Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of North Texas, 2003. / Accompanied by 4 recitals, recorded Jan. 26, 1998, June 21, 1999, Apr. 15, 2002, and Apr. 23, 2003. Includes bibliographical references (p. 46-49).

Treatise (D.M.A.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-152). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Treatise (D.M.A.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Treatise (D.M.A.) Florida State University, 2007. / Advisor: Frank Kowalsky, Florida State University, College of Music. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed 8-21-2007). Document formatted into pages; contains 92 pages. Includes biographical sketch. Includes bibliographical references.

Not available / text

Not available / text

William Bolcom was born May 26, 1938, in Seattle Washington. Formal training in music began at age eleven at the University of Washington School of Music with Bertha Poncy Jacobson (piano), John Verrall (composition), and George McKay (composition). In 1958 he began study with Darius Milhaud, first at Mills College, Oakland, and later at the Paris Conservatory; while in Paris he also studied aesthetics with Olivier Messiaen and counterpoint with Simon Ple-Caussade. Stanford University awarded him a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition in 1964, and since that time he has taught at Queen's College in New York, the New York University School of Arts and Yale Drama School; he was also composer-in-residence at the New York University School of the Arts from 1969 to 1970. He is presently associate professor of composition at the University of Michigan School of Music, a position he has held since 1973. Bolcom is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. He won second prize in composition at the Paris Conservatory, and he has held fellowships and grants from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations and the New York State Council for the Arts. He has also received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and commissions have come from the Domaine Musical (Berlin), Julliard Repertory Ensemble, the Koussevitsky Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Milhaud, Rochberg and Boulez have exerted a significant influence on Bolcom's development as a composer, and his compositions incorporate a wide variety of techniques and procedures ranging from popular music and improvisation to microtones and serialism. In 1979 eight of Bolcom's new works were premiered, and his other compositions continue to be performed widely. His works are published by Bowdoin College Press, Jobert, Theodore Presser, Nonesuch, Philips, Advance, and CMS-Desto. As pianist and accompanist for his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, he is recorded on Columbia, Jazzology, and Nonesuch. A prolific writer on musical subjects, Bolcom has written articles for Stereo Review and Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians; he is also co-author with Robert Kimball of Reminiscing with Sissle and Blake, a book about Eubie Blake and Nobble Sissle's contribution to the black musical theatre of the '20's (New York: Viking Press, 1973). Bolcom has written over a hundred compositions ranging from stage works to carillon music. His theatre works include Theatre of the Absurd, a work for actors, musicians and tape, and he has completed a half-length version of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera which was left unfinished by Darius Milhaud in 1937. He has produced a large body of piano literature including twelve Etudes, numerous rags, and a work for two pianos, harpsichord, and harmonium. Orchestral works, chamber music, choral music, violin pieces and works for organ are also represented in his output.

Composer William Bolcom (1938-) has shown a remarkable capacity for incorporating disparate materials and combining them to create original compositions, while often using traditional genres and forms. This style has earned Bolcom the reputation as a leading composer of American postmodernism. This study provides a brief sketch of Bolcom's development as a postmodern composer, his repertoire for violoncello and piano, and it examines his compositional style as applied in his Sonata for Violoncello and Piano (1989). In the Sonata Bolcom applies a wide variety of musical vocabulary from serious and popular traditions. He juxtaposes contrasting ideas to create and resolve rhythmic, melodic and harmonic tensions and amalgamates concepts of three centuries of music history into one new integral work. All these disparate elements with classical, romantic, impressionist, expressionist, modernist and popular connotations are molded together to form a serious piece of musi c with a sense of humor. The three contrasting movements of the Sonata share many common rhythmic, melodic and harmonic traits. The movements form a congruent work of Classical and Romantic spirit, often reminiscent of Brahms' music, despite the mixed use of traditional, popular, and modernist musical languages.