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Tier 3 · vertical & regional
Leon Kirchner
Person · male · United States · Brooklyn · born 1919 · died 2009 · recording since 1996
American composer (1919-2009)
Also known as 利昂·基尔赫纳
Timeline
11 events✦ Award 4▣ Album 4◦ Birth 1★ Debut release 1† Death 1
1910s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1990s
· Debut release
Debut release: Yo-Yo Ma Premieres Cello Concertos
First documented Album in the MusicBrainz discography.
source: musicbrainz
2000s
2010s
Biography
English biography332 words · 2 sectionssource: wikipedia-en · licence CC BY-SA 4.0 · revision 1376058216
Biography
Leon Kirchner (January 24, 1919 – September 17, 2009) was an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 3.
Life and career
Kirchner was born in Brooklyn, New York. He began his music studies at the age of four. Five years later, his family moved to Los Angeles. He began composing while a student at Los Angeles City College. With the encouragement of his piano teachers and Ernst Toch, he entered the University of California, Los Angeles to study with Arnold Schoenberg. Kirchner began graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley and was awarded the George Ladd Prix de Paris in 1942. As World War II put Europe in turmoil, he went to New York and studied with Roger Sessions. At the war's end, he returned to Berkeley as a lecturer and assisted Sessions and Ernest Bloch in theory.
Kirchner held a Slee Professiorship at the University of Buffalo (succeeding Aaron Copland), and professorships at the University of California, University of Southern California, Yale University, the Juilliard School of Music, and Mills College, where he was the first Luther Brusie Marchant Professor from 1954 to 1961. In 1961 he moved to Harvard University, where in 1966 he succeeded Walter Piston as Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music and taught until 1989. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1967 for his Quartet No. 3.
According to Alexander Ringer, he "remained consistently individual, unimpressed by changing fashion where 'idea, the precious ore of art, is lost in the jungle of graphs, prepared tapes, feedbacks and cold stylistic minutiae'."
Kirchner married Gertrude Schoenberg, a singer and student of Arnold Schoenberg (no relation), on July 8, 1949; they had one son and one daughter. In 2009 he died of congestive heart failure at his home on Central Park West in New York City. He was 90.
Discography & profile
Normalised profile
Percentiles are computed over every artist in the database, so a tier-3 artist can still sit in the 95th percentile on a single axis.
| Metric | Value | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia language versions | 12 | 64.8th |
| Spotify monthly listeners | — | no data |
| Release groups in DB | 4 | 78.1th |
| Studio albums | 4 | 82.8th |
| Awards recorded | 4 | 96.3th |
| Timeline events | 11 | 87.9th |
| Recording span (years) | 13 | 31.9th |
| Genres | 5 | 88.3th |
Percentiles are computed at render time; missing values mean the artist has no data on that axis.
Discography (4 release groups · 4 studio albums)
Albums · 4
Yo-Yo Ma Premieres Cello Concertos
1996 · studio album
Search SpotifySearch YouTube Music
Tracklist · 7 tracks · 1:19:04
1Concerto for Cello and Orchestra: I. Invocation (Arioso)9:192Concerto for Cello and Orchestra: II. Profanation (Dance)8:493Concerto for Cello and Orchestra: III. Soliloquy (Cadenza)4:264Concerto for Cello and Orchestra: IV. Prayer and Lamentation (Hymn)8:325Music for Cello and Orchestra18:366Violoncello Concerto: I. Combattimento. Svolazzante12:527Violoncello Concerto: II. Adagiati. Largo, desolato, grigio16:302008 · studio album
Search SpotifySearch YouTube Music
Tracklist · 9 tracks · 1:01:39
1String Quartet no. 1: I. Allegro ma non troppo5:142String Quartet no. 1: II. Adagio4:283String Quartet no. 1: III. Divertimento3:164String Quartet no. 1: IV. Adagio6:065String Quartet no. 2: I. Moderato4:576String Quartet no. 2: II. Adagio5:327String Quartet no. 2: III. Allegro molto5:348String Quartet no. 315:599String Quartet no. 410:33Haydn / Schumann / Liszt / Kirchner
2011 · studio album
Search SpotifySearch YouTube Music
Tracklist · 29 tracks · 1:09:07
1Piano Sonata no. 60 in C major, Hob. XVI:50: I. Allegro5:472Piano Sonata no. 60 in C major, Hob. XVI:50: II. Adagio5:413Piano Sonata no. 60 in C major, Hob. XVI:50: III. Allegro molto2:314Carnaval, op. 9: Préambule2:225Carnaval, op. 9: Pierrot1:586Carnaval, op. 9: Arlequin1:097Carnaval, op. 9: Valse noble2:118Carnaval, op. 9: Eusebius1:379Carnaval, op. 9: Florestan0:5710Carnaval, op. 9: Coquette1:0811Carnaval, op. 9: Réplique (- Sphinxes)0:4712Carnaval, op. 9: Papillons0:3813Carnaval, op. 9: A.S.C.H. - S.C.H.A. (Lettres dansantes)0:5114Carnaval, op. 9: Chiarina0:4615Carnaval, op. 9: Chopin1:1916Carnaval, op. 9: Estrella0:3217Carnaval, op. 9: Reconnaissance1:3218Carnaval, op. 9: Pantalon et Colombine0:5419Carnaval, op. 9: Valse Allemande0:4920Carnaval, op. 9: Paganini1:1621Carnaval, op. 9: Aveu1:0322Carnaval, op. 9: Promenade1:4223Carnaval, op. 9: Pause0:1824Carnaval, op. 9: Marche des “Davidsbündler” contre les Philistins3:5325Années de Pèlerinage, Italie: Sonetto 104 del Petrarce6:2126Concert Paraphrase of Verdi’s Rigoletto7:1127Piano Sonata no. 1: I. Lento – Tempo II6:4028Piano Sonata no. 1: II. Adagio3:2829Piano Sonata no. 1: III. Allegro risoluto3:462018 · studio album
Search SpotifySearch YouTube Music
Tracklist · 6 tracks · 1:02:37
1Sinfonia in Two Parts: Part I7:452Sinfonia in Two Parts: Part II9:183Toccata for Strings, Solo Winds, and Percussion13:314Music for Orchestra10:435Orchestra Piece (Music for Orchestra II)9:076The Forbidden12:13
Stats & PK
Percentile within all 23,672 published artists.Put Leon Kirchner head-to-head →
| Metric | Value | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia language versions | 12 | 64.8th |
| Spotify monthly listeners | — | no data |
| Release groups in DB | 4 | 78.1th |
| Studio albums | 4 | 82.8th |
| Awards recorded | 4 | 96.3th |
| Timeline events | 11 | 87.9th |
| Recording span (years) | 13 | 31.9th |
| Genres | 5 | 88.3th |
Awards & honours
| Year | Award | Category | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1948 | Guggenheim Fellowship | won | |
| 1951 | Arts and Letters Award in Music | won | |
| 1967 | Pulitzer Prize for Music | won | |
| 1974 | Rome Prize | won |
Where this record comes from
aliases/urls—musicbrainz · CC0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://musicbrainz.org/artist/51e22904-499b-4af4-a495-867dec67388bdiscography—musicbrainz · CC0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://musicbrainz.org/artist/51e22904-499b-4af4-a495-867dec67388bcore—wikidata · CC0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q928971genre—wikidata · CC0 · retrieved 11 October 2026
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q928971seed-list—wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Kirchnerbiography—wikipedia-en · CC BY-SA 4.0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Kirchner
Why this artist is in the database
- List of composers by name
Tier rule: curated genre/region list
Image: no portrait (not displayed: the licence credit is missing)
Wikidata: Q928971 · MusicBrainz: 51e22904-499b-4af4-a495-867dec67388b
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