Daniel James Wolf (born September 13, 1961 in Upland, California) is an American composer of serious music and a music scholar. September 13 is the 256th day of the year (257th in leap years). ... 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1961 calendar). ... Upland is a city located in San Bernardino County, California. ... Musicology is reasoned discourse concerning music (Greek: μουσικη = music and λογος = word or reason). In other words: the whole body of systematized knowledge about music which results from the application of a scientific method of investigation or research, or of philosophical speculation and rational systematization to the facts, the processes and the...

Wolf studied composition study with Gordon Mumma, Alvin Lucier, and La Monte Young, as well as musical tunings with Erv Wilson and Douglas Leedy and ethnomusicology. BA University of California Santa Cruz, MA, PhD, Wesleyan University. Important contacts with Lou Harrison, John Cage, Walter Zimmermann. Based in Europe from 1989, he is known as a member of the "Material" group of composers, along with Hauke Harder, Markus Trunk. Gordon Mumma (March 30, 1935, in Framingham, Massachusetts) is a composer. ... Alvin Lucier Alvin Lucier (born May 14, 1931) is an American composer of music and sound installations exploring acoustic phenomena, especially resonance, as well as a former member of the Sonic Arts Union along with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. ... La Monte Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer whose eccentric and often hard-to-find works have been included among the most important post World War II avant-garde or experimental music. ... Ervin Wilson is an American music theorist whose work, outside of the academic community, is noted for the variety and originality of its ideas. ... Douglas (Harry) Leedy, born March 3rd, 1938 in Portland, Oregon is an American composer. ... A Bachelor of Arts (B.A. or A.B., from the Latin Artium Baccalaureus) is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or program in the arts and/or sciences. ... The University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC or UC Santa Cruz) is one of the ten campuses of the University of California. ... A Master of Arts is a postgraduate academic masters degree awarded by universities in North America and the United Kingdom (excluding the ancient universities of Scotland and Oxbridge. ... PhD usually refers to the academic title Doctor of Philosophy PhD can also refer to the manga Phantasy Degree This is a disambiguation page — a list of pages that otherwise might share the same title. ... Wesleyan University founded in 1831, is a private, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. ... Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 - February 2, 2003) was an American composer. ... John Cage For the character of John Cage from the TV show Ally McBeal see: John Cage (Character) John Milton Cage (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American experimental music composer, writer and visual artist. ... Walter Zimmermann (b. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Wolf's compositions apply an experimental approach to musical materials, with a special interest in intonation, yet often display a surface that playfully - if accidentally - recalls historical musics. Major works include The White Canoe, an opera seria for handpuppets to the libretto by Edward Gorey and four string quartets. Edward St. ... The resident string quartet of the Library of Congress in 1963 A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string instruments—usually two violins, a viola and cello—or a piece written to be performed by such a group. ...

Three distinct streams combine to form Wolf's oeuvre. Wolf makes sound installations, experimental concert works based on sound structures mostly free from historical associations, and experimental concert works based on reifying the tradition of European art music (or other world musics, particular Javanese gamelan) and then performing operations on its internal principles. The following remarks pertain to this last body of work.

Composer Wolf identifies with the experimental music tradition--especially its American West Coast manifestation-- spiritually, intellectually and personally. Nevertheless, in that portion of his work where his choice of musical materials and forms derive from common practice harmony and counterpoint, he might, to some, suggest a conservative neoclassicist. Where neoclassicism means pursuing classical ideals with novel sonic resources, Wolf's actually employs the reverse tactic -- he virtuosically explores reasonably familiar classical or neoclassical materials with no a priori commitment to received ideals.

He jokingly calls his method "dysfunctional harmony." A metaphor might help explain his meaning. Imagine the principles of common practice music as carried by some genetic code subject to mutations. Either intuitively or methodically, Wolf mutates certain genes and produces harmony or counterpoint that systematically engages our historical understanding but still undermines our expectations. In the long run biological mutations either prove adaptive (and proliferate) or maladaptive (and disappear), but when the sport first appears, it holds only its strangeness, orthogonal to any world of value.

In this respect Wolf has deeply internalized the experimental ethos. Typical composers employ trial and error as they search for some effect, while strict aleatoric composers, after Cage, perform trials and simply accept the effect. Wolf performs Cageian experiments, mostly in his head, with or without the aid of chance procedures, but in doing so nevertheless engages musical functionality though without making a fetish of it.

While Wolf's tendency towards small forms and quiescent gestures often tickles a listener's notions of the musically elegant, his mutated materials make for music that must fall just shy of received standards of elegance. Much of the power of his music derives from a tension that dwells in the negative space between the forms Wolf actually achieves and the engaged listener's induced desire for a perfectly elegant idealization.

Rather than a post-modernist's theatrical pastiche and cold irony, Wolf's detente with the great tradition has a tragic aspect. One might compare Wolf's engagement with the past to that of the uncompromising realist in literature, drama or the visual arts, one who takes on the practices of the great tradition but rejects the hegeomonic repression encoded in naive heroicism and idealization.

He has written extensively about modern and experimental music, systematic musicology, and speculative music theory. Modern music is music that is part of either the movement of musical modernism or the era of 20th century music, or is contemporary music. ... Experimental music is any music that challenges the commonly accepted notions of what music is. ... Music theory is a field of study that describes the elements of music and includes the development and application of methods for analyzing and composing music, and the interrelationship between the notation of music and performance practice, theory. ...

External links

• Daniel James Wolf composer's own webpage with list of works, sample scores, articles
• Material Press publisher
• Renewable Music blog by Daniel Wolf