Richard Edward Wilson
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Richard Edward Wilson (born 1941) is an American composer of orchestral, operatic, instrumental, and chamber music. Wilson was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was at a young age drawn to the concerts of George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1963, Wilson graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University, where he studied with Robert Moevs and Randall Thompson. He later received an MA from Rutgers University and has since 1966 taught on the faculty of Vassar College.
Richard Wilson's compositions are marked by a stringent yet lyrical atonality which often sets him apart from the established schools of modern American music: minimalism, twelve-tone, neo-romanticism, and avant-garde. Two of his works, Eclogue for solo piano, and his String Quartet No. 3, hold places in the canon of twentieth century music. Of his large-scale orchestral works, the most familiar are: the Symphony No. 1, premiered by the London Philharmonic and recorded by the New Zealand Symphony; Articulations, written for the San Francisco Symphony; and the one-act whimsical opera, Æthelred the Unready, based on the exploits of the ill-advised Saxon king, Ethelred II of England.
