Klarinet Archive - Posting 000406.txt from 2003/12

From: Bear Woodson <bearwoodson@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Ronald Lo Presti
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 14:19:12 -0500

Hello, Everyone.

I am still weeks behind on reading, storing and
answering E-Mails from the many Instrument Lists,
but I wanted to send this out quickly. Some people
have been contacting me regarding the conflict about
the birth and death dates of Ronald Lo Presti. Some
of you know that of the many composers, with
whom I have studied, he was my first, and still most
influential composer on my style of writing. In his
memory I write a lot of Canons, Fugues, Double
Fugues, Triple Fugues, Stretto Fugues, etc., which
often use the melody in Inversion (Upside-Down),
in Retrograde (Backwards), or even in Retrograde-
Inversion. Although those terms are often associated
with "12-Tone Music", neither Mr. Lo Presti nor I
ever liked, nor used 12-Tone, when using those
techniques, which have been used by NON-12-Tone
composers since the Late Middle Ages!

Anyway, some Internet and Print Sources have
false dates for Mr. Lo Presti's birth and death, so I
called his widow, and found out the correct infor-
mation:

Composer Ronald Lo Presti (1933-1985)
(October 28, 1933 to October 26, 1985)

I studied with him in the Early 1970's at ASU
(Arizona State University), and I was living in Los
Angeles during the 1980's, when he passed away,
so I didn't even know about it, until a year or so
later.

He was a good husband and father to his wife and
6 children, and a genius as a composer, as far as I'm
concerned. He had studied from Howard Hanson,
who had derived the "Chromatic Functional Modality"
Harmonic Language based on the teachings of Paul
Hindemith, and then Professor Hanson taught it
privately to his students, including Mr. Lo Presti, who
later taught it to me. By merely being a loyal student
I am told by increasing numbers of sources, that *I*
am the Last Surviving Expert on this Harmonic Lang-
uage, which will likely be the Harmony for both
Popular and "Modern Classical" Music for the next
300 years! I hope to do what I can to promote the
music and memory of Mr. Ronald Lo Presti.

Bear Woodson
Composer in Tucson, Arizona, USA

Home: 520 - 881 - 2558
"Bear Woodson" <bearwoodson@-----.net>
http://www.fluteconnection.net/
Then click on "Contemporary Composers",
then click on "Bear Woodson".
http://catalog.lib.asu.edu/search/a?SEARCH=McGale

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