Discipline: Music Composition

Robert Helps

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: Tampa, FL
MacDowell Fellowships: 1966, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1974
Robert Helps (1928-2001) was an American pianist and composer. Helps taught piano at the New England Conservatory of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Manhattan School of Music, and the University of South Florida. At the end of his life he divided his time between the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the University of South Florida. When in California he resided in Berkeley, a city with which he felt a strong affinity. Helps was a recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. In 1976 he received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His music has been released on the NAXOS, CRI, Desto, and Albany labels. The University of South Florida's Special Collections holds the Robert Helps Archive. The university also sponsors a Robert Helps Festival and awards an annual Robert Helps Prize for young composers.

Studios

Veltin

Robert Helps 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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