William Bergsma
Encyclopedia

Biography

After studying piano with his mother, a former opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 singer, and then the viola
Viola
The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...

, Bergsma moved on to study composition; his most significant teachers were Howard Hanson
Howard Hanson
Howard Harold Hanson was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music. As director for 40 years of the Eastman School of Music, he built a high-quality school and provided opportunities for commissioning and performing American music...

 and Bernard Rogers
Bernard Rogers
Bernard Rogers was an American composer.Rogers was born in New York City. He studied with Arthur Farwell, Ernest Bloch, Percy Goetschius, and Nadia Boulanger. He taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music, The Hartt School, and the Eastman School of Music...

. Bergsma attended Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 for two years (1938-40) before moving on to the Eastman School of Music
Eastman School of Music
The Eastman School of Music is a music conservatory located in Rochester, New York. The Eastman School is a professional school within the University of Rochester...

, where he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees. In 1946 he accepted a position at Juilliard, where he remained until 1963, eventually holding such positions as chair of composition and from 1961-63, associate dean. In 1963 he moved on to the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

, heading the music school until 1971, remaining a professor from then on after stepping down from the administrative post. In 1966 Bergsma founded the Contemporary Group at the University of Washington, which is an organization of composers and musicians who stage performances of new musical works and educate students and the public about contemporary music; the group remains active to this day. He is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

s, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Students of Bergsma include composers Jack Behrens
Jack Behrens
Jack Behrens is a Canadian composer, music educator, and writer of American birth. A member of the Canadian League of Composers and an associate of the Canadian Music Centre, his music has been performed throughout North America and on CBC Radio and radio stations in he United States...

, Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...

, Karl Korte
Karl Korte
Karl Korte is an American composer of contemporary classical music.He grew up in Englewood, New Jersey. He attended the Juilliard School, where he studied with Peter Mennin, William Bergsma, and Vincent Persichetti...

, and Robert Parris.

Bergsma's music is noted for its lyrical, contrapuntal qualities. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Bergsma rejected serialism in favor of a more conservative style, though one distinctly rooted in the 20th century. He eschewed the avant-garde—his obituary in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is an online newspaper and former print newspaper covering Seattle, Washington, United States, and the surrounding metropolitan area...

describes him as having "never deserted tonality" and seeing "dozens of his former avant-garde colleagues returning to the fold"—though he did embrace aleatoric
Aleatoric music
Aleatoric music is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer...

 techniques later in his career.

He composed two operas, The Wife of Martin Guerre (1956) and The Murder of Comrade Sharik (1973), which are markedly different in style. The first is a somber tale of a 16th century French peasant's disappearance and return upon which he is suspected to be an impostor; the music is marked by dissonance which emphasizes the tension in the story, particularly in the final courtroom scene. The second is more lighthearted and comic; Bergsma wrote his own libretto after the story Heart of a Dog
Heart of a Dog
Heart of a Dog , a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, is a biting satire of the New Soviet man written in 1925 at the height of the NEP period, when Communism appeared to be weakening in the Soviet Union....

by Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhaíl Afanásyevich Bulgákov was a Soviet Russian writer and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, which The Times of London has called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.-Biography:Mikhail Bulgakov was born on...

, which involves a dog transforming into a citizen of 1920s Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 as a result of a doctor's experiments. The partially-aleatoric orchestral writing is intended to be the voice of Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

, and quotes from Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...

, La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...

and Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...

for comedic effect. He was also a skillful composer of smaller works, including many chamber ensembles and solo piano pieces as well as orchestral writings.

Bergsma died in Seattle
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

of a heart attack, at the age of 72.

Selected works

  • Symphony no.1 (1949)
  • Tangents (1951), piano
  • A Carol on Twelfth Night (1954), orchestra
  • The Wife of Martin Guerre (1956), opera
  • March with Trumpets (1956), band
  • Concerto for wind quintet (1958)
  • Chameleon Variations (1960) orchestra
  • Fantastic Variations on a Theme from Tristan and Isolde (1961), viola and piano
  • In Celebration, (1963), orchestra
  • The Murder of Comrade Sharik (1973), opera
  • Symphony no. 2, "Voyages" (1976), solo violin, chorus, and orchestra
  • The Voice of Coelacanth (1981), horn, violin, and piano
  • Variations (1984), piano

External links

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