# Benjamin Lees (1924-2010)



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

From WIK:

_Benjamin Lees (January 8, 1924 - May 31, 2010) was an American composer of classical music.

__Lees was born Benjamin George Lisniansky in Harbin, China, of Russian-Jewish descent. He began piano lessons at 5 with Kiva Ihil Rodetsky of San Francisco and started composing as a teenager._
_After serving in the United States military, Lees studied composition under Halsey Stevens, as well as with Kalitz and Ingolf Dahl, at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles,California. Composer George Antheil, impressed by Lees' compositions, offered further tutelage; this period lasted four years, at the end of which Lees won a Fromm Foundation Award._
_The receipt of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1954 allowed him to live in Europe, realizing his goal of developing his individual style away from current fashions in the American art music scene and resulting in a number of mature and impressive works. Returning to the United States in 1961, he divided his time between composition and teaching at several institutions. These included the Peabody Conservatory (1962-64, 1966-68), Queens College (1964-66), the Manhattan School of Music (1972-74), and the Juilliard School (1976-77).

_
_Lees rejected atonalism and Americana in favor of classical structures. Niall O'Loughlin writes in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "From an early interest in the bittersweet melodic style of Prokofiev and the bizarre and surrealist aspects of Bartók's music, he progressed naturally under the unconventional guidance of Antheil." Lees' music is rhythmically active, with frequently changing accents and meter even in his early works, and is known for its semitonal inflections in melody and harmony._
_In 1954, the NBC Symphony Orchestra performed his Profiles for Orchestra on a national radio broadcast. Notable works include Symphony No. 4: Memorial Candles, commissioned by theDallas Symphony Orchestra in 1985 to commemorate the Holocaust, and Symphony No. 5: Kalmar Nyckel, written in 1986 to honor the founding of Wilmington, Delaware. (Kalmar Nyckelwas the name of the ship that first carried the original settlers from Sweden to what would become Wilmington.) His 1998 Piano Trio no. 2, "Silent Voices" was written in Palm Springs._
_Lees received a Grammy nomination for Kalmar Nyckel in 2003, following release of a recording by the German orchestra Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz under Stephen Gunzenhauser. He lost to Dominick Argento.

_He wrote his Piano Sonata No. 4 for Gary Graffman. It is finally available in a large box set of Graffman's recordings.

I like everything I've heard by Lees, and especially his individuality. Without being 12-tone or serial, he manages to create his own tonalities out of harmonic materials which sound unmistakably always like him. "Charles Ives with control" is about the best metaphor I can muster. His ideas are always interesting, always richly harmonic and complex.


----------



## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> _
> I like everything I've heard by Lees, and especially his individuality. Without being 12-tone or serial, he manages to create his own tonalities out of harmonic materials which sound unmistakably always like him. "Charles Ives with control" is about the best metaphor I can muster. His ideas are always interesting, always richly harmonic and complex._


_

I like him too, but I'd say he's more than conservative enough to avoid the Ives reference. I'd liken his style to Bartok minus the Hungarian harmonies. His is not too far removed from Persichetti and Mennin._


----------



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I like Persichetti, too. I still think my "Ives with control" metaphor is better than yours.


----------

