William Bolcom

William Bolcom was born in Seattle, Washington in 1938. He began composition studies with John Verall at an early age and continued with Darius Milhaud at Mills College, and with Milhaud and Messiaen in Paris. After a period of work with Leland Smith at Stanford, he taught at the University of Washington and Queens College, CUNY. While in New York, he developed the technique and style of playing ragtime that placed him in the forefront of the ragtime revival. From 1968 to 1970, he was composer-in-residence at the Yale University Drama School and at New York University. In 1971, Bolcom met the mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, whom he married in 1975 and with whom he began to develop programs of American popular song. Bolcom has also made solo albums of music by Gershwin, Milhaud, and himself. In 1973, he began a long association with the University of Michigan as professor of composition.

Bolcom's intent to break down distinctions between popular and serious music is realized in his own compositions, in which widely differing styles are often juxtaposed within the same work. An intensely dramatic atonality is contrasted with the song styles of World War I (as in the cabaret opera Dynamite Tonight), ragtime (Black Host), old popular tunes (Whisper Moon), or a waltz (Piano Quartet). Bolcom's ideology, rooted in the transcendentalism of Blake, inspires compositions concerned with momentous religious and philosophical themes, a concern expressed in intense, even flamboyant music of vivid illustrative power. These qualities are evident most notably in the monumental setting of the 46 poems in William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. The latter work, a summation of Bolcom's achievements as a composer, was highly acclaimed at its world premiere in Stuttgart in 1984.