Composer, Conductor, Teacher. A gifted American musician of the post-World War II years. He is best known for his "Toccata Concertante" for orchestra (1948), his Symphony (1962), and his choral settings. Born in Boston, Fine pursued a musical career against the wishes of his father, who wanted him to become a lawyer; nevertheless he received an excellent education, studying at Harvard with Walter Piston, conducting with Serge Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Returning to Harvard in 1940, he taught basic piano and music history for a decade but was never offered tenure there, quite possibly because of anti-Semitism among the faculty. More rewarding were the many summers (1946 to 1957) he spent teaching composition at Tanglewood, where he was close friends with fellow composers Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and Lukas Foss. In 1950 Fine joined the new Brandeis University as Composer in Residence and in 1952 became founder and first chairman of its School of Creative Arts, which quickly gained national recognition under his guidance. He died of a heart attack at 47. The chair in composition at Brandeis is named in his honor. As a composer Fine was strongly influenced by the Neo-Classicism of Igor Stravinsky, which he tempered with a more romantic lyricism. From the early 1950s he made increasing use of serialism, though he never abandoned traditional tonality. Much of his music is of epigrammatic terseness. His other major works include two sets of choruses from "Alice in Wonderland" (1942, 1953), a Violin Sonata (1946), "Music for Piano" (1947), the Partita for Wind Quintet (1948), "The Hour Glass", a haunting song cycle for chorus on poems of Ben Jonson (1949), the "Notturno" for Strings and Harp (1951), and "Serious Song" (1955) for string orchestra. Fine's Symphony, his last and most ambitious composition, seemed to herald a bold, expansive new style, one he sadly would not live to develop. At his death he left sketches for an opera ("Maggie", based on a Stephen Crane novel) and a Violin Concerto. His archives are now housed at the Library of Congress.
Composer, Conductor, Teacher. A gifted American musician of the post-World War II years. He is best known for his "Toccata Concertante" for orchestra (1948), his Symphony (1962), and his choral settings. Born in Boston, Fine pursued a musical career against the wishes of his father, who wanted him to become a lawyer; nevertheless he received an excellent education, studying at Harvard with Walter Piston, conducting with Serge Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Returning to Harvard in 1940, he taught basic piano and music history for a decade but was never offered tenure there, quite possibly because of anti-Semitism among the faculty. More rewarding were the many summers (1946 to 1957) he spent teaching composition at Tanglewood, where he was close friends with fellow composers Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and Lukas Foss. In 1950 Fine joined the new Brandeis University as Composer in Residence and in 1952 became founder and first chairman of its School of Creative Arts, which quickly gained national recognition under his guidance. He died of a heart attack at 47. The chair in composition at Brandeis is named in his honor. As a composer Fine was strongly influenced by the Neo-Classicism of Igor Stravinsky, which he tempered with a more romantic lyricism. From the early 1950s he made increasing use of serialism, though he never abandoned traditional tonality. Much of his music is of epigrammatic terseness. His other major works include two sets of choruses from "Alice in Wonderland" (1942, 1953), a Violin Sonata (1946), "Music for Piano" (1947), the Partita for Wind Quintet (1948), "The Hour Glass", a haunting song cycle for chorus on poems of Ben Jonson (1949), the "Notturno" for Strings and Harp (1951), and "Serious Song" (1955) for string orchestra. Fine's Symphony, his last and most ambitious composition, seemed to herald a bold, expansive new style, one he sadly would not live to develop. At his death he left sketches for an opera ("Maggie", based on a Stephen Crane novel) and a Violin Concerto. His archives are now housed at the Library of Congress.
Bio by: Bobb Edwards
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