Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Music Examples
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- I Introduction
- II Some Autobiography
- III An American Apprenticeship
- IV Writings About Music
- V Literary Connections
- VI Peter Dickinson on his own Music
- VII Interviews and a Memoir
- VIII Travels
- Appendix 1 Peter Dickinson: Chronological List of Works
- Appendix 2 Peter and Meriel Dickinson: Discography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Music Examples
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- I Introduction
- II Some Autobiography
- III An American Apprenticeship
- IV Writings About Music
- V Literary Connections
- VI Peter Dickinson on his own Music
- VII Interviews and a Memoir
- VIII Travels
- Appendix 1 Peter Dickinson: Chronological List of Works
- Appendix 2 Peter and Meriel Dickinson: Discography
- Index
Summary
I arrived in New York on 1 September 1958, Labor Day, and became a graduate student at the Juilliard School of Music on a Rotary Foundation Fellowship. These Fellowships covered the costs of travel, tuition and living, but also had an ambassadorial role in requiring Fellows from many different countries to speak at Rotary Clubs around the whole area. The Rotarians I met were generous in their hospitality; anxious to show how they lived and worked; but some became perplexed when I extolled American achievements in literature, art and music.
I studied composition with Bernard Wagenaar and amongst my fellow students were Philip Glass and Peter Schikele – one concert programme at Juilliard contained works by all three of us. Wagenaar was a sympathetic teacher, not very different from the approach I had previously come across when showing pieces to Lennox Berkeley. My grades for composition were in the highest category throughout – ‘excellent, outstanding’. I also attended Charles Jones's graduate class where I came across Ives’ Concord Sonata for the first time, and William Bergsma supported the work of student composers. The only concert devoted entirely to my music took place at International House on 3 May 1959. It included first performances of A Dylan Thomas Song Cycle and Fantasia for solo violin. What became my Juilliard Dances was premiered at Juilliard on 13 May 1959, in a project where three composers wrote music for the same dance. The others were Dorothy Hill Klotzman and Leonardo Balada.
It was after I returned for a second year in New York that I became a contributing editor to the Musical Courier and had the opportunity to attend concerts and recitals given by some of the finest performers in the world. In that year I spent a few months on the music staff of the New York City Ballet and actually played for Balanchine to choreograph. However, since I was not a member of the American Musicians Union; could only have joined it if I had applied for citizenship, which I did not intend to do; I had to leave. My ballet connections had developed earlier when I met the Mexican dancer and choreographer Gloria Contreras, one of whose early ballets was to my Vitalitas Variations. In selecting from my reviews of concerts, mostly in Carnegie Hall, I have chosen rewarding occasions rather than mediocre performances best forgotten.
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- Peter Dickinson: Words and Music , pp. 24 - 47Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2016