Richard Wernick

Biography

Richard Frank Wernick (January 16, 1934 – April 25, 2025) was an American composer. He is best known for his chamber and vocal works. His composition Visions of Terror and Wonder won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Life and career

Wernick was born January 16, 1934. His birthplace is reported variously as Newton, Massachusetts, or Boston. He began his musical studies playing the piano at age 11. His high school music theory teacher took notice of his abilities, and introduced him to Irving Fine, who was a composition professor at Harvard University at the time. Wernick went on to complete his undergraduate studies with Fine at Brandeis University. While at Brandeis, Wernick also studied with Harold Shapero, Arthur Berger, and Leonard Bernstein. His studies at Tanglewood included composition work with Ernst Toch, Aaron Copland, and Boris Blacher and conducting studies with Leonard Bernstein and Seymour Lipkin. Wernick also studied at Mills College with Leon Kirchner.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Wernick worked as a theater, film, television, and dance composer. His output during this time includes the film score for the short comedy A Bowl of Cherries.
Wernick spent much of his career as a composition professor, teaching at SUNY Buffalo (1964–1965) and the University of Chicago (1965–1968). However, his longest tenure was at the University of Pennsylvania, from 1968 to 1996. For his notable students, See: List of music students by teacher: T to Z#Richard Wernick. David Patrick Stearns of The Philadelphia Inquirer considered Wernick's time at Penn, especially during the 1970s, to represent the height of his compositional influence as part of the university's composition "triumvirate" (Wernick, George Crumb, and George Rochberg).
In 1983, Riccardo Muti selected Wernick to be the Consultant for New Music to the Philadelphia Orchestra. His role as advisor was to assist Muti in identifying new works for the Philadelphia Orchestra to perform, with a stated emphasis on American composers. He held this position until 1989, when he was re-appointed Special Consultant to the music director. He continued until the end of Muti's tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1993.
Three of Wernick’s manuscript scores are held by the Library of Congress. His String Quartet no. 3 was the result of a 1988 commission by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation. His second Library of Congress-affiliated commission was under the auspices of The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation. This commission resulted in Wernick’s 1996 Trio for violin, cello, and piano. Fittingly, he was honored as the first commission by The Irving and Verna Fine Fund, for which he composed Quintet for Horn and String Quartet in 2002.
Wernick won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his composition Visions of Terror and Wonder. He won Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards in 1986 for his Violin Concerto (first place, tie with Bernard Rands), 1991 (first place, for String Quartet No. 4), and 1992 (second place, for Piano Concerto). He also received awards from the Ford, Guggenheim, and Naumburg Foundations. (See also List of Awards below.)
Wernick lived outside of Philadelphia with his wife, bassoonist Bea Wernick, née Beatrice Messina. His son Adam Wernick is a writer, composer and sound designer. Another son, Lew Wernick, is a guitarist. A third son, Peter, died in 1986. Wernick died April 25, 2025, in Haverford, Pennsylvania, at the age of 91.

Compositional style

Wernick described his style as one that attempts to find common ground with an audience:

My expectation is that I'm not writing down to an audience, but I'm not trying to write above their heads. I'm not writing to an audience which is illiterate and I'm not writing to an audience which is technically educated in music, but I do write for an audience that I assume has experience in listening to music and is willing to at least meet me halfway. So I'll go halfway to meet them."
As such, critics have sometimes identified his style as more audience-accessible, particularly when compared to more strictly serialist composers of the 20th century.
Harmonic analysis of Wernick's work suggests that his style makes reference to tonal harmony, but is usually based on fixed cells of intervals. He occasionally made use of twelve-tone sequences and their permutations, but this technique is not necessarily a defining feature of his output. Wernick also made extensive use of contrapuntal techniques, especially in his string quartets.
In vocal and programmatic works, Wernick's choice of texts often reflect an ideological message. Kaddish Requiem mourns "the victims of Indochina," referring to the contemporaneous Vietnam War as well as to related violence throughout the region. Likewise, the final movement of his Duo for Cello and Piano is a memorial for the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001. Several of his works, most notably Kaddish Requiem and Visions of Terror and Wonder, combine religious texts from multiple traditions.
Performers with whom Wernick frequently worked include the Juilliard String Quartet, the Emerson String Quartet, David Starobin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Jan de Gaetani, Lambert Orkis, and Gregory Fulkerson.