Charles Wuorinen

Charles Wuorinen was a modernist American composer whose academic reputation was firmly established on a decades-long teaching career and a body of work that exceeds 250 compositions. Wuorinen was a dedicated serialist, though his music often contains features that may suggest tonality. He also worked in the field of electronic music, where he had success with the 1970 Pulitzer Prize-winner Time's Encomium. Yet most of his compositions were written for conventional Western instruments, and he wrote music in all of the established classical genres, including orchestral, chamber, choral, and vocal music.