John McGuire (composer)


John McGuire is an American composer, pianist, organist, and music editor.

Biography

John McGuire initially studied composition with Robert Arthur Gross at Occidental College, where he earned a BA in 1964. He received a succession of three Alfred E. Hertz Traveling Scholarships from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Fulbright Traveling Scholarship, which together enabled him to study with Krzysztof Penderecki at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen from 1966–68, and at the Fourth Cologne Courses for New Music, under Karlheinz Stockhausen, in 1967. He has also had works commissioned by Radio Bremen, from pianist Herbert Henck, from Dartmouth College, and from the Ministry of Culture of North Rhine–Westphalia. In 1995 he was composer-in-residence at the Akademie Schloss Wiepersdorf in Brandenburg.
In 1998 he returned to his native country, working for a time as an editor for the Carl Fischer music-publishing firm in New York City starting in 1998. From 2000 to 2002 he taught advanced composition and twentieth-century music as a part-time Visiting Adjunct Professor at Columbia University.
He is married to the soprano Beth Griffith, for whom he composed A Cappella in 1990–97 and Contradance in 2000–2004.

Musical style and influences

Kyle describes McGuire as a "postminimalist". His music seeks a synthesis of minimalism and the serialism with which he had become acquainted during his studies in Germany, especially with Stockhausen. "His work over the next 25 years was devoted entirely to the exploration and development of various aspects of this synthesis, in particular the fusion of elemental tonal functions with chromatic time structures". He is regarded as one of the key figures in the Cologne School.
His music is published by Feedback Studio and Breitkopf & Härtel

Compositions