Brant, Henry Dreyfuss

▪ 2009

      American composer

born Sept. 15, 1913, Montreal, Que.

died April 26, 2008, Santa Barbara, Calif.

was a musical prodigy who had begun composing by age nine (for an ensemble of instruments of his own invention) and went on to produce avant-garde compositions whose performances often relied upon the spacial placement of instruments. Some of his earliest works included unconventional acoustic sound sources, notably Music for a Five and Dime Store (1932), which incorporated a collection of kitchen implements as well as a violin and piano. His Antiphony 1 (1953) widely dispersed five different orchestral groups; Voyage Four (1963) positioned musicians beneath the floor as well as on walls; and Orbits (1979) featured 80 trombones. Brant's Pulitzer Prize-winning Ice Field (2001) drew on a childhood experience in which he traveled the Atlantic aboard an ocean liner that maneuvered around icebergs. He taught composition in New York City at Columbia University and the Juilliard School before serving (1957–80) as an instructor at Bennington (Vt.) College. In 2007 Brant completed Textures and Timbres, a textbook on orchestration.

* * *