William E. Benjamin

Benjamin, William E.

William E. (Emmanuel) Benjamin. Theorist, musicologist, composer, b. Montreal 7 Dec 1944; B MUS (McGill) 1965, MFA (Princeton) 1968, PH D (Princeton) 1975. He studied piano at the CMM and in 1966 won a Woodrow Wilson national fellowship, the first of several such awards. He completed his PH D thesis 'On modular equivalence as a musical concept' in 1975. His major appointments have been at the University of Michigan 1972-8 and, beginning in 1978 at the University of British Columbia. At the latter he became director of the School of Music in 1984. In 1982-3 he was an honorary research fellow at King's College, London. He has presented papers at conferences and spoken as a guest lecturer at universities on Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Webern, and other topics. He has also contributed articles to many musicological journals, frequently dealing with music theory and analysis. Joseph Kerman in Contemplating Music (Cambridge, Mass 1985) called Benjamin one of the "most able younger practitioners of modern music theory."

Selected Compositions

Piano Concerto. 1970-75. Pf, orch. Ms

Square Waves. 1976-77. Concert band. Ms

Two Poems (G. MacEwan). 1981. Alto, chamber ensemble. Ms

Sequences. 1982. Guit. Ms

The Unveiling, incidental music. 1982. Ms

Also works for string trio, SATB, chamber ensemble, and other incidental music

Selected Writings

William E. Benjamin, 'Debussy's "Pour les Sixtes": an analysis,' J of Music Theory, vol 22, no. 2, 1979

'Pitch class counterpoint in tonal music,' Music Theory, ed. R. Browne (New York 1981)

'Schenker's theory and the future of music,' J of Music Theory, vol 25, no. 1, 1981

'Models of underlying tonal structure: how can they be abstract and how should they be abstract?' Music Theory Spectrum, vol 4, 1984

'Istvan Anhalt: a tribute and an appreciation,' MSc, 340, Nov-Dec 1984

'Canadian music and the international academic marketplace,' Hello Out There! Canada's New Music in the World, 1950-85, CanMus Documents no. 2 (Toronto 1988)

Other reviews and papers published in Perspectives of New Music and In Theory Only.