Ernst Bacon

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Ernst Bacon
Born
Ernst Lecher Bacon

(1898-05-26)May 26, 1898
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
DiedMarch 16, 1990(1990-03-16) (aged 91)
Orinda, California
, U.S.
Occupation(s)Composer, pianist and conductor
Spouses
  • Mary Prentice Lillie
  • Analee Camp
  • Margaret Camp
  • Ellen Bacon
Notes

Ernst Lecher Bacon (May 26, 1898 – March 16, 1990) was an

conductor. A prolific author, Bacon composed over 250 songs over his career. He was awarded three Guggenheim Fellowships and a Pulitzer Scholarship in 1932 for his Second Symphony.[1]

Personal life

Bacon was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 26, 1898 to Marie von Rosthorn Bacon (sister of

University of California at Berkeley, where he received a master's degree for the composition of The Song of the Preacher in 1935.[2][3]

Bacon was married four times. He married his first wife Mary Prentice Lillie, granddaughter of

Richard Teller Crane in 1927. They had two children, Margaret and Joseph. His second wife was cellist, Analee Camp. They had two sons, Paul and Arthur. Paul died at the age of 18, which had a deep and lasting effect on Bacon. In 1952, he married his third wife, Peggy Camp (no relation to Anna Lee). He met his fourth wife Ellen Wendt, a soprano singer, when he was 70 and she was 26 at 10,000 feet on a Sierra Club trip in Kings Canyon National Park in 1968, four years after he retired from Syracuse University. Despite the age gap, they shared a love for classical music and writers like Emerson and Thoreau. He married her in 1971. Their son David was born in 1973.[4]

Bacon died in 1990 at age 91 in Orinda, California.[4]

Career

At the age of 19, Bacon wrote a complex

Vienna, Austria. Experiencing the depression of post-war Europe first hand, he understood that the avant-garde
movement reflected the pessimism of its origins. Bacon set out instead to write music that expressed the vitality and affirmation of his own country.

He composed a large number of art songs, and much other music including chamber, orchestral, and choral works. Aside from his musical and literary composition, Bacon held a number of positions that took him across the country. From 1925-27, Bacon was an opera coach at the Eastman School of Music. In 1928 Bacon traveled from New York to California to take up a position at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he served until 1930. In 1935, Bacon was the guest conductor at the first Carmel Bach Festival in California. A year later he was supervising the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Music Project and conducting the San Francisco Symphony.

From 1938-45, he was dean and professor of piano at

Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. From 1945-47 he was director of the school of music, then from 1947-63 he was professor and composer in residence at Syracuse University. He was Professor Emeritus from 1964. Among his students were Jonathan Elkus, Carlisle Floyd, David N. Johnson, and Donald Martino. He continued to work until shortly before his death in 1990.[6][7]

Settings

Bacon composed settings to the works by the following:

Carl Sandberg, William Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sara Teasdale, Walt Whitman
.

Discography

References

  1. ^ "Ernst Bacon". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation... Retrieved 2023-05-12.
  2. ^ A Bibliography of the Works of Ernst Bacon. Dale Vargason, Jr. (Thesis for MA at Department of Music, SUNY Buffalo).
  3. ^ Library of Congress. (2006). "Ernst Bacon, 1898-1990 biography". Retrieved December 6, 2006
  4. ^ a b Herbert, Geoff (15 April 2021). "Adventurous Syracuse alum competes on epic TV show 'Race to the Center of the Earth'". The Post-Standard. Retrieved 23 April 2021.
  5. JSTOR 27900661
    – via JSTOR.
  6. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2023-05-12.
  7. ^ Holliday, Thomas, Falling Up: The Days and Nights of Carlisle Floyd, The Authorized Biography, 2013, Syracuse University Press
  8. ^ Reviewed at MusicWeb International

Library of Congress. (2006). "Ernst Bacon, 1898-1990 biography". Retrieved December 6, 2006 A Bibliography of the Works of Ernst Bacon. Dale Vargason, Jr. (Thesis for MA at Department of Music, SUNY Buffalo). Fowler, Glenn, Ernst Bacon, a Composer Known For Echoing America, Dies at 91, New York Times March 18, 1990, https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/18/obituaries/ernst-bacon-a-composer-known-for-echoing-america-dies-at-91.html?smid=url-share Holliday, Thomas, Falling Up: The Days and Nights of Carlisle Floyd, The Authorized Biography, 2013, Syracuse University Press Musical Play Gets the Pulitzer Award, New York Times, May 3, 1932,https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1932/05/03/100729643.html?pageNumber=16 The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Fellows, Profile https://www.gf.org/fellows/ernst-bacon/

Research resources

External links

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