Conference napalm::commusic_v1

2242.0. "Ussachevsky, a life in music" by MILKWY::JANZEN (Busy-ness is not Business) Fri Jan 19 1990 10:02

    Los Angeles Daily News January 6, 1990 obits

    Ussachevsky, electronic composer

    (New York Times News Service)
    
    NEW YORK - Vladimir Ussachevsky, who composed the first piece of 
    electrnoic music heard in concert in the United States and who went 
    on to lead the pioneering Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, 
    died of a brain tumor Thursday at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx.  He was 78.
    
    Ussachevsky studied traditional composition and worked all his mature life
    in what he once called a "pseudo-Romantic Russian style," with
    an emphasis on chrola music derived from the Russian Orthodox Church.

    But he was best known for his electronic composition and for his 
    leadership in the institutionalization of this musical genre.  
    Ussachevsky began composing directly onto magnetic tape in 1951, and the 
    results of that early work were first heard the next year at a 
    Composers' Forum concert at McMillin Theater (now the Kathryn Bache 
    Miller Theater) of Columbia University.

    Ussachevsky continued composing electronic music thorughout the 1950s, 
    often in collaboration with his fellow Columbia composer Otto Luening.

    In 1959, along with Luening and the composers Milton Babbitt and Roger
    Sessions, he founded the Columbia-Princeton center, now called the 
    Columbia Unviersity Electronic Music Center.
    
    Ussachevsky taught at Columbia from 1947 until his retirement in 1980.