Rosen, Charles (Welles)

Rosen, Charles (Welles) , erudite American pianist, teacher, and writer on music; b. N.Y., May 5, 1927. He began piano studies when he was only 4. Between the ages of 7 and 11 he studied at the Juilliard School of Music in N.Y., and then took piano lessons with Moriz Rosenthal and Hedwig Kanner-Rosenthal (1938–44). He continued his training with the latter (1944–52) and also received lessons in theory and composition from Karl Wiegl. He concurrently studied music history at Princeton Univ. (B.A., 1947; M.A., 1949), where he took his Ph.D. in Romance languages in 1951. In 1951 he made his debut in N.Y., and subsequently appeared as a soloist with major orchs. and as a recitalist. He was asst. prof. of modern languages at the Mass. Inst. of Technology (1953–55). In 1971 he became prof. of music at the State Univ. of N.Y. at Stony Brook. In 1976–77 he also was the Ernest Bloch Prof. of Music at the Univ. of Calif, at Berkeley. As a pianist, Rosen has garnered notable distinction for his insightful interpretations of Bach, Beethoven, and Debussy, and for his traversal of such 20^th-century composers as Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez, and Carter. He has contributed brilliant articles on various subjects to various publications. In 1972 he received the National Book Award for his distinguished vol. The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (N.Y., 1971). His subsequent books included Arnold Schoenberg (N.Y., 1975), Sonata Forms (N.Y., 1980; 2^nd ed., rev., 1988), Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (N.Y., 1994), and The Romantic Generation (Cambridge, Mass., 1995).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire