William Schuman: The composer that shaped Juilliard, the Lincoln Center, and American music

John Banther (0:00)

I'm John Banther, and this is Classical Breakdown.

From WETA Classical in Washington, we are your guide to classical music. In this episode, I'm joined by WETA Classical's Evan Keely, and we're talking about American composer and arts leader, William Schuman. He lived in the 20th century and was such a major influence that he was nearly a household name. But why is his name unfamiliar or even unknown today? We take a look at his very different start in music, the institutions he led and changed, specific characteristics in his music, and works you need to hear.

I would guess, Evan, that most listeners today don't know the name William Schuman. But if I describe them, I think some might also be surprised as to why they haven't heard them before. I mean, starting with the name, right? I mean, Schuman is how I pronounce it and how I often will pronounce it, but I know it's not exact.

Evan Keely (0:58)

Yeah, Schuman is how I was told to pronounce it. We have the one N, not two Ns with like Robert Schuman. But yeah, I think you and I are both going to slip and say Schuman.

My understanding, and I didn't know the composer personally, but my understanding is the pronunciation is Schuman.

John Banther (1:16)

Okay. Schuman like-

Evan Keely (1:18)

Like Koeman.

John Banther (1:19)

Koeman, okay.

Evan Keely (1:20)

Sort of. Well, we're going to do our best.

John Banther (1:23)

We'll do our best. And people might be surprised if I describe who he was, why we don't talk about him today, or maybe why they wouldn't even know who he is today. So just to give you like the cliff notes of his life, William Schuman was born in 1910

He was a composer who at age 35 became president of Juilliard. He then founded the Juilliard String Quartet. He was the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He became president of the Lincoln Center in 1961 and oversaw its campus creation. He has numerous awards like the National Medal of Arts and Edward MacDowell Medal. He has a large body of work, eight symphonies. Those have all been recorded. And he's on numerous interviews and TV appearances. But again, I bet most people don't know his music or what he even did in this country.

Evan Keely (2:11)

Yeah, hugely consequential figure in American music as a composer and in these other aspects of his life that you just touched on, John, and we'll get into that some more. His compositions do have that American sound, I think.

You and I have talked about other American composers on Classical Breakdown. We talked about Aaron Copeland and Margaret Bonds and John Williams and William Grant Still. And like all of those composers, William Schuman derives that American sound, in part by drawing on the legacy and the history of music in this country. So one of the pieces we'll talk about today is one of his most enduring works, New England Triptych, which is an orchestral suite that draws on tunes by William Billings, an American composer who lived during the American Revolution.

John Banther (3:01)

Yeah, that definitely feels like a good jumping off or jumping into point for his music. But yeah, why would he after his death in 1992 seem like he's forgotten? We're going to talk about and think about some of those reasons we're going to go over his life. And of course, some of the music like that triptych that we think you are really going to like.

Okay, so we start as we often do with a composer's early life. But this composer is a little different because it's not even until age 19 or 20 that he decides to become a composer after hearing a New York Philharmonic concert. He wrote, I was astounded at seeing the sea of stringed instruments and everybody bowing together. The visual thing alone was astonishing, but the sound, I was overwhelmed. I had never heard anything like it. The very next day, I decided to become a composer.

Now, Evan, we know that he was apparently writing some songs or some music with friends like popular songs in his teens, but this feels very, very different. Because at this point in his life, he's already been at New York University for two years studying for a business degree. And every other composer we talk about, it's like, yeah, they started at six, they went to conservatory at 12, stuff like that. But that doesn't happen here. The person he reminds me of today is the author Haruki Murakami, who many people will probably recognize. He didn't start writing fiction until he was almost 30 years old after he went to a baseball game.