Daniel James Wolf is an American composer.

Studies

Wolf studied composition with Gordon Mumma

Gordon Mumma

Gordon Mumma is an American composer. He cofounded Ann Arbor's Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music with Robert Ashley, was a musician with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and was a member of the Sonic Arts Union with Ashley, Alvin Lucier, and David Behrman...

, Alvin Lucier

Alvin Lucier

Alvin Lucier is an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and...

, and La Monte Young

La Monte Young

La Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...

, as well as musical tunings with Erv Wilson

Erv Wilson

Ervin Wilson is a Mexican/American music theorist. Despite his avoidance of academia, Wilson has been influential on those interested in microtonal music and just intonation, especially in the areas of scale, keyboard, and notation design...

 and Douglas Leedy

Douglas Leedy

Douglas Leedy is an American composer, performer and music scholar.-Biography:Born in Portland, Oregon, Leedy studied with Karl Kohn at Pomona College and at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was in a composition seminar with membership including La Monte Young and Terry Riley...

 and ethnomusicology (M.A., Ph.D. 1990 Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

). Important contacts with Lou Harrison

Lou Harrison

Lou Silver Harrison was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison...

, John Cage

John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

, Walter Zimmermann

Walter Zimmermann

Walter Zimmermann is a German composer.Zimmermann studied composition in Germany with Werner Heider and Mauricio Kagel, the theory of musical intelligence at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht , and computer music at Colgate University in New York.Zimmerman's works are infused by a personal...

. Managing Editor of Xenharmonikon, 1985-89. Based in Europe from 1989, he is known as a member of the "Material" group of composers, along with Hauke Harder

Hauke Harder

Hauke Harder is a German composer and experimental physicist.- Life :Harder received a PhD in Chemistry, and works at the Institute for Physical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry and Physics, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany.In 1989, he studied with Wolfgang von Schweinitz, a New Simplicity...

, Markus Trunk and others.

Compositions

Wolf's compositions apply an experimental approach to musical materials, with a special interest in intonation

Intonation (music)

Intonation, in music, is a musician's realization of pitch accuracy, or the pitch accuracy of a musical instrument. Intonation may be flat, sharp, or both, successively or simultaneously.-Interval, melody, and harmony:...

, yet often display a surface that playfully - if accidentally - recalls historical music. Major works include The White Canoe, an opera seria for hand puppets to the libretto by Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey

Edward St. John Gorey was an American writer and artist noted for his macabre illustrated books.-Early life:...

, six string quartet

String quartet

A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...

s, Figure & Ground for string trio, Field Study for vn, tb, ban, gui, Decoherence for x orchestras of x players, Twoity fl,pf and A Beckett Gray Code for wind quintet. Much of his music is in just intonation, but his work with alternative tunings includes a collection of Etudes in all equal temperaments between 8 and 23 notes per octave.

Composer Wolf identifies with the experimental music tradition—especially its American West Coast manifestation—spiritually, intellectually and personally. He jokingly calls his method "dysfunctional harmony" or "not yet tonal", with some reference to tha "anarchic harmony" found in the late music of John Cage. Three distinct streams combine to form Wolf's work: sound installations, experimental concert works based on sound structures mostly free from historical associations, and experimental concert works based on reifying the tradition of European art music (or other world musics) and then performing operations on its internal principles.

External links

• Daniel James Wolf composer's own webpage with list of works, sample scores, articles
• Material Press publisher
• Renewable Music blog by Daniel Wolf