George Perle

George Perle (May 6, 1915 – January 23, 2009) was a composer and music theorist. He was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. A student of Ernst Krenek, Perle composed with a technique of his own devising called "twelve-tone tonality," which is different from, but related to, twelve-tone technique^[1] of the Second Viennese School of which he was an, "early admirer," and whose techniques he used aspects of but never fully adopted.^[2] Perle's former student Paul Lansky described 12-tone tonality thus: "Basically this creates a hierarchy among the notes of the chromatic scale so that they are all referentially related to one or two pitches which then function as a tonic note or chord in tonality. The system similarly creates a hierarchy among intervals and finally, among larger collections of notes, 'chords.' The main debt of this system to the 12-tone system lies in its use of an ordered linear succession in the same way that a 12-tone set does".^[3]

In 1968 Perle cofounded the Alban Berg Society with Igor Stravinsky and Hans F. Redlich, who had the idea (according to Perle in his letter to Glen Flax of 4/1/89). Perle's important work on Berg includes documenting that the third act of Lulu, rather than being an unfinished sketch as long thought, was actually three-fifths complete and that the Lyric Suite contains a secret program dedicated to Berg's love-affair.^[2] After retiring from Queens College in 1985 he became a professor emeritus at the Aaron Copland School of Music.^[2] In 1986 Perle was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his Fourth Wind Quintet and also a MacArthur Fellowship.^[2] "Widely considered the poetic voice of atonal composition," he died aged 93 in his home in New York City in January 2009.^[2]

Partial bibliography

• Perle, George (1992). "Symmetry, the Twelve-Tone Scale, and Tonality", Contemporary Music Review 6 (2), pp. 81–96.
• Perle, George (1962, reprint 1991). Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. University of California Press.
• Perle, George (1978, reprint 1992). Twelve-Tone Tonality. University of California Press.
• Perle, George (1990). The Listening Composer. California: University of California Press. .
• Perle, George (1984). "Scriabin's Self-Analysis", Musical Analysis III/2 (July).
• Perle, George (1980). The Operas of Alban Berg. Vol. 1: Wozzeck. California: University of California Press.
• Perle, George (1985). The Operas of Alban Berg. Vol. 2: Lulu. California: University of California Press.

References

External links

• George Perle's homepage
• Wikiquote - quotes by and about George Perle
• GeorgePerle.com A Life in Music
• ENCOUNTERS: George Perle by George Sturm
• New Music and Listener Expectation: A commencement address given at San Francisco Conservatory of Music by George Perle
• Reflections by George Perle
• Those Were The Days. Or Were They?: Three Living Legends of Contemporary Music Compare Yesterday and Today by Mic Holwin (also George Crumb and David Diamond)
• NewMusicBox In the 1st Person : Three Generations of Teaching Music Composition Part One: George Perle and Paul Lansky - February 19, 2002 - Upper West Side, New York, NY