Discipline: Music Composition

Emerson Meyers

Discipline: Music Composition
MacDowell Fellowships: 1951, 1952, 1957, 1966
Emerson Meyers (1910-1990) was a composer, pianist, teacher, and professor emeritus of Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He was an early composer of electronic music and was particularly active in the Washington arts community in the decade after World War II. He appeared as a soloist, organized music for Washington's 150th anniversary celebration, directed fund-raising for the National Symphony Orchestra, and was music director for revived summer concerts at the Watergate bandshell on the Potomac. Known then as a dazzling classical pianist, he helped train young musicians interested in one of music's new directions, the electronic, tape-augmented tones that were created in Europe in the late 1930s. In 1964, Meyers founded the electronic music center at Catholic University, whose faculty he joined in 1943. He said he hoped to promote the then-experimental musical form that was being widely explored in Europe and half a dozen American universities. In 1943, he won first prize for chamber music from the National Federation of Music Clubs, one of a number of awards, prizes, and commissions that he received over the years.

Studios

Irving Fine

Emerson Meyers worked in the Irving Fine studio.

Youngstown Studio was given to MacDowell by friends of Miss Myra McKeown in Youngstown, OH, where she promoted both art and music. It was renamed Irving Fine Studio in 1972 in honor of Irving Fine, a distinguished composer, conductor, and teacher who was a MacDowell Fellow during the 1940s and 1950s. The simple interior of the studio…

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