Ernst Bacon

about

Ernst Lecher Bacon (May 26, 1898 – March 16, 1990) was an American composer, pianist, and 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. Bacon was self-taught in composition, except for two years of study with Karl Weigl in 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. Sometimes compared with Béla Bartók, Bacon incorporated into his music the history and folklore, as well as the indigenous music, poetry, folksongs, jazz rhythms, and the very landscape of America. As with Franz Schubert, a large body of more than 250 art songs is at the heart of an oeuvre that also includes numerous chamber, orchestral, and choral works. According to Marshall Bialosky, Ernst Bacon was "one of the first composers to discover Emily Dickinson... and set a great number of her poems into some of the finest art song music, if not actually the very finest, of any American composer in our history." He was deeply drawn by Walt Whitman's amplitude of vision, as well as by the poignant economy of Dickinson. Other poets with whom he felt an affinity included Carl Sandburg (who was a personal friend), Blake, Emily Brontë, Teasdale, and Housman. User-contributed

top songs

albums

Ernst Bacon: Fond Affection

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Ernst Bacon: The Complete Works for Solo Guitar

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Songs of Charles Ives and Ernst Bacon

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Ernst Bacon: Remembering Ansel Adams and other works

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Songs by 20th Century American Composers

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Orchestral Music - Ives, C. / Persichetti, V. / Harris, R. / Bacon, E. / Gould, M. / Mckay, G.F. / Turok, P. / Copland, A.(Lincoln Portraits)

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Trios from the City of Big Shoulders

The Complete Works for Solo Guitar

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Songs from Chicago

Remembering Ansel Adams and Other Works

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New Music for the Piano (Robert Helps, piano)

Fond Affection

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