As you can tell from his dates, this year (1998) is the centennial of the birth of Ernst Bacon! The Ernst Bacon Society was formed in January 1996 to promote the awareness of his music and other works. The society has been working hard to plan performances around the country. If anyone is interested in a list of centennial concerts, obtaining scores or any other information please contact: Sam Farrell, 6 Malverna Road, Roslindale, MA 02131 (e-mail at samfarrell@mindspring.com), or Ellen Bacon at 8 Drovers Lane, De Witt, NY 13214, USA.

Biography

Born in Chicago 100 years ago on May 26, 1988, Bacon’s Austrian mother gave him a love of song and an early start on the piano. Although his varied career included appearances as pianist and conductor, along with teaching and directing positions, his deepest preoccupation was always composing. His musical awards included a Pulitzer Fellowship in 1932 for his symphony in D minor and 3 Guggenheim Fellowships.

From his first job as opera coach at the Eastman School in the early ‘20s, he went on to receive a Masters Degree from the University of California at Berkeley and to teach at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music under Ernest Bloch. During the ‘30s he was director of the WPA Federal Music Project and Orchestra in San Francisco and founded the Carmel Bach Festival. At Syracuse University he was director of the School of Music from 1945 to 1947 and composer in residence and professor of piano until his retirement in 1963.

In 1964 he returned to the West, settling in the small town of Orinda, east of the Berkeley hills. Here, as everywhere else, he drew his greatest inspiration from nature, jotting down notes as he explored local trails. His fertile imagination and constant creative efforts left little time for self-promotion, and although nearly blind in old age, he continued to compose until the very end of his 91 years.

At the age of 19, while majoring in math at Northwestern University, Bacon wrote a complex treatise exploring all possible harmonies. However, when he began to compose music in his 20s, he rejected a purely cerebral approach. He took the position that music is an art, not a science, an that its source should be human and imaginative, rather than abstract and analytical.

Ernst Bacon was self taught in composition, except for two years of study with Karl Weigl in Vienna. Experiencing the depression of post-war Europe at first hand, he understood that the avant-garde movement reflected the pessimism of its origins and set out instead to write music that expressed the vitality and affirmation of our own country. Sometimes compared with Bartok, he incorporated into his music the history and folklore, as well as the indigenous music, poetry, folksongs, jazz rhythms, and the very landscape of America. These elements come through in the piano and violin selections on today’s program.

As with Schubert, a large body of more than 250 art songs is at the heart of an oeuvre that also includes numerous chamber, orchestral, and choral works. According to Marshall Bialosky, Ernst Bacon was "one of the first composers to discover Emily Dickinson... and set a great number of her poems into some of the finest art song music, if not actually the very finest, of any American composer in our history." He was deeply drawn by Walt Whitman’s amplitude of vision, as well as by the poignant, economy of Dickinson. Other poets with whom he felt an affinity included Sandburg (who was a personal friend), Blake, Brontë, Teasdale and Housman.

(contributed by Sam Farrell <samfarrell@mindspring.com>

Pianist, conductor and composer. Studied in Chicago and Vienna and USA with Bloch and Goossens. In 1925 Prof. at Eastman School of Music, in 1945 director of music school of Univ. of Syracuse.