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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Burrill Phillips (November 9, 1907 – June 22, 1988) was an American composer, teacher, and pianist.
Phillips was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He studied at the Denver College of Music with Edwin Stringham and at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, with Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers. On September 17, 1928, he married Alberta Phillips (who wrote many of his librettos; died 1979). The couple had a daughter, Ann (b. 1931; actress Ann E. Todd, later Ann Basart) and a son, Stephen (1937–1986), who predeceased his father. Due to privations caused by the Great Depression, the children, Ann and Stephen, were raised by their maternal grandparents.
Phillips's first important work was Selections from McGuffey's Reader, for orchestra, based on poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (Basart 2001). He wrote of this work in his 1933 diary, "I don't think anybody had written such 'American-sounding' music before. On the first night, the students said it was corny. And it was. But I didn't care, because it was a huge success.
In 1960 his String Quartet Number Two was premiered at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. by the Paganini Quartet, with the composer present, and broadcast on live FM radio. In the early 1960s he turned to free serial techniques, less sharply accented rhythms, and increasing fantasy (Basart 2001).
Phillips taught composition and theory at Eastman (1933–49), the University of Illinois (1949–64), the Juilliard School of Music (1968–69), and Cornell University (1972–73). His students include Jack Beeson, William Flanagan, Kenneth Gaburo, Ben Johnston, H. Owen Reed, Daria Semegen, Steven Stucky, David Ward-Steinman, and Charles Whittenberg (Butterworth 2005, 34, 149, 163, 365, 406, 440, 495, 515), as well as Jerry Amaldev.[citation needed] He was a Fulbright Lecturer in Barcelona, Spain, in 1960–61, and received Guggenheim fellowships in 1942–43 and 1961–62 (Butterworth 2005, 350), when the entire Phillips family reunited in Paris.
He died in Berkeley, California on June 22, 1988, aged 80, of complications after a heart attack. His scores and sketches are housed in the Burrill Phillips archive, Special Collections, Sibley Library, Eastman School of Music, Rochester, New York (Anon. 1982).
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