Claudio Spies

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Carlos Claudio Spies (March 26, 1925 – April 2, 2020) was a Chilean American composer.

Biography

Early life

Born in Santiago, Chile, of German Jewish parents, Spies completed primary and secondary education in Santiago in 1941, when he passed the Bachillerato. Erich Kleiber and Fritz Busch were mentors to Spies at an early age.

Spies came to the United States in August 1942 to study music at

• Harvard University (1953–1957)
• Vassar College (1957–1958)
• Swarthmore College (1958–1970)
• Princeton University (Professor of Music, 1970–1998; Professor Emeritus, 1998–)
• The Juilliard School (1998–2010)

In addition to teaching music composition and analysis, he has also taught such subjects as: study of composers' manuscripts,

With Stravinsky, he attended countless rehearsals, performances, and recording sessions of new Stravinsky works in such places as Boston, New York, and Venice (the first performance of The Rake's Progress in 1951). Another Stravinsky work whose premiere Spies helped bring to fruition was Requiem Canticles, at Princeton's McCarter Theatre in 1966.^[2]

While teaching at Harvard Summer School in 1968, Spies conducted the first performances of four preliminary versions of Stravinsky's

He died April 2, 2020, in Sonoma.[2]

Sources

• Sadie, Stanley, The Norton/Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, W. W. Norton, 1988

References