2 - A History of the Rome Prize in Music Composition, 1947–2006

Summary

Preface

I have been closely associated with the American Academy in Rome since I arrived there in September 1964 as that year's Rome Prize Fellow in Music Composition. Following a three-year fellowship, I remained in Rome as a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and, after winning the 1969 Kranichsteiner Musikpreis in piano, I settled in Rome as a freelance composer-pianist. In the fall of 1970 I was composer-in-residence at the Academy and began assisting with the Academy's music program on a regular basis. I have continued to do so—fi rst as an adviser to the composers-in-residence and subsequently as the music liaison.

The following history is the culmination of several projects that I have undertaken, in my capacity as music liaison, with the purpose of historicizing the American Academy's music program. It builds on the reports I regularly wrote for Academy publications describing the Academy's musical activities (1974– 2006); on the brochure “American Academy in Rome: Music Composition and Performance Activity,” which I compiled in 1976 and updated in 1994; on the documentation I gathered while overseeing the digitalization of the Academy's Concert Recordings Archive in 2003; and on my personal knowledge of the Academy's music program throughout the period in which I have been assisting or actively overseeing the program in Rome (1970–present).

Direct contributions by the composers themselves have been crucial throughout these projects. In preparing the “Music Composition and Performance Activity” brochure in 1976 and its update in 1994, I requested fellows and composers-in-residence to fi ll out questionnaires regarding their creative work while at the Academy. Their written responses provided the corresponding information listed in that brochure. Similarly, in preparation for the present history, I circulated a more detailed questionnaire in 2006—this time by e-mail as well as by mail, fax, and phone contact. My colleagues were, once again, forthcoming and informative, and their responses have been incorporated in the present text.

With regard to the Academy's development as an institution (i.e., the context within which the music program functioned), I have consulted the Academy's Annual Reports (1946 to the present) and Academy newsletter publications. Other sources of information have been personal interviews, correspondence, and materials that I have gathered from 1964 to the present.