Robert Samson Bloch earned a master’s degree from the University
of Chicago and a le prix avec distinction from the Royal
Conservatory of Music, Brussels. He was a violinist and violist
known equally for his performance of early and contemporary music
and was the recipient of the First Prize in the Young Artists
Contest of the Society of American Musicians, the Kranichsteiner
Musikpreis, and an Alfred Hertz Memorial Fellowship.
Sydney R. Charles, professor emerita, joined the faculty of the
Department of Music in 1961 and retired in 1985. Her major fields
of research include musical practice and theory, 14th- and
15th-century English music, and musical iconography. Charles was
active in building the music collection at Shields Library, and
she served as chair of the department from 1977 to 1980.
She published the books Josquin des Prez: A Guide to
Research, The Music of the Pepys MS 1236, and A Handbook
of Music and Music Literature in Sets and Series, and she
published many articles in the New Grove Dictionary of Music
and Musicians. She also was an editor of the journal
Notes. Charles received her bachelor’s and master’s
degrees from the Eastman School of Music and her Ph.D. from the
University of California, Berkeley, in 1959.
Andrew Frank (b. Los Angeles, 1946) studied composition with
Jacob Druckman at Bard College (B.A. 1968) and with George Crumb,
George Rochberg, and Richard Wernick at the University of
Pennsylvania (M.A. 1970). He had been a member of the
Department of Music at UC Davis since 1972, and in
2007 became professor emeritus.
Albert John Joseph McNeil is a native Californian, born in Los
Angeles. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the
University of California, Los Angeles, and did doctoral studies
at the University of Southern California, the Westminster Choir
College of Princeton, and the University of Lausanne,
Switzerland. He was director of choral activities for 21
years and headed the music education program at UC Davis.
Bachelor of Arts in music, UC BerkeleyMaster of Arts in music composition, UC Berkeley
When the University established the Department of Music in
1958, Jerome Rosen was the chair. He helped to write
both the undergraduate and graduate degree curricula. He
retired in 1988.
While studying at UC Berkeley, Rosen became associated with
Darius Milhaud, who was teaching at Mills College. In
1949-50 he studied in Paris with Milhaud and took lessons at the
Paris Conservatoire from the leading clarinet virtuoso of the
era, Ulysse Delécluse.
He went to Paris as the recipient of a UC Berkeley prize, the
George Ladd Prix de Paris. Rosen also received Fromm Music
Foundation grants (1953, 1954, and 1960), a Guggenheim Fellowship
(1958), and a residency at the Rockefeller Study Center in
Bellagio, Italy (1982).
Rosen was a composer of sixty works of solo and chamber
music, often including clarinet or saxophone, as well as vocal
pieces, works of symphonic scope and the operas Calisto
and Melibea (1979) and Emperor Norton of the
USA (1999), both produced in Main Theatre.
Slawson’s compositions include works for various chamber
ensembles, chorus and orchestra. He is best known for his
theories about an aspect of timbre called “sound color” and his
compositions of computer music that apply those theories. His
programming system, SYNTAL, is an adaptation of a computer speech
synthesizer to music composition.
Master's in music composition, University of Chicago
Richard Swift was a noted composer and one of the founding
editors of the UC Press journal 19th-Century Music. In
the 1970s he also served on the editorial board of this leading
scholarly publisher. He earned his master’s in music composition
at the University of Chicago in 1956, studying under Leonard
Meyer and Leland Smith, and he taught at the University of
California, Davis, from 1956 to 1991 where he was a pillar of the
arts and humanities and established the artist-in-residence
program while serving as the Music department chair from 1963 to
1971. His music compositions encompass the traditional genres,
including songs to texts by major poets in his acquaintance. He
was a rigorous composer, a valued theorist, and a gifted teacher.
William E. Valente (1934−1993) was professor of music at UC Davis
from 1950 to 1993. He taught music theory and composition,
was an undergraduate adviser for the Department, and conductor of
the University Concert Band. In honor and memory of Professor
Valente and his impact on the many students he taught, guided,
and inspired during his life as a mentor, an endowment was
established in name: The William E. Valente Music Scholarship
Fund.
He attended the University of Tulsa and Harvard University,
where he studied composition with Leon Kirchner. He was assistant
professor in music at Fisk University and visiting assistant
professor of music at Vassar College, joining the Department of
Music at UC Davis in 1972. He received numerous awards and
commissions for new compositions, including concerti for cello
and for piano with orchestra and works for symphonic band and for
chorus (including two masses).
