Lukas Foss (Berlin, - Manhattan, New York, [1]) est un compositeur, pianiste et chef d'orchestre américain.

 

Lukas Fuchs à Berlin en 1922, il vint avec sa famille à Paris en 1933 et étudia au Conservatoire de Paris jusqu'en 1937 avec Lazare-Lévy (piano), Noël Gallon (composition), puis il partit aux États-Unis où sa famille se fixa, et poursuivit ses études musicales. Il entra au Curtis Institute de Philadelphie et eut pour professeurs Isabelle Vengerova (piano), Rosario Scalero, Randall Thompson (composition) et Fritz Reiner (orchestration). Il travailla ensuite avec Paul Hindemith à l'Université Yale. Il fut l'assistant de Serge Koussevitsky de 1946 à 1953 au Berkshire Music Center et pianiste du Boston Symphony Orchestra. Après un séjour de deux ans à Rome (1950-1952), il fut nommé professeur de composition à l'Université de Californie à Los Angeles de 1952 à 1963, et chef d'orchestre de la Philharmonie de Buffalo. Il dirigea aussi le Center for Creative and Performing Arts de cette ville. À partir de 1971, il dirigea l'orchestre philharmonique de Brooklyn, puis l'orchestre Kol Israel de Jérusalem.

Le compositeur

Comme jeune compositeur, son style musical, traditionnel et empreint de lyrisme témoignait de sa filiation à Gustav Mahler, mais son pays adoptif lui fit assimiler les influences de son maître Paul Hindemith comme celles d'Aaron Copland et Igor Stravinsky, plus particulièrement dans ses œuvres vocales

(The Prairie,1942; Song of Songs, 1946; Griffelkin, 1955).

En 1957, il créa un ensemble de musique de chambre expérimental à l'Université de Californie (UCLA) qui, suivant sa pensée, devait se consacrer à un travail de recherches concernant les problèmes d'improvisation et de rapports entre compositeur et interprètes. Ses recherches l'amenèrent à aborder différentes techniques d'écriture (sérialisme, formes ouvertes, formes aléatoires, formes précalculées). Foss a dès lors constamment recherché le renouvèlement des relations entre compositeur, musique et interprètes, en y incluant aussi le public, ce qui fait sa spécificité.

Compositions (sélection)

Links

Interviews

 

Born as Lukas Fuchs in Berlin, Germany in 1922, Foss was soon recognized as a child prodigy. He began piano and theory lessons with Julius Goldstein [Herford] in Berlin at the age of six. His parents were Hilde (Schindler) and the philosopher and scholar Martin Fuchs. He moved with his family to Paris in 1933, where he studied piano with Lazare Lévy, composition with Noël Gallon, orchestration with Felix Wolfes, and flute with Louis Moyse. In 1937 he moved with his parents and brother to the United States, where his father (on advice from the Quakers who had taken the family in upon arrival in Philadelphia) changed the family name to Foss. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, with Isabelle Vengerova (piano), Rosario Scalero (composition) and Fritz Reiner (conducting).

At Curtis, Foss began a lifelong friendship with classmate Leonard Bernstein, who later described Foss as an "authentic genius." In 1961 Bernstein would conduct the premiere of Foss's Time Cycle, while Foss would conduct the premiere of Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.

Foss also studied with Sergei Koussevitzky during the summers from 1939 to 1943 at the Berkshire Music Center (now known as the Tanglewood Music Center) and, as a special student, composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale University from 1939 to 1940. He became an American citizen in 1942.

Foss was appointed professor of music at UCLA in 1953, replacing Arnold Schoenberg. While there he founded the Improvisation Chamber Ensemble, which made its Boston debut in 1962 for the Peabody Mason Concert series.[4] He founded the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts in 1963 while at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Six different years from 1961 to 1987, Foss was the Music Director of the esteemed Ojai Music Festival. From 1963 to 1970 he was Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1971-1988 he was Music Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic (formerly Brooklyn Philharmonia). From 1981 to 1986, he was conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.[2] He was a Professor of Music, Theory, and Composition at Boston University beginning in 1991. His notable students include Faye-Ellen Silverman, Claire Polin and Rocco Di Pietro.

He is grouped in the "Boston school" along with Arthur Berger, Irving Fine, Alexei Haieff, Harold Shapero, and Claudio Spies.

He was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.[5][not in citation given]

Lukas Foss, who was afflicted with Parkinson's disease in his final years, died at his home in Manhattan on February 1, 2009, aged 86, of a heart attack.

In 1951 Foss married Cornelia Brendel, an artist and painter who was born in Berlin in 1931, the daughter of art historian Otto Brendel. Lukas and Cornelia Foss had two children, Christopher Brendel Foss, who became a documentary filmmaker and corporate consultant on social and environmental engagement/sustainability communications, and Eliza Foss Topol, an actress. Lukas and Cornelia were separated for almost five years, from 1968 to 1972, while Cornelia was the lover of pianist Glenn Gould and moved, with the two children, to Toronto, an arrangement that she later called, "a perfect triangle".[