Peter Child

'''Peter Burlingham Child''' (born 6 May 1953)<ref name="Harvard">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Child, Peter Burlingham |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s6XH8mOtfwcC&pg=RA1-PA156 |page=156 |encyclopedia=The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music|last=Randal |first=Don Michael |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |year=1996 |isbn=0-674-37299-9}}</ref> is a British composer, teacher, and musical analyst. He is Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was a composer in residence with the New England Philharmonic.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nephilharmonic.org/staff.shtml |title=New England Philharmonic – Management |date=21 August 2009 |access-date=20 June 2011 |publisher=New England Philharmonic |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110408165651/http://www.nephilharmonic.org/staff.shtml |archive-date=8 April 2011 }}</ref>

==Education and career== Child took his first composition lessons at the age of 12 with Bernard Barrell.<ref name="mit"/> He began attending Keele University in Staffordshire, England, but transferred to Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 1973 in a junior-year exchange program.<ref name="mit"/> He earned his BA in music at Reed in 1975.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.reed.edu/apply/academics/arts_div.html |title=Admission – The Arts |access-date=20 June 2011 |publisher=Reed College |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110622051842/http://www.reed.edu/apply/academics/arts_div.html |archive-date=22 June 2011 }}</ref> Child then studied Kamatic music in Madras, India for one year on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.<ref name="mit"/> In 1978 he won a fellowship to the Berkshire Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, where he studied under Jacob Druckman.<ref name="Harvard"/> In 1981 he received his PhD in musical composition from Brandeis University,<ref name="mit">{{cite web |url=http://mit.edu/child/#/biography |title=Biography |year=2011 |access-date=20 June 2011 |publisher=MIT}}</ref> where his teachers included Arthur Berger, Martin Boykan, and Seymour Shifrin.<ref name="Harvard"/>

Child taught at Brandeis<ref name="Harvard"/> and chaired MIT's department of Music and Theater Arts from 1996 to 1999.<ref name="mit"/>

He was the American Symphony Orchestra League – Meet the Composer "Music Alive" composer in residence with the Albany Symphony Orchestra from 2005 to 2008.<ref name="mit"/><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=2JEJAQAAMAAJ&q=peter+child+composer ''Symphony'', Vol. 56]. American Symphony Orchestra League, 2005.</ref> Child wrote five new compositions for that orchestra, including ''Washington Park'', a work inspired by the city's Washington Park Historic District.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://albarchive.merlinone.net/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&imageid=6533151 |title=Heart of the City: New orchestral music gives voice to Albany's Washington Park |last=Dalton |first=Joseph |date=24 January 2008 |work=Albany Times Union |access-date=20 June 2011 |archive-date=6 March 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120306101106/http://albarchive.merlinone.net/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&imageid=6533151 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

==Composer== Child composes music for orchestra, chorus, computer synthesis, voice, and chamber groups.<ref name="mit"/> His compositional style has been compared to Charles Ives, Benjamin Britten, and Gustav Mahler.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bmop.org/explore-bmop/musicians/peter-child |title=Peter Child |year=2010 |publisher=Boston Modern Orchestra Project |access-date=20 June 2011}}</ref> Among his works are ''Embers'' (1984), a one-act chamber opera based on the play by Samuel Beckett, and ''Clare Cycle'' (1984), four settings from the poetry of John Clare.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://apnmmusic.org/peterchild.html |title=APNM Composer: Peter Child |publisher=Association for the Promotion of New Music |access-date=20 June 2011}}</ref>

Among the musical ensembles that have performed his music are the John Oliver Chorale, the Pro Arte Orchestra, the Lydian String Quartet, Collage, Parnassus, New York New Music, New Millennium Ensemble,<ref>''The New Yorker'' (1998), [https://books.google.com/books?id=--TjAAAAMAAJ&q=peter+child p. 110].</ref> the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Lontano (Great Britain), Interensemble (Italy), Speak Percussion (Australia), Emory University Wind Ensemble and Percussion Ensemble, and Boston Musica Viva.<ref name="mit"/>

Child's music has been commissioned by the Harvard Musical Association, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. Massachusetts resident Peter Grinnell Gombosi commissioned him to write several compositions for significant events in the Gombosi family's life,<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.necc.org/news/Open_Door/summer_2004.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060925212322/http://www.necc.org/news/Open_Door/summer_2004.pdf|archive-date=25 September 2006|title=In Memoriam |journal=The Open Door |publisher=The New England Center for Children |volume=7 |issue=2 |date=Summer 2004 |page=8}}</ref> including a string quartet commissioned in honor of the birth of Gombosi's son Andrew.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lydianquartet.com/listen.html |title=Recordings (Modern after 1945) – PETER CHILD: String Quartet No. 2 (1989) |year=2011 |access-date=20 June 2011 |publisher=Lydian Quartet |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080723233340/http://www.lydianquartet.com/listen.html |archive-date=23 July 2008 }}</ref>

==Awards== Child is the recipient of many music awards, including the 1994 Gyorgy Kepes Fellowship Prize awarded by the MIT Council for the Arts, the 2001 Music of Changes Award, and the 2004 Levitan Award in the Humanities from MIT. His compositions have earned the 1978 Margaret Grant Memorial Prize from Tanglewood, the 1979 First Prize from East and West Artists, the 1980 Recording Prize from WGBH Radio, the 1983 New Works Prize from the New England Conservatory, and the 1983 New England Composers Prize from the League-International Society for Contemporary Music, Boston.<ref name="mit"/>

==Personal== Child has lived in Cambridge 40 + years. The last 15 with his 2nd wife, the conceptual artist Lina Viste Grønli with whom he collaborated on the composition "Practicing Haydn" (along with Elaine Chew).<ref>[http://13.performa-arts.org/artists/lina-viste-grnli-with-peter-child-and-elaine-chew Collaboration of Lina Viste Grønli, Elaine Chew, and Peter Child], Performa Arts</ref> He has recently relocated to Norway with his wife Lina and their daughter Elsie Ruth. From a previous marriage to Sheila Perry Brachfeld-Child, he has two daughters, Madeleine<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.wickedlocal.com/wellesley/news/x1817193352#axzz1PquDShWS |title=Achievers: Bryant University dean's list |publisher=The Wellesley Townsman |year=2011 |access-date=20 June 2011}}</ref> and Rachel.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.wickedlocal.com/wellesley/fun/entertainment/arts/x1817194988#axzz1PquDShWS |title=Wellesley High School Honor Roll |date=31 May 2006 |access-date=20 June 2011 |publisher=The Wellesley Townsman}}</ref>

==Works==

===Musical analysis=== *{{cite book |title=The Theory and Analysis of Musical Phrase Structure |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=UnD9kQAACAAJ&q=Theory+and+Analysis+of+Musical+Phrase+Structure |year=1985 |publisher= University Microfilms International}}

===Musical compositions=== *{{cite book |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=9ts8AQAAIAAJ |title= Duo for flute and percussion: Study score |year=1981 |publisher=Mobart Music}} *{{cite book |title=Ensemblance (1982): per flauto, clarinetto in sib (i.e., si♭), violino, viola, violoncello, percussioni, pianoforte e nastro magnetico|year = 1988|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QiE4AQAAIAAJ|publisher=Semar}}

==References== {{reflist|2}}

==External links== *[http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/arts-child-0301.html "N.E. Philharmonic to premiere Peter Child choral work March 4" (2006 news release)] *[http://classical-scene.com/2010/05/08/spectrum-of-moods-in-child%E2%80%99s-song-of-liberty-at-mit/ "Spectrum of Moods in Child’s Song of Liberty at MIT" (2010 review in ''The Boston Musical Intelligencer'')]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Child, Peter}} Category:21st-century American composers Category:Watson Fellows Category:Brandeis University alumni Category:Reed College alumni Category:1953 births Category:Living people Category:MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty Category:Alumni of Keele University Category:Musicians from Great Yarmouth Category:Pupils of Arthur Berger Category:21st-century American male composers