Bruce Mather - Education

Education

Born in Toronto, Mather began composing music as a young child. At the age of 10 he won a prize in the 1949 Composers, Authors and Publishers Association of Canada composition competition. In 1952 he entered The Royal Conservatory of Music where he studied piano with Alberto Guerrero, Earle Moss, and Alexander Uninsky and music theory and composition with Godfrey Ridout, Oskar Morawetz, and John Weinzweig. In 1957 he matriculated to the University of Toronto where he earned a Bachelor of Music degree in 1959.

Mather attended the Aspen Music Festival and School in the summers of 1957 and 1958 through a scholarship provided by the Women's Musical Club of Toronto and the Beta Sigma Phi International Sorority. While there Alexander Uninsky introduced the young composer to Darius Milhaud and Milhaud quickly became one of his more important mentors. He continued to study with Milhaud and with Simone Plé-Caussade, Lazare Lévy, and Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire from 1959-1961. In 1964 he received a Master of Music from Stanford University where he was a pupil of Leland Smith and Roy Harris, and in 1967 he earned a Doctor of Music from the University of Toronto.