Tom Johnson is an American composer, music critic, and theorist. He was a student of the famous experimental melodist Morton Feldman. Johnson continued the work of the teacher, becoming an adherent of minimalism in music.
Biography: early years
Tom Johnson was born on November 18, 1939 in Greeley, Colorado. At a young age, he began to learn to play the piano under the guidance of his parents. Soon they decided to send their son to a local music school. Tom was lucky with a teacher who focused not on his playing technique, but on the development of innate abilities. This approach, in fact, determined the entire further musical career of Johnson.
After graduating from high school, Tom moved from Colorado to Connecticut, where he became a student at Yale University. This is one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the United States. Within its walls, Tom studied polyphony, compositional technique, tried to write exercises. In an interview, Johnson admitted that studying at the university gave him good knowledge, but they still turned out to be few. Therefore, he was constantly engaged in self-education.
As a student, he takes private lessons from Morton Feldman. At that time he was already known as an intelligent teacher, experimenter and one of the founders of the new American school of avant-garde chamber music. It was he who taught Tom to boldly deviate from tradition when composing compositions. He will subsequently carry this lesson through his entire musical career.
Carier start
After graduation, Tom Johnson tries to find himself in music. He writes many compositions in the spirit of minimalism. At that time, this musical style was just emerging. One of his pioneers was Tom's teacher, Morton Feldman. Johnson also decided to move in this direction. Minimalism can be described as "quiet, quiet American music, where the events take place about once every five minutes." In other words, this is a technique in composition, built on microrepeats. Minimalism is at the intersection of non-academic and academic music. This style has qualities that make it attractive to connoisseurs of jazz, rock and avant-garde.
Following the precepts of his teacher Feldman, even in Johnson's early compositions, the dominance of dodecaphony and other mathematically developed musical styles, which were traditional at that time, is not heard. Tom himself called his first works "a kind of endless stream."
In 1969 Johnson moved to New York. A couple of years later, he became a columnist for the popular local newspaper The Village Voice. Johnson hosted a music column, where he mainly criticized the compositions of contemporary authors. The discoveries of aleatoric pioneer John Cage, the rise of American minimalism to the world, and other now-forgotten musical experiments are all reflected in Tom's weekly publications.
He subsequently collected articles from this publication in a collection, which he called "The Voice of New Music". The book was published in Europe in 1989. The collection reflects the evolution of the musical language of the States of that period and, according to Johnson, gives the reader a more comprehensive understanding of the origins of American music. This book also testifies to the wide range of interests of the composer himself.
In 1972, Johnson composed one of his outstanding works, The Four Note Opera. The composition turned out to be "thoroughly American", but at the same time devoid of tension.
In 1979, Johnson released the album Nine Bells. It included music created with nine bells, which were hung from each other at a certain distance. To get a composition, the performer had to walk between them, quickly or slowly. At the same time, the sound of footsteps was an integral part of the music. This is one of Johnson's interesting compositional experiments.
Emigration to Europe
In 1982, Tom left the New York newspaper and began to increasingly think about moving to another country. A year later, he left the States for Europe, and criticism for the sake of composing compositions. Since then, he returned to journalism in isolated cases. Johnson went to Paris, where he still lives.
In France, he begins to write with a vengeance. The Riemann Opera is another landmark work of the composer. It was written from the "Music Dictionary" by the German musicologist Hugo Riemann in 1988. The result was an outwardly ingenuous composition that won over with its minor insight.
Johnson's iconic works include Bonhoeffer's Oratorio. The opera was presented in 1996. Johnson wrote it to a text by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a famous German Lutheran pastor and theologian. In the same year, Johnson published the book "Self-Similar Melodies" In which he tried to "make out" his own music in detail.
In the late 1990s, Johnson composed a number of pieces for saxophonist Daniel Kinzi, including:
- Narayana's Cows;
- Vanuatu;
- "Loops of Kinzi".
The last composition in 2001 was awarded the Victoires de la Musique (the French analogue of the Grammy) in the Best Academic Essay nomination.
Many of Johnson's works are written for radio performance, including:
- “I am listening to the choir”;
- "Melodic Machines";
- Time to listen.
Personal life
Tom Johnson is married to Esther Ferrer, a very famous artist from Spain. The couple have been living together in Paris for over 30 years. Despite their already advanced age, they still tour the world: Tom - with concerts, and Esther - with performances. The couple has no children.
