Samuel Adler

Biography

Samuel Hans Adler (born March 4, 1928) is a German-American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored with several awards, including Germany's Order of Merit – Officer's Cross.

Biography

Adler was born to a Jewish family in Mannheim, Germany, the son of Hugo Chaim Adler, a cantor and composer, and Selma Adler who was an amateur pianist. At the age of ten, Samuel was separated from his father while Hugo was imprisoned in the Netherlands following the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938. After Hugo's return to Mannheim, the family was reunited and subsequently fled the Nazi regime in Germany through the Netherlands to the United States in 1939, where Hugo became the cantor of Temple Emanuel in Worcester, Massachusetts. Sam soon followed his father into the music profession and began his musical studies on the violin with Albert Levy. His formal education in composition was initiated under Herbert Fromm in 1941. Subsequently, Adler earned degrees from both Boston University (where he studied musicology with Karl Geiringer) and Harvard University (where he studied with Aaron Copland, Irving Fine, Paul Hindemith, Paul Pisk, Walter Piston, and Randall Thompson and earned an M.A. in 1950). He studied conducting with Serge Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in 1949. Adler has been awarded four honorary doctorates from Southern Methodist and Wake Forest Universities, St. Mary's College of Notre Dame and the St. Louis Conservatory of Music.

After completing his academic studies in 1950, Adler served as a corporal in the 2d Armored Division. During this time he founded the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra (1952) in Stuttgart, Germany, which served to demonstrate the shared cultural heritage of America and Europe in the post World War II era through cultural diplomacy. For this, he received a special Citation of Excellence from the Army for the orchestra's success between 1952 and 1961. Subsequently, he accepted a position as music director at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas, beginning his tenure there in 1953. At the Dallas temple during his 1953 to 1966 tenure, he formed four children's choirs, and an adult volunteer choir with ninety members. From 1954 to 1958, Adler conducted the Dallas Lyric Theater. From 1957 to 1966, he served as professor of Composition at the University of North Texas College of Music. Between 1966 and 1995, Adler served as professor of composition at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music. In addition, he served as chairman of the Department of Music at the Eastman School of Music from 1973 to 1994. Since 1997, Adler has been a member of the composition faculty at Juilliard and, for the 2009–10 year, was awarded the William Schuman Scholars Chair.

He is also the author of three books, Choral Conducting (Holt Rinehart and Winston 1971, second edition Schirmer Books 1985), Sight Singing (W.W. Norton 1979, 1997), and The Study of Orchestration (W.W. Norton 1982, 1989, 2001, 2016; Italian edition edited by Lorenzo Ferrero for EDT Srl Torino, 2008). He has also contributed numerous articles to major magazines, books and encyclopedias published in the U.S. and abroad. Adler also reflected upon six decades of teaching in his memoirs Building Bridges with Music: Stories from a Composer's Life which was published by Pendragon Press in 2017.
Over the decades Adler's musical legacy has been interpreted by several orchestral ensembles including: the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Esterhazy Quartet, the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt, and the Bowling Green Philharmonia. In more recent times his works have also been showcased by leading orchestras around the world, including: the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Mannheim National Theatre Orchestra, and the St. Louis Symphony. Performances of his compositions have been recorded on several record labels including: Albany Records, Linn Records, Navona Records, and Naxos Records.
Adler is married to Emily Freeman Brown, who is currently serving as music director and conductor of the Bowling Green Philharmonia.

Compositional style

Musicologists have noted that Adler's works incorporate a wide range of compositional techniques including: free atonality, diatonicism, and serialism. In addition, he is recognized for interweaving dance rhythms, folk themes, ostinati, and devices associated with aleatoric music throughout his scores. Adler does not advocate serialism or atonality.
It has also been observed that Adler's compositions illustrate a "midstream modernism", which is characterized by interwoven contrapunctal musical lines which form the foundation for a tonal harmonic complex punctuated by tangential atonal episodes. In addition, his music is said to be inspired by the liturgical cantilena featured in the Jewish musical tradition as well as oriental inflections.
In the course of describing his own compositional style, Adler emphasized the belief that contemporary music does not place sufficient emphasis on the aesthetic and communicative impact of musical composition while exaggerating the technical aspect instead. Simply stated, Adler observes that, "I feel that my works require a modified serial technique, but it is a very unorthodox one, and almost never strictly adhered to throughout a given work. Neither does it destroy all tonal feeling".

Archived works

The Samuel Adler Papers Collection at the Eastman School of Music's Sibley Music Library within the Ruth T. Watanabe Special Collections Department contains: selected examples of Adler's original compositional scores, arrangements, musical transcriptions, correspondence, professional papers from the years 1990-2018, publicity materials and selected commercial CD recordings of his compositions. The archive is an open collection which periodically receives new materials. It has been donated by Dr. Adler for the benefit of both researchers and students alike. Researchers may contact the staff archivist at the Ruth T. Watanabe Special Collections division of the Sibley Library for further assistance.
The Synagogue Music of Samuel Adler Collection at the Milken Archive of Jewish Music contains selected recordings of Samuel Adler's sacred and liturgical compositions which he recorded as a member of the faculty at the university of Rochester's Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.
Samuel Adler – Composer Web Archive at The United States Library of Congress contains links to compositions, recordings and publications by Samuel Adler which are available online.

Notable students

Since 1997, Adler has been a member of the composition faculty at the Juilliard School in New York City. Among his most successful students are composers Fisher Tull, Kamran Ince, Eric Ewazen, Claude Baker, Marc Mellits, Robert Paterson, Gordon Stout, Chris Theofanidis, Michael Brown, Michael Glenn Williams, Gordon Chin, and Roger Briggs.