Gunther Schuller
Gunther Schuller
Gunther Schuller is a noted contributor to Encyclopaedia Britannica online. Read Britannica's biography of Gunther Schuller
BIOGRAPHY

Jazz historian, composer, and musicologist. Author of The Compleat Conductor, The Swing Era, The History of Jazz, and others. Composer of Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano, The Black Warrior oratorio, and others. He won a Grammy Award in 1973 and a Pulitzer Prize in 1994.

photograph: William E. Sauro—The New York Times/Redux

Primary Contributions (1)
Louis Armstrong
Jazz, musical form, often improvisational, developed by African Americans and influenced by both European harmonic structure and African rhythms. It was developed partially from ragtime and blues and is often characterized by syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, varying degrees of…
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Publications (3)
Gunther Schuller: A Life in Pursuit of Music and Beauty
Gunther Schuller: A Life in Pursuit of Music and Beauty (October 2011)
By Gunther Gunther Schuller
Simultaneously the memoir of a famed composer, conductor, and music educator, and an important historical sourcebook on the American musical scene during the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the autobiography of Gunther Schuller chronicles the first thirty-five years of this multifaceted and expansive figure's life and work. Schuller began composing music at an early age and joined the Cincinnati Symphony as its principal French horn player at seventeen. Since then he has written for...
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Musings: The Musical Worlds Of Gunther Schuller
Musings: The Musical Worlds Of Gunther Schuller (May 1999)
By Gunther Schuller
Musings gathers together the essays, speeches, liner notes, dictionary entries, and magazine articles of Gunther Schuller, one of the most important musical figures of the century. The writings in this collection cover such artists as Paul Whiteman, Duke Ellington, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Sarah Vaughan, Gil Evans. Schuller also writes about such topics as the "Third Stream," the art of conducting, the future of opera, and the need for broadening the audience for quality...
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The Compleat Conductor
The Compleat Conductor (December 1998)
By Gunther Schuller
A world-renowned conductor and composer who has lead most of the major orchestras in North America and Europe, a talented musician who has played under the batons of such luminaries as Toscanini and Walter, and an esteemed arranger, scholar, author, and educator, Gunther Schuller is without doubt a major figure in the music world. Now, in The Compleat Conductor, Schuller has penned a highly provocative critique of modern conducting, one that is certain to stir controversy. Indeed, in these pages...
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