Discipline: Music Composition

Clifford Taylor

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: Philadelphia, PA
MacDowell Fellowships: 1959, 1960
Clifford O. Taylor (1923-1987) was an American composer and music educator. He studied with Walter Piston and Paul Hindemith and served as chairman of the department of music composition at Temple University for 23 years. Among his compositions are three symphonies, The Freak Show (a 1975 one-act opera), several string quartets, and numerous piano sonatas. In December 1971 the Philadelphia Orchestra played the world premiere of his Symphony No. 2. His major works belonged to a school of thought among 20th century American composers, such as Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, that was intent on exhibiting strictly American styles, properties, and innovations.

Studios

Veltin

Clifford Taylor worked in the Veltin studio.

Veltin Studio was donated by alumni of the Veltin School, a school for girls in New York with a highly respected visual arts department. As the plaque just outside the entrance attests, this studio was used by poet Edwin Arlington Robinson during most of the 24 summers he spent at MacDowell. Perhaps most famously, Thornton Wilder put the finishing…

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