Walter Piston

Walter Hamor Piston Jr. (January 20, 1894 – November 12, 1976) was an American composer and theorist of the front rank in the middle twentieth century. Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes in music for his Third Symphony (1948, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra) and his Seventh Symphony (1961, premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra) and two New York Music Circle awards, Piston was among several prominent American symphonists of the World War II era who attained international notoriety. In addition to his work as a composer, Walter Piston wrote authoritative books on harmony and orchestration.

Though he was considered to be a part of the new school of American "nationalism" in music, he downplayed the idea of establishing an American style preferring to be more concerned with developing his craft in pursuit of his own personal style. On this subject, he wrote, "The self-conscious striving for nationalism gets in the way of the establishment of a strong American School of composition and even of significant individual expression. If composers will increasingly strive to perfect themselves in the art of music, and will follow only those paths of expression which seem to them the true way, the matter of a national school will take of itself."

This is concomitant with the insights of another celebrated composer and theorist, Arnold Schoenberg:

“Whether one calls oneself conservative or revolutionary, whether one composes in a conventional or progressive manner, whether one tries to imitate old styles or is destined to express new ideas - one must be convinced of the infallibility of one's own fantasy and one must believe in one's own inspiration.”

Life

Piston was born in Rockland, Maine. His father's father, a sailor named Antonio Piston, changed his name to Anthony Piston when he came to America from Genoa, Italy. In 1905, Walter Piston Sr. and his family moved to Boston. Walter Jr. trained as an engineer at the Mechanical Arts High School in Boston, but he was artistically inclined and upon graduating from there in 1912, proceeded to the Massachusetts Normal Arts School, majoring in painting, also studying architectural drawing and American history. There he met Kathryn Nason, and married her at a Unitarian church.

With his brother Edward, Walter Piston Jr. took piano lessons from Harris Shaw (who was Virgil Thomson's organ teacher). During the 1910's Walter Piston made a living playing piano and violin in dance bands, and later on in the decade played violin in orchestras led by Georges Longy. With help from Shaw, Walter Piston was admitted to Harvard in 1920, where he studied counterpoint with Archibald Davison, canon and fugue with Clifford Heilman, advanced harmony with Edward Ballantine, composition and music history with Edward Burlingame Hill. Piston often worked as an assistant to the various music professors there, and conducted the student orchestra.

At about that time Piston joined the Navy Band and learned to play more instruments. He wanted to join the U.S. Navy as an officer, but was deemed more useful as a musician.

Upon graduating summa cum laude from Harvard, Piston was awarded a John Knowles Paine Traveling Fellowship, consisting of $1500 yearly for two to three years of travel abroad. He chose to go to Paris, living there from 1924 to 1926, but he also visited Italy. At the Ecole Nationale de Musique in Paris, Piston studied composition and counterpoint with Nadia Boulanger, composition with Paul Dukas and violin with George Enescu. His Three Pieces for Flute, Clarinet and Bassoon of 1925 was his first published score.

He moved to Belmont, Massachusetts after returning from Europe, and taught at Harvard from 1926 until retiring in 1960. His students include Samuel Adler, Leroy Anderson, Arthur Berger, Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, Irving Fine, John Harbison, Frederic Rzewski and Harold Shapero.

In 1936, the Columbia Broadcasting System commissioned six American composers (Aaron Copland, Louis Gruenberg, Howard Hanson, Roy Harris, William Grant Still and Piston) to write works for CBS radio stations to broadcast. Piston considered radio better suited to smaller orchestras and he wrote a Concertino for Piano and Chamber Orchestra. The following year Piston wrote his Symphony No. 1, which was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on April 8, 1938.

At the invitation of Arthur Fiedler, Piston wrote his most famous ballet, The Incredible Flautist, for Hans Wiener and the Boston Pops Orchestra.

Piston studied the twelve-tone techniques of Arnold Schoenberg, and wrote a work for organ using them, the Chromatic Study on the Name of Bach.

During World War II, Piston was an air raid warden in Belmont, and he wrote patriotic fanfares and other such works.

In 1943, the Alice M. Ditson fund of Columbia University commissioned Piston's Symphony No. 2, which was premiered by the National Symphony Orchestra on March 5, 1944 and was awarded a prize by the New York Music Critics' Circle. His next symphony, Symphony No. 3 earned a Pulitzer Prize, as did his Symphony No. 7. His Viola Concerto and String Quartet No. 5 also later received Critics' Circle awards.

Piston wrote four books on the technical aspects of music theory which are considered to be classics in their respective fields: Principles of Harmonic Analysis, Counterpoint, Orchestration and Harmony. The last of these went through four editions in the author's lifetime, was translated into several languages, and (with changes made by a later author) is still widely used by teachers and students of harmony. In it, Piston introduced, for the first time, the concept of the secondary dominant, as well as his unique theory of classifying nonharmonic tones (nonchord tones).

Piston's handwriting was so neat that almost all his orchestral scores were published as facsimiles of his original scores, and he also wrote the musical examples in the textbooks he authored.

In his final years, Piston was debilitated by diabetes, and his vision and hearing suffered. His wife died in 1976, and he died later that same year, of a heart attack, in Belmont, Massachusetts. He was cremated, and his ashes were dispersed at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Works

Ballet

• The Incredible Flutist (1938)

Orchestral

• Symphonies
  • Symphony No. 1 (1938)
  • Symphony No. 2 (1943)
  • Symphony No. 3 (1948)
  • Symphony No. 4 (1950)
  • Symphony No. 5 (1954)
  • Symphony No. 6 (1955)
  • Symphony No. 7 (1960)
  • Symphony No. 8 (1965)

• Suite for Orchestra (1929)
• Concerto for Orchestra (1934)
• Suite from The Incredible Flutist
• Sinfonietta (1941)
• Serenata for Orchestra (1957)
• Three New England Sketches (1960)

Band

• Tunbridge Fair, for symphonic band (1950)

Concertante

• Piano
  • Piano Concertino (1937)
  • Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1958)
• Violin
  • Violin Concerto No. 1 (1939)
  • Violin Concerto No. 2 (1960)
  • Fantasia for Violin and Orchestra (1970)
• Viola Concerto (1958)
• Fantasy for English Horn, Harp, and Strings (1954)
• Capriccio for Harp and Strings (1963)
• Clarinet Concerto (1967)
• Concerto for String Quartet, Wind Instruments and Percussion (1976)

Chamber/Instrumental

• String quartets
  • String Quartet No. 1 (1933)
  • String Quartet No. 2 (1935)
  • String Quartet No. 3 (1947)
  • String Quartet No. 4 (1952)
  • String Quartet No. 5 (1962)
• Three Pieces for Flute, Clarinet and Bassoon (1926)
• Flute Sonata (1930)
• Suite for Oboe and Piano (1931)
• Violin Sonata (1939)
• Sonatina for Violin and Harpsichord
• Flute Quintet (1942)
• Divertimento, for nine instruments (1946)
• Piano Quintet (1949)
• Wind Quintet (1956)
• Piano Quartet (1964)
• String Sextet (1964)

Piano

• Piano Sonata (1926)
• Passacaglia (1943)
• Improvisation (1945)

Choral

• Psalm and Prayer of David (1959)

Books

• Principles of Harmonic Analysis (Boston, 1933)
• Harmony (New York, 1941, 5/1987 with M. DeVoto)
• Counterpoint (New York, 1947)
• Orchestration (New York, 1955)

The edition of Piston's Harmony that is currently available is:

• Walter Piston and Mark Devoto (1987) Harmony. 5th ed. New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-95480-3.

External links

• Art of the States: Walter Piston