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Proud of the fact that he was from middle America, Jack Beeson (1921-2010) spent his life composing, teaching and enriching the musical landscape with a wide variety of works. Despite all of this, he is known as an opera composer, a sobriquet that is completely justified. While not being part of the standard repertoire, several of his operas are known and recorded, and have a secure place in the general knowledge of both performers and audiences. Their melodies are singable, their harmonies are pleasing, and their subjects are pure Americana.
In the summer of 1986, I arranged to speak with the composer on the telephone. He had been having trouble with the service to his retreat in the woods, so he had the phone company install, as he told me, "Eight hundred fifty feet of new line through the woods." When we settled down for our conversation, I told him he was coming through loud and clear, and he replied, "Well, that's fine. It's the first time in a year it's been very good. I told them I had to be free by four, and that radio people were punctual."
Here is what transpired that afternoon .......
Bruce Duffie: You've been at Columbia University now for a number of years.
Jack Beeson: Forty-one.
BD: How has the teaching of composition changed in forty-one years?
JB: I rather imagine that teaching composition hasn't changed very much, at least where I am. I learned a good deal about how to go about it from Otto Luening, who I was assisting at first, and who's still very much alive and kicking and thinking.
BD: Yes. I had a nice interview with him a year or so back, and did a program
JB: Well, he talks about those earlier days. I started there in the fall of '45, actually, so this makes forty-one years. My own thought about teaching composition is pretty much that of my last teacher, Béla Bartók, with whom I was able to work during his last year off and on. He took me on, and as far as I know-at least it is said-that I'm the only American student of composition of his. It's probably true. I knew that he didn't teach composition but...