Gunther Schuller - macdow.convio.net

MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 1

2015 MEDAL DAYMichael Chabon reflects on mortality and the importance of making art 2

Terrance McKnight describes multiple ways to remember

Gunther Schuller 5

Composer Yehudi Wyner reviews the genius that

was his friend 6

Gunther Schuller56TH EDWARD MACDOWELL MEDALIST REMEMBERED ON GLORIOUS MEDAL DAY

Medalist Gunther Schuller, who was president of the New England Conservatory from 1967-1977, is seen here conducting the NEC Jazz Orchestra in 2010. (photo by Andrew Hurlbut)

MacDowell Chairman Michael Chabon welcomed the Medal Day

crowd with a moving address, combining mirth and poignancy in his words calling attention to the

importance of making art.

2 MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015

2015 MEDAL DAY

On a day glorious for its perfect weather, nearly 1,100 people gathered at the MacDowell Colony Sunday, August 9 to commemorate composer, educator, and conductor Gunther Schuller as the 56th Edward MacDowell Medalist. It was also a day to celebrate “the creative spirit that he embodied so durably and so inexhaustibly,” said author Michael Chabon in opening the Medal Day ceremony in his capacity

as Chairman of the MacDowell Board. Public radio host Terrance McKnight memorialized Schuller before celebrated composer and pianist Yehudi Wyner spoke about his friend. Wyner accepted the Medal on behalf of the Schuller family.

Schuller was named the 2015 Medalist in April by a selection committee that included composers Augusta Read Thomas, Sebastian Currier, Aaron Jay Kernis, Paul Moravec, David Rakowski, Alvin Singleton, and Melinda Wagner. Before he could accept the award, Schuller died at the age of 89 on June 21 as preparations were underway for his visit to the Colony.

Following the award ceremony at the free public event, guests enjoyed picnic lunches on Colony grounds and then toured the paths of the Colony’s 450 acres for visiting 31 open studios. The annual event offers the public the rare opportunity to visit with artists-in-residence to experience what’s happening on the leading edge of contemporary arts around the world.


MacDowell Colony chairman welcomes Medal Day crowd with universal themes TRANSCRIPT: MICHAEL CHABON REFLECTS ON MORTALITY AND MAKING ART

Thank you, thank you all for being here on this extraordinary day, the sun is repeatedly threatening to break through the clouds and it looks like it’s happening for us now.

As I’m sure everyone here must be aware, our medalist this year, our 2015 Medalist Gunther Schuller, died on June 21st, at the age of 89. Now, it’s a nice day, shaping up to be a beautiful day, here in Peterborough. We’re all happy to be together, in this beautiful place. The idea of the Medal, the MacDowell Medal, is to celebrate, and that’s what we’ve gathered here to do. We’re here to celebrate both the life and the work of Mr. Schuller and the creative spirit that he embodied so durably and so inexhaustibly right up to the end of that life. We’re here to celebrate the creative spirit of all the artists in residence today, and of every artist who has put in time here since we first opened for business 108 years ago. (David, I know you remember). I know that, and I’m sure that’s how Mr. Schuller would want it. No doubt he would want us to celebrate him, and not to dwell. I don’t want to dwell.

But I just can’t help it. First of all, the MacDowell Board of Directors, which I have the honor of chairing, lost three of its members in the past year: George

Nicholson, Jytte Jensen, and Susan Sollins-Brown. Susan actually served on the Medal selecting panel for our Medalist last year. Two of our board members endured the deaths of their beloved spouses in the past year.

And here we are in New England, a region that from Cotton Mather to Emily Dickinson to Anne Sexton to the Pixies’ Black Francis has historically shown itself to be amenable to extended ponderings of mortality, of that death who kindly stops for us, whether or not we stop for him. And here we are at the MacDowell Colony, a place that openly encourages the artist in residence to ponder his or her mortality.

Don’t believe me? In every studio at the MacDowell Colony, as many of you know, and as all of you will see when you tour the studios this afternoon, you will find a number of tombstones. These are small wooden planks, some straight rectangles, some pointed at the top or rounded like actual headstones, on which a resident artist, typically just before departure, signs his or her name and supplies the dates of his or her residency. As each tombstone fills with names it is hung from a nail on the wall or lined up along the fireplace mantle; year after year, decade after decade, the tombstones accumulate. In the oldest studios, they crowd the walls by the dozen.

Sooner or later, when you work in a studio at MacDowell, a day or an hour will come when the work’s not going that great, your attention wanders, your eye strays to the tombstones lined up over your fireplace or nailed up on the wall over your desk, and if your studio is old enough and your eye strays back far enough, back before the mid-1950s or thereabouts, it will occur to you that all of the artists and writers and composers whose names appear on those tombstones are at least highly likely to be dead by now. In some of the oldest studios, the inscriptions on the first few tombstones, especially those that were written in pencil, have faded to illegibility. Many tombstones are almost completely blank.

We’re here to celebrate the creative spirit of all the artists in residence today, and of every artist who has put in time here since we first opened for business 108 years ago.

Clockwise from top left: Resident Director David Macy, Executive Director Cheryl A. Young, Colony Chairman Michael Chabon, WQXR Radio Host Terrance McKnight, Colony President Susan Davenport Austin, Composer Yehudi Wyner

Electric Earth Concerts performed Gunther Schuller’s 1967 quartet Aphorisms under the Medal Day tent after the ceremony.


stand on the whole “soul” question. Though I certainly feel as if I possess one, there’s just something too wishful in that feeling, and so I’m inclined to dismiss it at the same time that it comforts me. I can live with that contradiction, as with the knowledge that my time is finite, and growing shorter by the day. It’s just that lately, for the first time, that shortening has become truly perceptible. I can feel each tiny skyward lurch of the balloon as another bag of sand goes over the side of my basket.

When I was young and callow (as opposed to middle-aged and callow), and I would hear about the death of someone I knew or admired, in particular someone older than me, my thoughts tended to run more or less along the following lines: That is so sad. Well, of course, everyone has to die sometime. Everyone, that is, but me. (Remember feeling that way?)To be accurate this wasn’t really something I thought, exactly. More like something I simply assumed, took for granted. Back then I took pretty much everything for granted, but especially, time.

Now, when I consider the death of a friend, a loved one, a colleague, a fellow board member, a beloved teacher and influential artist, like Gunther Schuller, I am much more likely to feel, in addition to grief or regret, Soon enough it will be you. And then—I can’t seem to help it—I think something along these lines: And so, what was the point of it all? All the hard work, all the disappointment, all the striving and wishing and heartbreak, all the hours and money and time and hopes invested by the parents of the dead one. Whether you

Now, I know that the tombstones are meant to be the record of a continuous active creative human presence in a studio, going all the way back, in some cases, to before the First World War. But again, I can’t help it; I dwell. I’m a dweller. I have always found the tombstones to be a powerful reminder of the oblivion that awaits me and, in all likelihood, the work that I’ve come to MacDowell to struggle with.

I mean, no wonder Thornton Wilder wrote Our Town here, bringing a graveyard up onto the stage, and filling the world—or reminding us of how the world is filled—with the presence of the dead.

The other day as I was walking with my dog along the road up to the little Maine village where we spend our summers with my family, the downeast sky was tufted with high white clouds, a smell of salvia and salt in the air, a pickup truck racing by with its window rolled down, trailing a sweet ache of the Allman Brothers’ “Melissa,” it struck me that, at 52, my present age, by even the most optimistic scenario I am well past the midpoint of my life. A hundred and four would be pretty spectacular.

Now, I’m comfortable with the idea of mortality, or at least I always have been. I never felt the need to believe in heaven or an afterlife. It’s been decades since I stopped believing—a belief that was never really more than fitful and self-serving to begin with—in the possibility of reincarnation of the soul. I’m not totally certain where I

The question of what matters, and why, is fundamental to the work we do at the MacDowell Colony.

2015 MEDAL DAY

Visitors from far and near took advantage of the perfect

weather to enjoy a picnic lunch before going off to explore

the historic structures on the Colony grounds, and satisfy

their curiosities about the contributions to culture being made by MacDowell Fellows.


are a mensch or a rogue, lazy or industrious, greedy or giving, the end of your story is the same as everyone else’s. And to what end? Why does it matter? And for at least a few minutes after I hear the bad news, a bleak, small voice within me says, very clearly, It doesn’t.

We all have our own way of grieving, I guess. The thing is, the question of what matters, and why, is

fundamental to the work we do at the MacDowell Colony. On the Board of The MacDowell Colony, we spend vast amounts of time sitting around long tables or dialing in on a conference line, trying to figure out for ourselves so that we can tell others, why MacDowell matters, why solitude and fellowship and a picnic lunch matter, why a library matters, why a peer selection matters. And most centrally of all, sometimes overtly and underlying every other discussion, why art matters.

To each of these questions that bleak, clear voice replies, it doesn’t. Or perhaps that small voice throws the question back at us, turns it around, and asks, To whom? Art lunches, and libraries don’t matter to the universe. They don’t matter to neutron stars, nebulae or gas giants. Rocks, trees and zebras don’t care if our admissions system is unbiased. When some nut-job takes a knife to a Rembrandt, when the Taliban dynamite a 1500-year old hundred-foot-tall statue of the Buddha, the earth rolls on, to the next ice age or meteor impact. If there’s no money available to help defray the expense when a painter, who is also a working mother, has to arrange unpaid leave and child care so that she can come for two all-too-brief but transformative weeks at the MacDowell

Colony, and as a result she is obliged to give up on painting, for good, the loss fails to register on history and Time.

The only ones, of course, to whom tasty and nutri-tiously composed picnic baskets, the caliber of applicants, or the Afro-Cuban musical tradition matters, of course, is us. Poor little humans, caring about stuff. Caring about art, and tradition, and the creative lives of working mothers, and about each other.

That, I end up saying to the gray despairing voice inside me, is the point of it all. You’re right: nothing matters—except to us. As far as we know, we are the only objects, the only beings, in the entire universe, to whom the universe matters. That’s our nature; our role, in turn, is to matter to other people, and our task, our greatest work, is to matter to them in a way that brings them comfort, safety, peace, knowledge or joy. Art can do and has done all of those things, at one time or another, sometimes all at once. Gunther Schuller with his gifts as a composer, musician and teacher could do, and did, all of those things. So has the MacDowell Colony and, on a good day, so has its hard-working and faithful Board of Directors, and the loved ones who support them. The work that we do matters and because it matters, we matter. Because those we have lost matter so much to us, we mourn that loss. The extent of the grief we feel is a measure of how much they and their lives and their work mattered. Let the loss serve to renew and to remind us of how much we all matter to each other, and how much it matters that we carry on, in spite of the indifference of galaxies and zebras, with our work. n

Interdisciplinary artist John Kelly describes his work to Medal Day visitors in Cheney Studio.

A visitor contemplates the work completed by painter Valerie

Hegarty during her residency in Graphics Putnam Studio.

(photo by Jenni Wu)


Music is a Force that Brings Humans TogetherTRANSCRIPT: WQXR RADIO HOST TERRANCE MCKNIGHT EXPLAINS THE UNIVERSE OF ACTIVITY THAT WAS GUNTHER SCHULLER

So what Michael didn’t say, I will forewarn you, is that my father is a Baptist preacher, and today is Sunday.

I’m really overjoyed to be here, for a number of reasons. But I want to take a moment to just imagine the occasion, 7 weeks ago, perhaps a lavish ceremony, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Gunther Schuller was the guest of honor, it was his day, and all his old friends were there. A whole generation of musicians. John Lewis and Leopold Stowkowski, Miles and Diz were there, Toscanini. Giants in the world of music. They were there to witness Gunther receiving his award for a life well lived and an art well served. Perhaps Louis Armstrong even played “When the Saints Go Marching In” with strings and woodwinds. I imagine that’s the way Gunther Schuller would want it. Because in his imagination human beings were not to be separated by music, but music should be the force that could bring us together. That was Gunther Schuller.

Imagine just a few months ago Gunther Schuller being interviewed and asked the question, how he wanted to be remembered. His response was, I’d like to be remembered. So I ask you, how will we remember Gunther Schuller. Perhaps we’ll remember a few of

his compositions. One of my favorites was Gunther narrating the piece about the young trumpet player learning to play jazz. Or maybe we’ll remember him from some of the books he authored. Maybe we’ll reflect upon all the students he touched and the music programs that he shook up. Remember the first time Gunther picked up a horn, he got an F out of the instrument, a beautiful tone. And how about a few years later when at 16 he played Shostakovich with the New York Philharmonic. The very next year he was principal horn in the Cincinnati Symphony. But maybe some of us will remember him as a journalist or radio personality. Gunther did so many things well. Perhaps we’ll think of Gunther every summer as the ice cream trucks roll through the neighborhood playing Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” Because we know Gunther did a lot to help revive Joplin’s music.

How will we remember Gunther Schuller? He did so many things extraordinarily well.

I knew of Gunther years before meeting him. I finally got the chance to shake his hand seven years ago. I never sat in his classroom or under his baton and unlike many of you I can’t really claim him to be a friend. But you know what, Gunther and I, we were cool. I had his phone number, and I’d just call him up. And he’d say, “You just called me to talk? You just called to see how I was doing? Nobody does that anymore.” And I said, “Well I do, and I’m going to call you again. I’m going to keep calling you.” And I did. We had riveting conversations, the last in which he lamented the fact that our society has become almost completely commercialized. That in large part we don’t value the

2015 MEDAL DAY

He believed that art and culture made for a more humane society, and he was always in search of people.

WQXR Radio Host Terrance McKnight

addresses the crowd, asking them to

remember Gunther Schuller as someone

who did so many things extraordinarily well.

The crowd under the tent listens as speakers give context to the choice of Gunther Schuller as the 56th Edward MacDowell Medalist.


arts the way we used to. That bothered him. He believed that art and culture made for a more humane society, and he was always in search of people. It was also in those conversations that I learned Gunther didn’t do everything well.

His father was an accomplished violinist, but Gunther couldn’t make a violin speak. Couldn’t play it at all. Piano, very little talent. He wasn’t great at everything. And aside from the scholarly writing, the prophetic compositions, I propose that we remember Gunther for his abilities and his inabilities. The most important inability was his inability to tolerate nonsense.

He couldn’t do it. When something didn’t make sense or was just flat out wrong, he had to say something about it and he had to do something about it.

He didn’t sit by quietly during his school days in Germany. He wrote letters to his parents about the Injustice until they did something about it.

At 14 years old he understood the genius of Beethoven and Duke Ellington and he felt that the two had something to learn from the other. That was heresy to many, but not to Gunther. So he talked about it.

It didn’t make sense to him that an orchestra couldn’t swing, or that its players couldn’t improvise. So he composed music that did.

It didn’t make sense to him that the blues was considered low brow, he thought the poetry of Bessie Smith was brilliant. He wrote about it. He understood jazz as an American masterpiece, it didn’t make sense to him that it wasn’t being taught in our conservatories, so he did something about that.

At Tanglewood, Gunther saw a dearth of African-American musicians, so he brought them in.

To Gunther, if it didn’t make sense he didn’t sit by quietly. It didn’t make sense to him that an orchestra couldn’t swing, or that its players couldn’t improvise. So he composed music that did.

So when we hear the grooves in Paul Moravec’s chamber music, remember Gunther Schuller.

When you feel the passion in Wynton Marsalis’ blues-inspired symphonies, remember Gunther Schuller.

When you witness Donal Fox at the piano going to town on Bach, think about Gunther Schuller.

Or when you hear me on the radio know that I’m there due in part to Gunther Schuller.

Gunther Schuller and I were just cool, and I can hardly wait to hear what one of his friends has to say about him. Yehudi Wyner. n

Visitors and honored guests alike enjoy one of Medal Day’s oldest traditions, a picnic lunch. After the ceremony, which is always free and open to the public, art lovers had the opportunity to visit with 31 artists-in-residence in their studios to get a look at what happens behind the normally closed doors of the Colony.


He Was the Whole Man and a Remarkable, Majestic Human BeingTRANSCRIPT: FELLOW COMPOSER YEHUDI WYNER AND FRIEND OF THE MEDALIST REVIEWS THE GENIUS OF GUNTHER SCHULLER.

Editor’s note: MacDowell Colony Chairman Michael Chabon introduced Yehudi Wyner and had just mentioned it was inconceivable that Wyner had not been to the Colony as a Fellow.

I think I was probably exhibiting a kind of quiet heroism in proving that one can do something with one’s life without going to MacDowell. I had no idea that this ceremony and encounter would be informal. I feel griev-ously overdressed. I might take off my tie. Or tell you about one of my grandchildren who came, when he was 11, to his mother (my daughter):“Mommy, can I go to school commando today?” “Commando, what’s that?” ”No underpants.”

One of the people who was a very strong supporter of the things that Gunther did was a man named Paul Fromm, who was the mogul of Christian Brother’s Wines, a man who assembled substantial wealth and put it into the support of contemporary music. Support which goes on even today with many great concerts, festivals, et al. Fromm concerts, Fromm commissions, Fromm conferences. Fromm was German, his broth-er Herbert was a composer (the two didn’t get along, though) nevertheless Fromm was a ubiquitous presence at Tanglewood with Gunther. He called Gunther Ganse, because he couldn’t say it so well, and I picked that up as well, in a way sort of making fun of Paul (which was not very nice of me), but suddenly realized that Ganse means the whole enchilada! And that, for me, was what Gun-ther really represented; the whole man, the entire artist, but more than just an artist, but a remarkable, majestic, human being.

I’ll tell you one other incident, which might amuse you before I go into the serious business of talking not just admiringly but gravely about Gunther. You may not know that I think at the age of 8 he had an accident and lost an eye. Gunther lived his entire life with one eye, couldn’t drive. How one eye can encompass and absorb very complex orchestral scores is beyond me. But he said for example that he had great ears, he admitted that he had a wonderful memory, and he had preternatural pow-er of perception. Well, there was a concert at Carnegie Recital Hall with a group that Gunther was conducting,

a contemporary group performing contemporary music, and his principal violinist was a wonderfully able con-temporary music player named Matthew Raimondi who founded the Composer’s School many years later. But he had trouble with a particular piece, and Matthew said ‘I don’t know I never get it right’, and Gunther said ‘watch me, I will give you a signal, watch my eye.’ The perfor-mance came and went, Matthew made the same mistake as before, Gunther came off really quite irritated, ‘What happened Matthew!’ Matthew said ‘I watched your eye!’ Gunther said ‘No, not this one, this one!’

Here is a statement that I will read from George, Edwin, and Nicole Schuller, George and Edwin are the sons of Gunther and Margy:

“On behalf of our father, Gunther Schuller, we would like to thank MacDowell Colony for bestowing such a great honor. All of us had hoped that we could be here to accept this award for our father. Unfortunately, due to the extreme complexity of our current situation, we were unable to attend this afternoon ceremony. However, we are all here in spirit, and so is Gunther, of course, listening intently with his customarily wide open and discerning ears. Gunther was a man who wore many hats. This includes being a musician, a conductor, a composer, a scholar, a writer, and an educa-tor. And this is but a short list of all the things that this man accomplished during his long life. One thing that has to be added to this list is that he was also a great father. When we both were young and upcoming musicians, he never failed to show us his support and answer our questions no matter how busy he was (and he was always extremely busy). Besides that he lived a life that most people couldn’t even imagine, keep in mind that he was completely self-taught, but it was his curiosity and his thirst for creativity that made him succeed in all of his endeavors. His love of music and openness to all genres of genuine human expression kept him vibrant and striving for greatness until the very end. This was a man who didn’t believe in retirement. Recently we’ve discovered how many people he had really touched, influenced, mentored, and helped to also fulfill their artistic dreams. Again we would like to thank The MacDowell

His love of music and openness to all genres of genuine human expression kept him vibrant and striving for greatness until the very end.

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Composer Yehudi Wyner, (left) who accepted the Medal on

behalf of the Schuller family, is greeted by artist-in-residence and

composer Richard Danielpour.


Colony, Augusta Read Thomas, and the rest of the selection committee, Yehudi Wyner, Terrance McKnight, and all of you who have come to be a part of this historic occasion for honoring the life and legacy of Gunther Schuller.”

And that is signed by George, Edwin, and Nicole Schuller.

Much of what I have written has already been cov-ered so I beg you forgive me for this redundancy, I didn’t know what Terrance was going to write, I had no idea what George and Edwin were going to transmit.

GUNTHER SCHULLER 1925-2015Upon his death the following appeared in The New York Times:

“Gunther Schuller: Composer, conductor, performer, educator, publisher, master of Jazz and Classical, his capacious gifts in all realms of music generated an inspiring life—his accomplishments define an era.”

How to expand that compressed statement? Truth to tell it would take a vast amount of elaboration to begin to come to terms with the miracle of his life. As a teenager he was obsessed with music. He was a prodigy horn player. Before he was twenty he was in the Cincinnati Orchestra and soon after in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. But he was already composing and arranging, insatiable in his appetite for all styles of music including jazz. It was not long before he gave up horn playing to devote himself to composing, conducting and all manner of musical enterprises. The list of activities is too long to assemble here, but in the course of time he became a notable conductor, an important scholar, a revolutionary educator and administrator at Tanglewood, at the New England Conservatory, and at other festivals he led and created. He wrote books, which in their vividness and comprehensiveness, have become classic sources; Horn Technique 1962, Early Jazz 1968, Swing Era 1989, The Compleat Conductor 1998, and Memoir: A life in Pursuit of Beauty 2011. This last book, remarkable in its density of events and references, carries us only to 1960. Schuller intended to embark on Volume II to bring us into the present.

Schuller was a model of industry, discipline, recep-tiveness, openness to art, to cinema, to music of every kind from every culture and from every era. His passion was not restricted by ideology or narrow prejudice. While of course he possessed an ego of a creator it did not lead him to a rejection of the work of others. His appetite for genuine expression of any kind was inexhaustible and his generosity of spirit was constantly in play. Hence his founding of MARGUN, a music publishing company which promoted the work of underrepresented com-posers. Hence his transcriptions of jazz and ragtime recording so they could be studied and circulated. Hence his launching a recording company GUNMAR to record

the music of composers he deemed authentic. Typical-ly profits from these activities as well as money from commissions and other awards and prizes were at once ploughed into supporting the work of others.

Schuller seemed to know everything, to know everybody, to remember every event, every fact. Similarly he had a comprehensive grasp of history. His work habits were relentless. In general we expect such obsession to be driven by a kind of febrile intensity, a nervous impa-tience, perhaps even a menacing presence. But these were not Schuller’s characteristics. Prevailingly he revealed an equable temperament, a benign patience, an absence of arrogance. The creative maelstrom, the chaos of ideas, impressions and obligations, remained active under the surface, not suppressed under tension but fermenting in a different mental realm, functioning invisibly.

Schuller revealed something about his own character when he writes in Memoir about his relationship with his beloved Margie during their courtship:

“I was (and am) a basically gentle type to begin with. I had seen enough scarring rancor, disaffection and estrange-ment on too many occasions between my own parents. So I vowed I would never let such clashes destroy our relation-ship. My love for her had one agenda: To make her happy.”

Usually we think that such behave on the part of parents would lead to all kinds of neurotic tendencies. It’s not always so. Bach was orphaned very, very young, and brought up by relatives, brothers who were not always kind to him and he nevertheless turned out to be one of the most generous and gentlest human beings who we can imagine. Similarly, Gunter did not go in the direction of the way he was brought up. He reports in his book his mother behaved mercilessly.

Only rarely would his benignness be breached. It had to do with two issues which enraged Schuller. The first involved the sacredness of the musical scores of great composers, which Schuller felt were intentional, detailed

Schuller was a model of industry, discipline, receptiveness, openness to art, to cinema, to music of every kind from every culture and from every era.

Photographer Susan May Tell (left) discusses her approach to her art

with visitors to Nef Studio during the afternoon open studio tour.


and literally inviolable. He excoriated conductors (and performers in general) who “interpreted” or distorted great works according to ego or ignorance, violating the instructions of the text. The second area of angry protest was directed at The Music Business. He found adminis-trators, conductors, players, managers, publicity agencies and unions destroying elements of art and joy in mu-sic-making. Not infrequently he would lecture orchestras with much irritation, accusing players of indifference to the highest aspirations of the art.

My most sustained contact with Gunther took place at Tanglewood–during the years 1975-1984—where he was director of the Music Center. Always approachable, always open and patient and interested in the activities of others, he was totally immersed in all the activities of the Festival. It was miraculous, almost inconceivable, how he could deter-mine all repertory, scheduling, personnel, ensembles for the entire eight-week season, thousands of decisions regarding choice of music from the obscure to the familiar, another indication of how universal and catholic was his enthusiasm for the vast repertory of musical art.

And what of recreation, of free time? Such concepts were swallowed up by Gunther’s love of work, by any-thing to do with music.

I have left composition for last. But it stands as first in the life of Gunther Schuller, the activity around which swirled all the other aspects of his hyperactive life. He com-posed constantly and with extraordinary fluency. The music is imaginative, inventive, colorful and complex, restlessly morphing, transforming, surprising. From the very begin-ning the craft was exemplary, with an uncanny understand-ing of instrumental capabilities and textural clarity, along with a fearless tendency to test conventional boundaries.

Notable compositions would include the Seven Studies on Paul Klee, orchestral images of wonderful color and variety, including an impression of Klee’s Twittering Machine. The popularity of this piece is enhanced by its pictorial reference, not surprising given our obsession with visual images of all kinds.

Of Reminiscences and Reflections (a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1994) is a deeply expressive creation in memory of Margy. Her death created a sense of loss that was never far from Gunther’s thoughts.

Dreamscape, a substantial recent composition for the Boston Symphony, which Schuller said came to him in a dream clear in shape and elaborated by a myriad of details. The intricacy and animated inventiveness of the piece is astonishing as is the genesis of its creation.

Magical Trumpets, a brand new piece for 12 trumpets commissioned by Tanglewood for this summer’s Con-temporary Music Festival, was performed for the first time just two weeks ago. Scintillating, vital, brilliantly polychrome, preternaturally virtuosic, it betrayed noth-

ing of old age or failing health. On the contrary it was full of fun and optimistic brilliance.

Composer Margaret McAllister, close friend of Schuller, told me that, “Gunther was composing in the morning the day before he passed (just sketching out ideas). He had completed all his outstanding commis-sions (23 compositions in two to three years!) and was looking forward to other projects.” Gunther’s sons Edwin and George estimate that he completed well over 180 compositions during his lifetime.

In the end it is the massive creative achievement, the feverish energy, the inexhaustible curiosity, the openness to new experience, the enduring generosity and support for friends and colleagues that begin to define the man. I say “begin” because the details are infinite and they inflect every moment of this individual’s life.I conclude with a paraphrase of Beethoven’s words about Mozart: We shall never see the likes of him again. n

It is the massive creative achievement, the feverish energy, the inexhaustible curiosity, the openness to new experience, the enduring generosity and support for friends and colleagues that begin to define the man.

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Mixed media artist David Opdyke and visitors to

his studio are framed by the arched doorway of Alexander Studio. The

public visited with artists-in-residence in 31 open

studios on Medal Day afternoon.


Gunther Schuller 1925-2015 Gunther Schuller was born in New York on November 22, 1925. He began his professional music career as a French horn player, performing with the American Ballet Theater as a teen, as principal horn in the Cincinnati Symphony (1943-1945), and with the Metropolitan Opera from 1945-1959. He also played French horn on Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool recording (1949-1950), and composed and conducted for jazz greats John Lewis and Dizzy Gillespie. As an educator, Schuller taught at the Manhattan School of Music and Yale University. He began teaching at the Berkshire Music Center (at Tanglewood) at the request of Aaron Copland, and later served as president of the New England Conservatory where he formalized NEC’s commitment to jazz by establishing the first degree-granting jazz program at a major classical conservatory.

Schuller composed more than 180 works, spanning all musical genres, including solo works, orchestral works, chamber music, opera, and jazz. Among Schuller’s orchestral works are Symphony (1965), Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee (1959), and An Arc Ascending (1996). Schuller’s large scale work Of Reminiscences and Reflections was composed as a tribute to his wife of 49 years, Marjorie Black, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994.

Schuller was the recipient of the William Schuman Award (1988), the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award (1991), the Gold Medal for Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1997), the Downbeat Lifetime Achievement Award, and an inaugural membership in the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2008. Despite illness, he never stopped composing.

Edward MacDowell Medal Awarded Annually Since 1960 The Edward MacDowell Medal is a national award presented annually to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to our culture. Since 1960, Medal Day has brought to New Hampshire some of the most influential artists of our time, including Leonard Bernstein, Georgia O’Keeffe, I.M. Pei, John Updike, Merce Cunningham, Louise Nevelson, and Sonny Rollins. A complete list of past Medal winners is available on our website at macdowellcolony.org/events-MedalDay-History.html.

An independent committee of peers selects the Medalist. Next August, The Edward MacDowell Medal will be awarded to an artist working in literature.

MacDowell Colony Chairman and author Michael Chabon presents the Edward MacDowell Medal to composer Yehudi Wyner who accepted on behalf of the Schuller family.


2015 MEDAL DAY

MacDowell Medal Day supplement @ 2015

Editor: Jonathan GourlayDesign and Production: Melanie deForest Design, LLCAll photographs not otherwise credited: Joanna Eldredge Morrissey

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The MacDowell Colony awards Fellowships to artists of exceptional talent, providing time, space, and an inspiring environment in which to do creative work. The Colony was founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and pianist Marian Nevins MacDowell, his wife. Fellows receive room, board, and exclusive use of a studio. The sole criterion for acceptance is talent, as determined by a panel representing the discipline of the applicant. The MacDowell Colony was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1997 for “nurturing and inspiring many of this century’s finest artists.”

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