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Stout, Alan

 Person

Biography

Alan Stout (b. 1932) is an American composer. He studied concurrently at Johns Hopkins University (BS 1954) and the Peabody Conservatory. After a year at the University of Copenhagen, he completed his formal musical training at the University of Washington (MA 1959). His teachers included Henry Cowell, Wallingford Riegger, Vagn Holmboe, and John Verrall. In 1962 he joined the Northwestern University School of Music. His diverse musical interests are reflected in the various societies to which he belongs. He is a founding member of the International Gong Society and the International Double Reed Society, a patron of the Schoenberg Institute, and a member of the board of directors of the International Percy Grainger Society. In addition, he has completed numerous performance editions and realizations of unfinished works of composers such as Charles Ives, Anton Webern, and Percy Grainger. He is also an advocate of Scandinavian music.

A prolific composer, Stout has written over 100 works. His style exhibits a blend of American experimentalism and more traditional writing. Often based on a relaxed application of the 12-note system, his music makes use of tone clusters, transcriptions of natural phenomena, and rhythmic notations that allow performers a certain degree of rhythmic flexibility. A consistent concern for timbre is also characteristic of his music. Many of his works revise and re-use material from earlier compositions. The Music for Oboe and Piano (1966) and the Music for Flute and Harpsichord (1967), for example, rework sections of the Second Symphony (1951–1966). That work, as well as the George Lieder (1962), the Fourth Symphony (1970) and Passion (1975) were given premières by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Adapted from Kathryn Gleasman Pisaro's article in Grove Music Online.

Found in 3 Collections and/or Records:

American Music Edition records

 Collection
Identifier: AME
Scope and Contents

Manuscript scores, business records, and correspondence that reflects AME’s repertoire of new American music by Green, Carl Ruggles, Halsey Stevens, and others, as well as the interactions Green had with many key figures in twentieth-century music, including John Cage, Henry Cowell, Charles Ives, Gunther Schuller, William Grant Still, Virgil Thomson, and many others.

Dates: 1920 - 1997; Other: Majority of material found within 1951 - 1991; Other: Acquired November 30, 2005

Alan Stout (1932-2018) Papers

 Collection
Identifier: 19/3/15
Abstract

The Alan Stout papers fills 22 boxes and includes music scores, sheet music, performance programs, articles, press releases, publications, biographical information, correspondence, course materials, and student work created by or related to the life and career of Alan Stout. Composer and music composition and theory professor, Alan Stout, was born on November 26, 1932 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Dates: 1916 - 2018; Majority of material found within 1951 - 2000

Alan Stout manuscript scores

 Collection
Identifier: Stout
Abstract

Manuscript scores (diazotype) by the American composer Alan Stout (born 1932), most with cover labels and stamps from the American Composers Alliance Library, New York.

Dates: 1961-1975; Other: Date acquired: 12/11/2007

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Subject
Composers--United States 1