Doublereed Archive - Posting 000102.txt from 2003/12

From: "jennifer devey" <sjdev@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [DR-L] Ronald Lo Presti
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 09:27:25 -0500

Although I have had the opportunity to play a couple of Lo Presti's
compositions (many years ago), I never knew much about him. Thank you for
the insight and explanations!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bear Woodson" <bearwoodson@-----.net>
To: "DoubleReed List" <doublereed-l@-----.edu>
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 12:22 PM
Subject: [DR-L] Ronald Lo Presti

> 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! ALL of my
> harmony is in "Chromatic Functional Modality".
>
> 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
>
>
> DOUBLEREED-L mailing list
> DOUBLEREED-L@-----.edu
> http://lists.washburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/doublereed-l
>

   
     Copyright © Woodwind.Org, Inc. All Rights Reserved    Privacy Policy    Contact charette@woodwind.org