William Osborne (composer)

William Osborne
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Born	1951 (age 72) Deming, New Mexico
Education	L'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, University of New Mexico
Occupation	Composer, academic, activist
Spouse(s)	Abbie Conant
Awards	Two ASCAP awards Doctoral Fellowship, University of Columbia Theatre commision from the City of Munich
Website	osborne-conant.org

William Osborne (born 1951) is an American post-modernist composer of Music Theatre, academic and feminist activist.

Biography

Osborne was born in 1951 in Deming, New Mexico, the grandson to two cotton farmers.

He received his BA from the University of New Mexico in 1973. After his undergraduate, Osborne lived in Philadelphia and New York City, where he studied with George Crumb for five years.

For two years, Osborne moved to Rome to study at the theatre and music school L'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with Franco Donatoni.

Osborne now lives in Taos, New Mexico with his wife, Abbie Conant.

Composition

Osborne's compositions have employed a combination of text, instrumental playing, electronics, twelve-tone technique and audio-visual elements. He has also used secular and religious literary sources with the children's opera Alice Through The Looking Glass (1976), inspired by Lewis Carroll, a setting of the Samuel Beckett play Rockaby (1985), and Music for the End of Time (1988), where each movement is based on a chapter from the Book of Revelations.

Osborne scores are often dense, incorporating stage directions, technical cues, passages of spoken text alongside traditional notation. For some of Osborne's complex scores, for example Cybeline (2004), a separate libretto exists.

Text plays a central role in almost all of Osborne's compositions. In his music theatre work, Osborne sets text to both music and spoken word. Some spoken word passages are directed by written-out rhythms, a technique similar to sprechgesang, except there is no indicated contour of pitch.

From the late 1990s onwards, Osborne began to increasingly incorporate electronics into his works. Osborne regularly combines midi piano with synthesisers and recorded samples to create quadraphonic accompaniments that the soloist plays with. The first major work to use electronics was Street Scene for the Last Mad Soprano (1996).

Osborne's works feature aleatoric electronic sections. For example, in Cybeline (2004), there are moments of "cloud music", where synthesised sounds are triggered randomly across different channels. Cybeline also experimented with the use of a sensor-fitted glove with which the performer improvises.

Although not a strict serialist composer, Osborne frequently employs twelve-tone compositional techniques, contrasting them with more tonal, romantic language.

Winnie, a theatre work based on the play Happy Days by Samuel Beckett, uses twelve-tone and serialism-informed compositional language extensively. The piece starts with an optional instrumental solo which is slow and lyrical, whose notes outline an 11-tone row.Between 2007 and 2008, Osborne composed Thirty Memos for Digital Piano, a collection of small pieces which use 12-tone technique extensively which are dedicated to Kurt Frederick.

Activism

Since the 1990s, Osborne has been heavily involved in the reporting of gender and racial bias and inequality in the field of classical music, particularly within European orchestras.

Osborne's wife, Abbie Conant, was the subject of an 11-year-long legal dispute with the Munich Philharmonic, which he documented extensively.

Taos Studio

Osborne and his wife Abbie Conant own a studio space in Taos, New Mexico. There is a two-bedroom living space and performance space capacity to seat 60. In addition to their own works, the studio has hosted readings, presentations and concerts from local Taoseña women and fellows of the Wurlitzer Foundation.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Osborne and Conant re-recorded several of their music theatre work. One of the videos, an extract from Miriam (1988-1990)a titled "Lament", was dedicated "to all those who lost their precious lives to COVID-19 and to those who grieve for them."

List of works

The following is a complete list of Osborne's works in chronological order:

• Aletheia, for performance artist and computer-controlled digital piano (2017)
• 6 Songs for Aleithia, for voice and two pianos (2008)
• Thirty memos for piano, for solo piano (2007)
• Cybeline, for performance artist and quadraphonic tape (2004)
• Music for the End of Time, for trombone and quadraphonic tape (1998)
• As it were a trumpet talking, for solo trombone (1987)
• Music for the End of Time (acoustic version), for trumpet, trmbone, contrabass and percussioN (1987)
• Act Without Words I, for pantomiming instrumentalist (1986)
• Rockaby, for singing actress and tape of voice, four trombones and piano (1985)
• Ohio Impromptu, for tenor, actor and piano (1985)
• Alice's Adventures Through the Looking-Glass, a children's opera for chamber orchestra and singers (1985)
• Six songs from Alice Through the Looking-Glass, for singers and piano accompaniment (1985)
• Leonore, for acting trombonist (1983)
• Words and Music, for actor, baritone and piano (1983)
• Winnie, for soprano (with optional instrument) and piano (1983)
• Hamm, for acting violinist (1981)
• Das Kleine Traumbuch, childrens pieces for piano (1981)
• Vladimir, for acting bass clarinetist (1981)
• The Sweinherd, for soprano, tenor, flute, viola, harp, and percussion (1980)
• The Lion and the Unicorn, for contrabass and harp (1978)
• Alice in Soundland, an early version of Alice's Adventures Through the Looking-Glass (1976)
• Pond, for solo trombone (1976)
• The Owl, for brass quintet and three percussionists (1975)
• The Land of Journey's Ending, for tenor, baritone, flute, trombone, piano, and three percussion (1974)
• The Mescalito Sonata, for two pianos (1973)

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