George Rochberg - Life

Life

Rochberg was born in Paterson, New Jersey. He attended the Mannes College of Music, where his teachers included George Szell and Hans Weisse, and the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Rosario Scalero and Gian Carlo Menotti. He served in the United States Army in the infantry during World War II.

He was the chairman of the music department at the University of Pennsylvania until 1968, and continued to teach there until 1983. In 1978, he was named the first Annenberg Professor of the Humanities. His notable students include Stephen Albert, Gaston Allaire, Maria Bachmann, William Bolcom, Uri Caine, Robert Carl, Daniel Dorff, Stephen Jaffe, Cynthia Cozette Lee, Yen Lu, Vincent McDermott, Michael Alec Rose, Robert Suderburg, and Maryanne Amacher.

He married Gene Rosenfeld in 1941, and had two children, Paul and Francesca. In 1964, his son died of a brain tumor.

He died in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 2005, aged 86. Most of his works are held in the archive of the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. Some can also be found in the Music Division of the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, New York, the University of Pennsylvania, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, and the City University of New York.

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