Lukas Foss, versatile and prolific American composer, dies at 86

Chris Pasles Los Angeles Times 02/03/2009 03:02

Lukas Foss, the polyglot American composer, conductor and pianist who directed half a dozen Ojai Music Festivals, led marathon concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and succeeded Arnold Schoenberg as head of composition at UCLA, has died. He was 86.

Foss died Sunday at his home in New York, according to his wife, Cornelia Foss. No cause of death was given, but Foss was known to have had Parkinson's disease.

American composer Aaron Copland once called Foss' works "among the most original and stimulating compositions in American music."

Foss wrote more than 100 works, passing through three stylistic periods, from tonal, neoclassical writing through experimentation with 12-tone, electronic, chance and other techniques, then returning to complex but more listener-friendly works.

His output includes four symphonies, three string quartets and many choral, chamber, orchestral and stage pieces, embodying almost every style available to a classical composer.

His best-known works are "Time Cycle" (songs with orchestra after texts by W. H. Auden, A. E. Housman, Franz Kafka and Friedrich Nietzsche); "Baroque Variations" for orchestra (deconstruction of Bach, Handel and D. Scarlatti); "Echoi" (for four instruments); two operas, "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (after Mark Twain) and "Griffelkin"; Symphony No. 3 ("Symphony of Sorrows); and "Renaissance Concerto" for flute and orchestra.

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