Robert Cogan

Robert Cogan (born 1930) is an American composer, music theorist, and teacher, who is a noted explorer of challenging new domains of musical composition and theoryFact|date=April 2007.

He studied at the University of Michigan (B.M., 1951; M.M., 1952); Princeton University (M.F.A., 1956); Royal Conservatory of Bruxelles; Berkshires Music Center, Tanglewood; and Staatliche Hochschule fuer Musik, Hamburg. His principal teachers include Nadia Boulanger, Aaron Copland, Ross Lee Finney, Philippe Jarnach and Roger Sessions.

For more than three decades Robert Cogan has been Chair of Graduate Theoretical Studies and Professor of Composition at New England Conservatory, Boston. He has also been a visiting Professor at the Berkshire Music Center; at State University of New York at Purchase; at the Central Conservatory, Beijing, and Shanghai Conservatory; and at IBM Research.

Publications by Robert Cogan include "Sonic Design: The Nature of Sound and Music" and "Sonic Design: Practice and Problems" (both with Pozzi Escot; published by Prentice-Hall and Publication Contact International), and "New Images of Musical Sound" (Harvard University Press). The latter won the Society for Music Theory's "Distinguished Publication Award" in 1987. He has published in numerous journals including "College Music Symposium"," Interface", "Journal of Music Theory," "Musical Quarterly", "Perspectives of New Music", and "Sonus".

As speaker and/or composer Robert Cogan has been programmed in Belgium, Brazil, Canada (Banff Festival), China, France (IRCAM), Paris; Avignon and Nice Festivals), Germany (Darmstadt Summer Institute for New Music; North and West German Radios; Zinzig Festival; University of Bielefeld), Great Britain (Universities of Edinburgh, London, and Southampton), Italy (Gubbio and Prix Italia Festivals; Italian Society for Musical Analysis; Rockefeller Bellagio Study Center), Korea (Seoul Arts Olympics), the Netherlands (International Computer Music Association), Russia, Sweden (Swedish Institute for Electronic Music), Switzerland (Montanea Festival), and Yugoslavia (Belgrade Radio-Television). In the United States he has appeared under the auspices of the American Society for Aesthetics; College Music Society; Ford, Morse, Rockefeller, and Rothschild Foundations; International Association for Semiotics; League of Composers; Music Educators National Conference; Music Teachers National Association; Society of Composers; Society for Ethnomusicology; and Society for Music Theory; as well as in universities throughout North America.

Performers of Robert Cogan's works include the conductors Tamara Brooks, Lorna Cooke de Varon, John Heiss, Jacques-Louis Monod, Fredrick Prausnitz, Gunther Schuller, and Leopold Stokowski; the Cleveland Orchestra, Hamburg Radio, and RIAS Berlin orchestras; pianists Geoffrey Burleson, Marilyn Crispell, David Del Tredici, David Hagan, Robert Henry, and Ellen Polansky; instrumentalists Esther Lamneck, Alexei Ludewig, and Stephanie Key; and singers Jan De Gaetani, Joan Heller, Jane Bryden, and Maria Tegzes. His music appears on the Delos, Golden Crest, Leo, Music and Arts, Neuma, and Spectrum recording labels.

Robert Cogan resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his partner, composer and theorist Pozzi Escot.

Selected Compositions

* "Algebra & Piano" (1981-2000)
* "Contexts/Memories" for piano (1982)
* "Costellar Pulsations" for two pianists (1985)
* "Pemungkah" for two acoustic and two electric pianos (1983)
* "Sou Nos & Variants" for solo piano (1961)
* "No Attack of Organic Metals" for organ (1973)
* "Eight Poems of William Bronk" for voice and piano (1998)
* "Soliloquy" for saxophone and two percussionists (1987)
* "Aflame in Flight" for solo violin with text by William Carlos Williams (1999)
* "Fierce Singleness" for solo clarinet (1988)
* "Polyutterances" for two solo voices, one of which may be pre-recorded (1989)
* "Spaces and Cries" for five brass instruments (1963)
* "America Is" for string quartet
* "Two Compositions for String Trio" (1960)
* "Whirl DS IS III: Mysterium Fragment" for mixed chorus with two solo sopranos, oboe, clarinet, bassoon & cello (1969)
* "Fantasia for Orchestra" (1951)
* "Gulf Coast Bound", a multi-movement work for big band (1987)

References

External links

* [http://www.sonicdesign.org/index.htm "Sonus" website, featuring music and publications of Robert Cogan & Pozzi Escot]
* [http://www.newenglandconservatory.edu/faculty/coganR.html Robert Cogan page at New England Conservatory website]