Biography
McKay was born in the Far West of America in the small frontier wheat farming town of Harrington, Washington. His family later moved to the much larger town of Spokane, where he attended school up to his college years. He was attracted to American folk-song, including jazz and blues and Native American themes, and to a great degree, his music contains a poignant evocation of the West Coast American spirit, including glimpses of a populist era of street marches, honky-tonk dance halls and social chaos along with a recognition of the great natural beauty of his home region and the vitality of its people (i.e. Harbor Narrative-1934). He admired composers who involved national folk-culture in their music, e.g. Heitor Villa-Lobos, Carlos Chávez, William Grant Still, Antonín Dvořák and Béla Bartók. Many of George Frederick McKay's symphonic works center on folk themes and include pieces dedicated to Native American music.
He was famous for his intellectual and moral support of young composers who studied with him in Seattle, viz. William Bolcom, John Cage, Goddard Lieberson, and Earl Robinson.
He also founded the Composition Department at the University of Washington, where he was a Professor of Music for over 40 years.
He composed works in various styles, including 70 orchestral works, and a total of nearly 1000 musical titles including songs, chamber works, romantic violin and cello sonatas, "ultramodern" dance music, jazzy piano pieces, band rhapsodies, serious string quartets, light opera tunes, folk music suites for string orchestra, large choral works, organ pieces and modern American symphonies. He composed several volumes of music for children and was a serious advocate for music education in the United States. He continued active composing during his retirement years at Lake Tahoe, Nevada and also wrote some pieces influenced by travel to Japan in the 1960s. Some of his early orchestral works attracted conductors such as Leopold Stokowski, Sir Thomas Beecham, Arthur Benjamin, Karl Krueger, Fabien Sevitsky and Howard Hanson for live performances in the 1930s and 1940s. His music has recently been recorded by performers such as William Bolcom and John McLaughlin Williams, and now is being heard worldwide via radio broadcasts and international performances. McKay also conducted the Seattle Symphony on several occasions.
McKay was also the literary author of a number of papers and books on musical technique, including "Creative Orchestration," "The Technique of Modern Harmony," and "Creative Harmony."
Read more about this topic: George Frederick Mc Kay
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