Irving Fine

Biography

Irving Gifford Fine (December 3, 1914 – August 23, 1962) was an American composer. Fine's work assimilated neoclassical, romantic, and serial elements. Composer Virgil Thomson described Fine's "unusual melodic grace" while Aaron Copland noted the "elegance, style, finish and...convincing continuity" of Fine's music.
Fine was a member of a close-knit group of Boston composers in the mid-20th century who were sometimes called the "Boston School." Other members of the Boston School included Arthur Berger, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, and Harold Shapero.

Life

Fine was born in Boston, Massachusetts, where he studied piano, and received both bachelor's and master's degrees from Harvard University, where he was a pupil of Walter Piston. Fine was a conducting pupil of Serge Koussevitzky, served as pianist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and studied composition with Nadia Boulanger at the Fontainebleau School of Music in Paris and at Radcliffe College. From 1939 until 1950, he taught music theory at Harvard and conducted its Glee Club, becoming a close associate of Leonard Bernstein, Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland. From 1950, he taught at Brandeis University, where he was Walter S. Naumburg Professor of Music and founded the School of Creative Arts. Between 1946 and 1957, he also taught composition at the Tanglewood Music Festival in the Berkshires.
Irving Fine died in Natick, Massachusetts in August 1962. He was 47 years of age. The cause of death was heart disease.

Educational legacy

Notable composition students of Irving Fine include Gustav Ciamaga, Noël Lee, Ann Loomis Silsbee, Halim El-Dabh, and Richard Wernick. Towards the end of his life, Fine notably collaborated with Wernick on the musical Maggie, a work based on the Stephen Crane novel of the same name. A Professorship of Music at Brandeis University is named in Fine's honor. The composer Arthur Berger served as Irving G. Fine Professor of Music from 1969 to 1980 (and as Emeritus Professor until his death in 2003). The current Irving G. Fine Professor of Music is Eric Chasalow.
Brandeis University is also home to the Irving Fine Society, founded in 2006 by music director Nicholas Alexander Brown. The society comprises the Irving Fine Singers and the Gifford 5, a woodwind quintet. The society "acts as a producing organization for concerts, educational programs and scholarly activities related to the legacy of composer Irving Gifford Fine and the global impact of American culture in the twentieth century."

Orchestra

Toccata concertante, 1947
Serious Song: A Lament, strings, 1955
Blue Towers, 1959
Diversions, 1959–60
Symphony, 1962

Chorus

Three Choruses from Alice in Wonderland, 3–4 voices, piano, 1942; arrangement with orchestra, 1949
The Choral New Yorker, S, A, Bar, 3–4 voices, piano, 1944
A Short Alleluia, SSA, 1945
In gratio jubilo, hymn, small orchestra, 1949
The Hour-Glass (B. Jonson), song cycle, SATB, 1949
Old American Songs (trad.), 2–4 voices, piano, 1952
An Old Song (Yehoash, trans. M. Syrkin), SATB, 1953
Three Choruses from Alice in Wonderland (L. Carroll), 2nd ser., SSA, piano, 1953
McCord's Menagerie (McCord), TTB, 1957

Songs

Mutability (I. Orgel), cycle, Mez, piano, 1952
Childhood Fables for Grown-ups (G. Norman), Mez/Bar, piano/orchestra, 1954–5

Chamber and solo instrument

Sonata, violin, piano, 1946
Music for Piano, 1947
Partita, wind quintet, 1948
Notturno, strings, harp, 1950–51
String Quartet, 1952
Children's Piano Pieces, 1956
Fantasia, string trio, 1956
Hommage à Mozart, piano, 1956
Romanza, wind quintet, 1958

Reading

A biography, Irving Fine: An American Composer in His Time, by author, composer, and pianist Phillip Ramey, was published in 2005 by the Library of Congress and Pendragon Press, and received the 2006 Nicolas Slonimsky Award for Outstanding Musical Biography from ASCAP.