Douglas Townsend is an American composer and musicologist who became interested in composition while a student at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts

Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts

Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts is a high school specializing in teaching visual arts and performing arts, located near Lincoln Center and the Juilliard School in the Lincoln Center district of Manhattan, on Amsterdam Avenue...

, in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, and taught himself composition, counterpoint and orchestration. In 1941 he began studying composition privately, with Tibor Serly

Tibor Serly

Tibor Serly was a Hungarian violist, violinist and composer.He was one of the students of Zoltán Kodály. He greatly admired and became a young apprentice of Béla Bartók. His association with Bartók was for him both a blessing and a curse...

, Stefan Wolpe

Stefan Wolpe

Stefan Wolpe was a German-born composer.-Life:Wolpe was born in Berlin. He attended the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory from the age of fourteen, and the Berlin Hochschule für Musik in 1920-1921. He studied composition under Franz Schreker and was also a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni...

, Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...

, Otto Luening

Otto Luening

Otto Clarence Luening was a German-American composer and conductor, and an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music....

 and Felix Greissle, among others. He taught at Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...

, CUNY (1958–69), Lehman College

Lehman College

Lehman College is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, USA. Founded in 1931 as the Bronx campus of Hunter College, the school became an independent college within the City University in 1968. The college is named after Herbert Lehman, a former New York governor,...

, CUNY (1970–71), the University of Bridgeport

University of Bridgeport

The University of Bridgeport is a private, independent, non-sectarian, coeducational university located on the Long Island Sound in the South End neighborhood of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The University is fully Accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges...

 (Connecticut; 1973–5) and Purchase College (also known as SUNY Purchase) (1973–6). From 1977 to 1980 he was editor of Musical Heritage Review. Townsend’s research into 18th- and 19th-century music has resulted in editions, recordings and performances, most notably of a Carl Czerny

Carl Czerny

Carl Czerny was an Austrian pianist, composer and teacher. He is best remembered today for his books of études for the piano. Czerny's music was profoundly influenced by his teachers, Muzio Clementi, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Antonio Salieri and Ludwig van Beethoven.-Early life:Carl Czerny was born...

 overture

Overture

Overture in music is the term originally applied to the instrumental introduction to an opera...

 and a mass

Mass (music)

The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...

 by Sigismund Neukomm. He has been awarded research grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund (1965) and the New York State Council on the Arts (1975).

Townsend’s compositions include several orchestral works, chamber music pieces, choral works, film and television scores, three operettas, and one opera. While still a high school student, he won a nationwide contest for student composers; Bernard Herrmann

Bernard Herrmann

Bernard Herrmann was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.An Academy Award-winner , Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo...

 led the CBS Symphony Orchestra in a radio broadcast performance of the winning composition, Contra Dances. Seven years later, Townsend achieved public notice as a composer when pianist Ray Lev

Ray Lev

Ray Lev was an American classical pianist. One year after her birth in Rostov na Donau, Russia, her father, a synagogue cantor, and mother, a concert singer, brought her to the United States.-Life:...

 performed the premiere of his Sonatina No. 1 as part of a sold-out Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

 recital. Townsend's scholarly interests are reflected in his music, which is for the most part securely tonal and written within traditional forms. A fine sense of timbre

Timbre

In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...

 and idiomatic writing is characteristic, as is a sense of humour; the fugal section of the Fantasy on Motives of Burt Bacharach

Burt Bacharach

Burt F. Bacharach is an American pianist, composer and music producer. He is known for his popular hit songs and compositions from the mid-1950s through the 1980s, with lyrics written by Hal David. Many of their hits were produced specifically for, and performed by, Dionne Warwick...

, for example, juxtaposes melodic ideas from Bacharach’s "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" and Niccolò Paganini

Niccolò Paganini

Niccolò Paganini was an Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. He was one of the most celebrated violin virtuosi of his time, and left his mark as one of the pillars of modern violin technique...

’s Caprice No. 24; the introduction musically spells out Bacharach’s name.

Sources