Frank Wigglesworth papers

1895-1996

Frank Wigglesworth was born on March 3, 1918, into a prominent Boston family that also counts Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and Oliver Wendell Holmes among its members. As a child he played both violin and viola, and began composing at the age of eleven. He attended Bard College, where he studied composition with Ernest White, played in the faculty-student string quartet, and served on the board of the Intercollegiate Music Guild. By 1938 he had begun composition studies with Otto Luening.

After graduating in 1940, with an opera as his senior thesis, Wigglesworth enrolled at Converse College in South Carolina. While there, he also taught, played viola, and conducted the local opera chorus. During the summer he attended the Bennington School of the Arts, a festival associated with Martha Graham, and composed his New England Concerto for violin and string orchestra. Shortly before his graduation from Converse, Wigglesworth was drafted into the U. S. Army and served as a control tower operator in the South Pacific. After his discharge in 1945, he received an Alice M. Ditson Fellowship from Columbia University.

In 1946-1948 Wigglesworth taught at the Greenwich House Music School and composed numerous vocal and instrumental works. He pursued advanced studies with both Henry Cowell and Edgard Varèse, and chaired the editorial boards of New Music Edition and New Music Recordings. In 1948 he married the artist Anne Parker and began teaching at Columbia University, where he also organized the New Music concert series. In 1951, as he was completing the ballet score Young Goodman Brown, Wigglesworth was honored by both the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy in Rome. He spent the next three years in Italy, composing his first symphony and other works.

Upon returning to New York, Wigglesworth taught at the New School for Social Research, Queens College, and the Dalcroze School. He continued writing for both small and large ensembles, completing two more symphonies, a second ballet, and incidental music to Shakespeare's Hamlet. In 1965 he was awarded a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and in 1969-70 he was Composer-in-Residence at the American Academy in Rome. Back in New York in 1970, Wigglesworth took up chefs training at New York Technical College. He also composed two Mass settings, numerous chamber works, and songs.

Throughout the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s, Wigglesworth served as an officer in several organizations devoted to the arts and new music, including the American Composers Alliance, the American Music Center, Composers' Forum, the Chamber Music Conference and Composers Forum of the East, Composers' Recordings, Inc., the MacDowell Colony and the Virgil Thomson Foundation. He rejoined the faculty of the Greenwich House Music School, and in his capacity as Artistic Director of three concert series, gave valuable performance opportunities to countless composers.

In 1988 Wigglesworth's friends and colleagues organized a concert of his works in honor of his 70th birthday. A year later the American Composers Alliance presented him with a Laurel Wreath Award for distinguished achievement in fostering and encouraging American music (as an officer of that organization he was ineligible for its better-known Laurel Leaf Award). To mark his 75th birthday, another concert was held, and the Manhattan Borough President proclaimed March 3, 1993, to be "Frank Wigglesworth Day". Wigglesworth died on March 20, 1996, at the age of 78. He is survived by his daughter Philio Wigglesworth Cushing, and son Henry Cowell Wigglesworth.

Sources:

"Frank Wigglesworth". Brochure issued by Broadcast Music, Inc. (New York, n. d).

Komarov, Jane. "Frank Wigglesworth: GHMS Elder Statesman". Quarter Notes 3: 2 (Spr 1991).

Luening, Otto, with Barbara H. Renton. "Wigglesworth, Frank". The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, vol. 4 (New York, 1986), p. 524.