Paul Creston

From Wind Repertory Project
Paul Creston

Biography

Paul Creston (10 October 1906, New York - 24 August 1985, San Diego, Calif.) was an American composer.

Born Giuseppe Guttovergi to Italian immigrants, Creston studied piano but was self-taught in violin and composition because of the meager income of his family. To support himself he played organ, holding a position at St. Malachy's Church in New York from 1934 to 1967. He also taught at Central Washington State College and New York College of Music.

Creston won two Guggenheim Fellowships (1938, 1939), the New York Music Critics' Circle Award (1943), and the Music Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1943). He wrote two theoretical books, Principles of Rhythm (1964) and Rational Metric Notation (1979). His students include Charles Roland Berry, Rusty Dedrick, and John Corigliano.

He was an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity, initiated into the national honorary Alpha Alpha chapter. His work tends to be fairly conservative in style, with a strong rhythmic element. His pieces include six symphonies and numerous concertos: Concerto No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 65 (1956) & Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 78 (1960), Concertino Marimba and Orchestra, Op. 21 (or Wind Band, Op. 21B) (1940) (premiered by Ruth Stuber), Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 43 (1949), Concerto for 2 Pianos and Orchestra, Op. 50 (1950), Concerto for Alto Saxophone, Op. 26 (1944) (dedicated to Cecil Leeson), Fantasy for Trombone and Orchestra (composed for and premiered by Robert Marsteller), and a Rhapsody for Alto Saxophone (written for Jean-Marie Londeix). He also wrote a Suite for Alto Saxophone and Piano, Op. 6 (1935) Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano, Op. 19 (1939) both dedicated to Cecil Leeson. Several of his works were inspired by the poetry of Walt Whitman.

Creston was one of the most performed American composers of the 1940s and 1950s. Several of his works have become staples of the wind band repertoire: Zanoni, Op. 40, (1946), Prelude and Dance, Op. 76 (1959) and the Celebration Overture, Op. 61 (1954) have been and still are on several state lists for contests across the USA and form part of the standard repertoire for wind band concert programs.
Creston was also a notable teacher, with the composers Irwin Swack, John Corigliano, Elliott Schwartz, Frank Felice, and Charles Roland Berry, accordionist/composer William Schimmel and the jazz musicians Rusty Dedrick and Charlie Queener among his pupils.


"The life and career of Paul Creston is a classic American success story. He was born Giuseppe Guttoveggio to Sicilian immigrants living in New York City and grew up in a humble working class household. His father worked as a house painter, but was keenly aware of his young son’s musical gifts and managed to scrape together enough money to pay for piano lessons. By the time Creston was a teenager he began to compose, but at the age of fifteen he was forced to drop out of school to help support his family. He worked at a variety of jobs over the ensuing years, from bank clerk to insurance examiner, but never relinquished his desire to become a composer. Using whatever materials he could get his hands on, Creston continued to study harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration in every spare moment he could find. He could often be found after work poring over books checked out from the public library until the early hours of the morning. His indefatigable self motivation also drove him to study the classics of the humanities, and he even found time to teach himself to play the violin.

It was common practice among immigrants of the time to adopt an Americanised name. Creston’s was derived from his nickname “Cress” after the character Crespino he portrayed in a school play. He simply liked the name Paul. In 1926, when he was twenty, Creston finally found his first employment as a musician, playing organ in a silent movie house. In 1934, he was appointed organist at St. Malachy’s Church in New York, where he remained for the next 33 years. His career as a composer was launched in 1939 when he received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. Just two years later, he won the New York Critics Circle Award and suddenly became one of America’s most promising young composers. Although Creston’s star shone brightly for a time, his decidedly tonal music fell out of favor as serialism began to occupy the musical mainstream in the 1950s and 60s. For the remainder of his career, the conservative Creston was adamant that this progressive and fashionable musical movement was an ill-advised escapade that that would eventually run its course.

Creston was particularly fascinated by rhythm, and it is a subject about which he wrote extensively. His complete mastery of harnessing the rhythmic energy in music is on full display in his Celebration Overture of 1955. Unexpected accents and playfully irregular phrases punctuate this festive work, which was commissioned by the famous band-leader Edwin Franko Goldman and the American Bandmasters Association. The work revels in the clarity of its unique and purely musical building blocks. As Creston himself described: 'I was preoccupied with matters of melodic design, harmonic colouring, rhythmic pulse, and formal progression, not with limitations of nature or narrations of fairy tales. The intrinsic worth of a musical work depends on the interrelation of musical elements toward a unified whole.'"

- Liner Notes from Above and Beyond: Music for Wind Band by the “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band


Works for Winds


Resources

  • Cummings, Paul. "Five Little Dances." In Teaching Music through Performance in Band. Volume 10, Compiled and edited by Richard Miles, 389-398. Chicago: GIA Publications, 2015.
  • Paul Creston at G. Schirmer's Website
  • Paul Creston. Wikipedia. Accessed 21 May 2020
  • Worzbyt, Jason. "Legend." In Teaching Music through Performance in Band. Volume 10, Compiled and edited by Richard Miles, 629-634. Chicago: GIA Publications, 2015.
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