Blumenfeld, Harold (October 15, 1923)
Dates
- Existence: October 15, 1923
Biography
Harold Blumenfeld is the first composer to devote extensive attention to the poetry of the precocious and notorious Arthur Rimbaud. A native of Seattle and long-term resident of St. Louis, Blumenfeld studied with Hindemith at Yale and with Leonard Bernstein, Robert Shaw and Boris Goldovsky at Tanglewood. After engagement in opera direction in St. Louis throughout the sixties, he turned to musical composition, producing a body of works based on Hart Crane, Derek Walcott, Baudelaire and Verlaine, Rilke and Mandelstam, and on an entirely different note, two comic operas - Fourscore, an Opera of Opposites and Breakfast Waltzes, both with libretti by his collaborator, Charles Kondek. These works earned him awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Endowment for the Arts. Over the past decade Blumenfeld has been immersed in Rimbaud, composing four works based upon his poetry. His Rimbaud Odyssey culminates in Seasons in Hell (1992-1994), a two-act opera tracing the adventures of the adolescent poète maudit and his subsequent - and disastrous - fortune-seeking and gun-running in Africa. Blumenfeld's fascination with opera dates from just after graduation from Yale, when he joined Goldovsky in Boston to produce the first American staging of Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea.
Source: /www.artsci.wustl.edu/~blumenf/>.
Found in 2 Collections and/or Records:
American Composers Collection
The American Composers Collection includes material related to over 150 composers, including manuscript music scores, programs, correspondence, news clippings, and other items. Material varies with composer, from a single item to several folders. The collection was amassed from various donations to the University of Missouri-Kansas City before being given to the Dr. Kenneth J. LaBudde Department of Special Collections. Provenance is noted when known.
Harold Blumenfeld (Addendum 1), 1981
The American Composers Collection includes material related to over 150 composers, including manuscript music scores, programs, correspondence, news clippings, and other items. Material varies with composer, from a single item to several folders. The collection was amassed from various donations to the University of Missouri-Kansas City before being given to the Dr. Kenneth J. LaBudde Department of Special Collections. Provenance is noted when known.
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