Composition Teachers:

Composition Teachers

6 degrees of separation: Here are some of my teachers, with of their teachers and some of their students. Does the music of Luigi Cherubini somehow remind one of that of Vincent Persichetti? Does the music of Franz Joseph Haydn somehow foreshadow that of Joyce Mekeel? Other than Phil Lesh does anyone else on this list have anything at all to do with "The Grateful Dead?" Some of these connections make a lot of sense, and others are absurd.I hope you find these as interesting as I do.

Merton Brown was more of a collaborator and best friend, studied with Wallingford Riegger and Carl Ruggles, and collaborated with the choreographers, Martha Graham and José Limón.

David Del Tredici was one of my composition teachers at Boston University. He studied with Roger Sessions, Leon Kirshner, Earl Kim and Seymour Shifrin (who studied with William Schuman, Otto Luening, and Darius Milhaud). Along with his college room-mate and my mother's significant other, Rolv Yttrehus, Del Tredici studied with Roger Session.John Adams, Milton Babbitt, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, John Harbison, Earl Kim, and Leon Kirchner also studied with Sessions. Sessions studied with Horatio Parker. Charles Ives was a student of Parker. Parker studied with George Whitefield Chadwick, who studied with Carl Reinecke. Reinecke's students include: Edvard Grieg, Ferruccio Busoni, Charles Villiers Stanford, Leoš Janáček, Isaac Albéniz, and Max Bruch. Reinecke studied with Robert Schumann & Felix Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn studied with Muzio Clementi. Chadwick also studied with Salomon Jadassohn. Jadassohn's students include Albéniz, Busoni, Frederick Delius, and Grieg.

David Diamond was one of my composition teachers at Juilliard, also studied with Roger Sessions, as well as with Bernard Rogers. Rogers studied with Arthur Farwell, who studied with Engelbert Humperdinck. Humperdink studied with Johann Gottlob Friedrich Wieck, who taught his daughter, Clara Wieck Schumann and her husband, Robert Schumann. Humperdinck also studied with Josef Rheinberger and Franz Lachner. Lachner studied with Simon Sechter, who may be the most prolific composer who ever lived. Schter's students include Franz Schubert and Anton Bruckner. Rogers also studied with Percy Goetschius (student: Howard Hanson) and Ernest Bloch, who studied with Eugène Ysaÿe. Ysaÿe studied with Henri Vieuxtemps and Henryk Wieniawski. Vieuxtemps also studied with Charles Auguste de Bériot who studied with Jean-François Tiby. Tiby studied with Giovanni Battista Viotti. Both Diamond, and his teacher, Rogers, studied with Nadia Boulanger, whose sister, Lili, was one of the greatest child prodigies who ever lived. Nadia Boulanger studied with Louis Vierne (assistant to Charles-Marie Widor. Marcel Dupré studied with Widor). Nadia Boulanger's students include: Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, John Eliot Gardiner, Virgil Thomson, Gian Carlo Menotti, Marc Blitzstein, Rolv Yttrehus and nearly everyone else, including my father, Dr. Sam Walter, and my teachers: Joyce MeKeel (see below), Lester Trimble (orchestration at Juilliard), and Robert Moevs (contemporary counterpoint). Moevs studied with Walter Piston. Boulanger studied with Gabriel Fauré. Fauré studied with Camille Saint-Saëns, who studied with Fromental Halévy. Georges Bizet was a student of Halévy.

Dr. Marilyn Keiser: My first composition teacher: from ages 12-15 I studied one year each of private: harmony, counterpoint and composition with Professor Keiser. At the time she was the assistant organist at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC, under under Alec Wyton, who performed my unison Mass, written on my 12th birthday. Professor Keiser taught for many years at The University of Michigan and, according to Steven Elger in The Diapasan, she is "one of our country's foremost concert organists."

Otto Leuning: one of my composition at Juilliard, studied with Ferruccio Busoni. Busoni's students include: Philipp Jarnach, Percy Grainger, and Edgard Varèse. Busoni studied with Reinecke and Salomon Jadassohn (see above listings under
Del Tredici).

Joyce Mekeel was one of my composition teachers at Boston University, studied with Earl Kim who studied with Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg's students include Alban Berg, Anton Webern, John Cage, Lou Harrison, and Leon Kirchner. Schoenberg also studied with Alexander von Zemlinsky. Zemlinsky studied with Anton Door. Door studied with Carl Czerny. Czerny studied with Ludwig von Beethoven. Beethoven studied with Franz Joseph Haydn (one lesson!) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Ms. MeKeel also studied with Sessions, Bloch, and Boulanger (see above under Diamond).

Dr. John Moriarty is a great teacher, accompanist, coach and director. He taught me more than he will ever know about about opera. He is the artistic director emeritis of Central City Opera, and was the chairman of the Opera Department of New England Conservatory; running a program with Boston Conservatory which I attended. He studied piano with Carlo Zecchi (who studied piano with Busoni and Arthur Schnabel) and French vocal literature with Pierre Bernac.

Vincent Persichetti was my main composition teacher at Juilliard. His students include Einojuhani Rautavaara, Peter Schickele (P.D.Q. Bach), Phillip Glass, and Leonardo Balada. Persichetti studied conducting with Fritz Reiner. Leonard Bernstein was also a student of Reiner. Reiner studied piano with Béla Bartók. Bartók studied with István Thomán. Ernő Dohnányi was also a student of Thomán. Thomán studied with Franz Liszt. Liszt studied with Carl Czerny and Johann Mepomuk Hummel. Felix Mendelssohn was a student of Hummel. Liszt also studied with Anton Reicha, as did Hector Berlioz. Reicha studied with Johann Georg Albrechtsberger who studied with Ludwig von Beethoven. Both Liszt and Reicha also studied with Antonio Salieri. Salieri studied with his own brother Francesco Salieri, who was a student of Giuseppe Tartini. Persichetti studied piano with Olga Samaroff. William Kapell and Richard Farrell also studied with Samaroff. Samaroff's husband was Leopold Stokowski. Stokowski studied with Antoine Francois Marmontel. Georges Bizet, Vincent d'Indy, Edward MacDowell and Claude Debussy were also students of Marmontel. Marmontel studied with Élie Halfon Halévy. Samaroff also studied with Pierre Zimmermann who studied with Luigi Cherubini. Samaroff also studied with Ernst Jedliczka who studied with Anton and Nikolai Rubinstein. Alexander Siloti was also a student of Nikolai Rubinstein.

Kyriena Siloti was one of my piano teachers. She studied
with her father, Alexander Siloti. Sergei Rachmaninoff, and
Marc Blitzstein were also students of Alexander Siloti.
Alexander Siloti studied piano with Nikolai Rubinstein
and Franz Liszt, and harmony with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

John Thow was one of my composition teachers at Boston Univeristy. He studied with Ingolf Dahl. Michael Tilson Thomas
was also a student of Dahl. Thow also studied with Earl Kim
(see above under Del Tredici), and Luciano Berio.
Berio'sstudents include Steve Reich and"Grateful Dead"
musician: Phil Lesh. He was a lovely person, a great teacher,
and is truly missed.

Does the music of Luigi Cherubini somehow remind one of that of Vincent Persichetti? Does the music of Franz Joseph Haydn somehow foreshadow that of Joyce Mekeel? Other than Phil Lesh does anyone else on this list have anything at all to do with
"The Grateful Dead?" Probably the answer is no in all cases!