George Edwards
Professor Emeritus
Chair, Department of Music (1996-99)
Columbia College Department Representative (2000-present)
BA (Oberlin 1965)
MFA (Princeton 1967)
George Edwards studied music composition with Richard Hoffmann, Milton Babbitt, and Earl Kim. He came to Columbia in 1976, having previously taught music theory at the New England Conservatory of Music, and has previously served as Chair of the Department of Music, and Secretary to the Advisory Committee of the Alice M. Ditson Fund. He has been recipient of the Koussevitzky Composition Prize (1967), the Rome Prize Fellowship (1973-75), two Guggenheim Fellowships (1980, 1985), and other awards, and many commissions. His compositions have been performed widely in the USA and abroad.
Selected Publications:
"The Nonsense of an Ending: Closure in Haydn's String Quartets," The Musical Quarterly 75 (1991): pp. 227-54
Articles in Partisan Review; Southwest Review; The Threepenny Review.
"Papa Doc's Recap Caper: Haydn and Temporal Dyslexia in Haydn Studies," W. Dean Sutcliffe, Ed Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 291-320
"A Palimpsest of Mozart in Schubert's Symphony No. 5," Current Musicology No. 62, 1998, pp. 18-39
Selected Compositions :
*The Isle is Full of Noises, for six players (1995)
*Czeched Swing, for piano (1994)
*The Resurrection of the Wheat, sop., piano (1993)
*Plus - change . . . , for seven players (1992)
*Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1990) (His compositions are available from Mobart Publiations, and recordings on the ACA, CRI, and Opus One labels.)
Graduate Courses Taught:
G8231/8234 Seminar in Music Composition
Courses on Tonal Composition, and Advanced Orchestration
Graduate/Undergraduate Courses Taught:
G6360/V3360 Analysis of Pre-tonal and Tonal Music/Pre-tonal and Tonal Analysis
G6379/V3379-G6380 Twentieth-century Styles and Techniques/ Twentieth-century Music
Undergraduate Courses Taught:
V3241-3242 Advanced Composition
V3321-3322 Chromatic Harmony and Counterpoint
C1123 Music Humanities Other courses in music theory
