Benjamin Boretz

Biography

Benjamin Aaron Boretz (born October 3, 1934) is an American composer and music theorist.

Life and work

Benjamin Boretz was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Abraham Jacob Boretz and Leah (Yullis) Boretz. He graduated with a degree in music from Brooklyn College in 1954 and studied composition with Tadeusz Kassern, then with Arthur Berger and Irving Fine at Brandeis University, with Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Music Festival and School, with Lukas Foss at UCLA, and with Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions at Princeton University.
Boretz was one of the first composers to work with computer-synthesized sound (Group Variations II, 1970–72). In the late 1970s and 1980s he converged his compositional and pedagogical practices in a project of real-time improvisational music-making, culminating in the formation at Bard College of the music-learning program called Music Program Zero, which flourished until 1995.
He has written extensively on musical issues, as critic, theorist, and musical philosopher, from the perspective of a practicing composer. His earliest large-scale music-intellectual essay was the book-length "Meta-Variations, Studies in the Foundations of Musical Thought" (1970), which addresses the epistemological questions involved in the cognition and composition of music, and propounds a radically relativistic/individualistic/ontological reconstruction of the musical creative process. His text composition "Language, as a Music, Six marginal Pretexts for Composition" (1978) engaged questions of the origin and nature of language and meaning as they might be conceived from the perspective of music.
Boretz has taught in the music departments of a number of American universities, including Brandeis, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Princeton University, University of Chicago, NYU, Columbia University, University of Michigan, Bard College, UC Santa Barbara, Evergreen College, and University of Southampton (UK, as a visiting Fulbright Professor). See: List of music students by teacher: A to B#Benjamin Boretz.
Boretz and Arthur Berger founded the composers' music journal Perspectives of New Music, and Boretz was The Nation's principal music critic (1962–1970). In 1988, he, Elaine Barkin, and James K. Randall founded Open Space to publish recordings and scores and, in 1999, with Mary Lee A. Roberts, The Open Space magazine, which he edits with Dorota Czerner, Tildy Bayar, Jon Forshee, Dean Rosenthal, and Arthur Margolin.
He has two children, Avron and Nina.

Recordings

Boretz's work as composer and writer is available on CDs, DVDs, and print books issued by Open Space Publications, a cooperative formed by Boretz with Elaine Barkin and James K. Randall.

Principal writings (published)

Books:

Language, as a music. Six marginal pretexts for composition. for speaker, prerecorded tape, and piano (1978). Lingua Press, 1980
Talk: If I am a musical thinker. (1980) Station Hill Press, 1984
Music Columns from The Nation, 1962–70; selected and edited, and with an introduction by, Elaine Barkin. Open Space Publications, 1988
Meta-Variations. Studies in the Foundations of Musical Thought. (1970) Open Space Publications, 1994
Being About Music. Textworks 1960-2003 (with J. K. Randall). Volume 1: 1960-1978; Volume II: 1978-2003. Open Space Publications, 2003
Inside in...outside out. Edited by Tildy Bayar. Introduction by David Lidov. Afterwords by Charles Stein, John Rahn, Joshua Banks Mailman, Jon Forshee, Robert Morris (composer), Arthur Margolin and Scott Gleason, Dorota Czerner. Open Space Publications, 2020
Articles published: in journals: The Open Space Magazine; Musical America; Musical Quarterly; Harper's; The Nation; Perspectives of New Music; Journal of Philosophy; Cimaise; the London Magazine; Journal of Music Theory; Contemporary Music Newsletter; Proceedings of the American Society of University Composers; Proceedings of the International Musicological Society; News of Music;
in books: Perspectives on Contemporary Music Theory (W. W. Norton); Perspectives on Musical Aesthetics (W. W. Norton).