Avant-garde U.S. composer Henry Brant dies at 94
Last Updated: Thursday, May 1, 2008 | 12:24 PM ET
CBC News
Montreal-born composer Henry Brant, known for his experimental works, won a Pulitzer Prize and two Guggenheim Fellowships. (Kathy Wilkowski/Associated Press)Henry Brant, a Montreal-born composer who developed the concept of spatial music, died Saturday at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 94.
He died of natural causes, according to a statement from his family.
In the 1950s, Brant sought a new sound because he believed "single-style music … could no longer evoke the new stresses, layered insanities, and multi-directional assaults of contemporary life on the spirit," according to a quote on his website.
The result was spatial music, in which musicians were placed at different points around a concert hall to provide resonance for the listener.
Throughout his composing career Brant experimented with different performance styles, combining West African drums, South Asian soloists, jazz ensembles or choruses with more traditional orchestras.
Brant said his work is about the chaos of modern urban life in a multicultural world, in which you can hear rap coming from a car radio, Indian classical music emanating from an apartment windows, and Beethoven or jazz coming from a sidewalk cafe.
He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his composition Ice Field.
He also composed for radio, ballet, jazz groups and film, including the 1963 film Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor. He was orchestrator for Carny (1980) and Good Morning Vietnam (1987).
Brant was born Sept. 15, 1913, in Montreal of American parents. He studied music at the McGill Conservatorium from 1926-29, then continued his studies in New York.
He played the violin, flute, tin whistle, percussion, piano and organ and began composing at age eight.
He went on to study and later teach at the Juilliard School, Columbia University and Bennington College, where he taught composition for 24 years.
Space explorer
In many of his most famous compositions, the positioning of the players throughout the performance venue were keys to the musical experience.
He is known for works such as Verticals Ascending, based on the Watts Towers in Los Angeles, and Horizontals Extending, which features two ensembles placed widely apart and a trapset (percussion) on stage, each playing in a different time.
The 1979 composition Orbits was scored for 80 trombones, and another piece, Rosewood, called for 100 classical guitars. Prisons of the Mind, a 1990 piece for the Dallas symphony hall, had 314 musicians.
His friend, professor Neely Bruce, remembered Brant as a perfectionist.
"He's a collage artist, definitely working with large-scale forces," Bruce said.
The wide spacing is crucial and "makes for a clarity that is really remarkable," he added.
The 1984 composition Fire in the Amstel called for four boatloads of flutists and other musicians to pass through the canals of Amsterdam.
"It was all timed so when one of the flutes went under one of the bridges of the canal, a marching band would go over it," Bruce said. Meanwhile, cathedral bells rang along the way, and choirs sang in the churches.
Ghosts & Gargoyles, a concerto for flute solo with flute orchestra, debuted in 2002 at Toronto's New Music Concerts.
Brant received two Guggenheim Fellowships and was the first American composer to win the Prix Italia.
His archive of 300 compositions was acquired in 1998 by the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel.
Brant and his wife, Kathy Wilkowski, moved to Santa Barbara in 1981.
With files from the Associated Press
