevailing trends toward music that falls easier on the ears."[9][10]
Harmonic analysis of Wernick's work suggests that his style makes reference to tonal harmony, but is usually based on fixed cells of intervals. He occasionally makes use of twelve-tone sequences and their permutations, but this technique is not necessarily a defining feature of his output. Wernick also makes extensive use of baroque-style counterpoint, especially in his string quartets.[2]
In vocal and programmatic works, Wernick's choice of texts often reflect an ideological message. Kaddish Requiem mourns the victims of the Vietnam War, while the final movement of his Duo for Cello and Piano is a memorial for the attacks on September 11, 2001. Several of his works, most notably Kaddish Requiem and Visions of Terror and Wonder, combine religious texts from multiple traditions.[2]
Performers with whom Wernick has frequently worked include the Juilliard String Quartet, David Starobin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Jan de Gaetani, Lambert Orkis, and Gregory Fulkerson.[6][2] Wernick's works were represented on some of the earliest releases by Bridge Records, a label founded by Starobin.[11]
The majority of Wernick's works are published by Theodore Presser Company[12] Many of his manuscripts are held by the Special Collections of the Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania.[6]
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