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Pulitzer Prize for Music
The Pulitzer Prize for Music was first awarded in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer did not call for such a prize in his will, but had arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year. This was eventually converted into a full-fledged prize: "For a distinguished musical composition of significant...
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| x Year | x Award Winner | x Winning work | x Notes/Description | |||
| x name | x image | x article | ||||
| 2009 | Steve Reich |
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Stephen Michael Reich (pronounced /ˈraɪʃ/; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer who pioneered the style of minimalist music. His innovations include using tape loops to create phasing patterns (examples are his early compositions, "It's...
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Double Sextet | ||
| 2008 | David Lang |
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David Lang (born January 8, 1957 in Los Angeles, California) is an American composer living in New York City. He was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Little Match Girl Passion.
Lang holds degrees from Stanford University, the...
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The Little Match Girl Passion | ||
| 2007 | Ornette Coleman |
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Ornette Coleman (born March 9, 1930) is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s.
Coleman's timbre is easily recognized: his keening, crying sound draws...
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Sound Grammar | ||
| 2006 | Yehudi Wyner |
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Yehudi Wyner (born June 1, 1929 in Calgary, Alberta) is an American composer, pianist, conductor, and music educator.
Wyner, who grew up in New York City, was raised in a musical family. His father, Lazar Weiner, was an eminent composer of Yiddish...
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Chiavi in Mano | ||
| 2005 | Steven Stucky |
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Steven Stucky (pronounced /ˈstʌki/) (born November 7, 1949) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.
Stucky was born in Hutchinson, Kansas. At age 9, he moved with his family to Abilene, Texas, where, as a teenager, he studied music in the...
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Second Concerto for Orchestra | ||
| 2004 | Paul Moravec |
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Paul Moravec (born November 2, 1957, in Buffalo, New York) is an American composer and the Music Department Chair at Adelphi University on Long Island, New York. Already a prolific composer, he has been described as a "new tonalist." He is best...
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Tempest Fantasy | ||
| 2003 | John Coolidge Adams |
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John Coolidge Adams (born February 15, 1947) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer with strong roots in minimalism. His best-known works include On the Transmigration of Souls (2002), a choral piece commemorating the victims of the September...
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On the Transmigration of Souls | ||
| 2002 | Henry Brant |
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Henry Dreyfuss Brant (September 15, 1913 – April 26, 2008) was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques.
Brant was born in Montreal, Quebec,...
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Ice Field | ||
| 2001 | John Corigliano |
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John Corigliano (born February 16, 1938, New York City, New York) is an American composer of classical music and a teacher of music. He is a distinguished professor of music at Lehman College in the City University of New York.
Italian American...
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Symphony No. 2 for String Orchestra | ||
| 2000 | Lewis Spratlan |
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Lewis Spratlan (b. 1940, Miami, United States) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He studied composition with Mel Powell at Yale University, where he was a member of the Yale Spizzwinks(?).
Spratlan joined the faculty of...
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Life is a Dream | ||
| 1999 | Melinda Wagner |
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Melinda Wagner (born 1957 in Philadelphia) is a US composer, and winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in music. Her undergraduate degree is from Hamilton College. She also served as Composer-in-Residence at the University of Texas (Austin) and at the ...
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Concerto for Flute | ||
| 1998 | Aaron Jay Kernis |
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Aaron Jay Kernis (born January 15, 1960) is an American composer.
Aaron Jay Kernis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and studied at the Manhattan School of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory, and Yale University (under John Adams, Jacob...
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String Quartet No. 2 | ||
| 1997 | Wynton Marsalis |
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Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American trumpeter and composer. He is among the most prominent jazz musicians of the modern era and is also a well-known instrumentalist in classical music. He is also the Artistic Director of...
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Blood on the Fields | ||
| 1995 | Morton Gould |
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Morton Gould (December 10, 1913 – February 21, 1996) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, and pianist.
Born in Richmond Hill, New York, Gould was recognized early as a child prodigy with abilities in improvisation and composition. His...
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Stringmusic | ||
| 1994 | Gunther Schuller |
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Gunther Schuller (born November 22, 1925) is an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, and jazz musician.
The son of a violinist with the New York Philharmonic, he studied at the Saint Thomas Choir School and became an...
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Of Reminiscences and Reflections | ||
| 1993 | Christopher Rouse |
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Christopher Rouse (born November 28, 1958) is an American film editor who won the Academy Award for Film Editing and the BAFTA Award for Best Editing for the film The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). His father, Russell Rouse, was a writer, director and...
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Trombone Concerto | ||
| 1992 | Wayne Peterson |
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Wayne Peterson (b. 1927, Albert Lea, Minnesota) is a musical composer, pianist, and educator.
Peterson earned B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Minnesota. He did advanced study on a Fulbright Scholarship at the Royal Academy of...
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The Face of the Night | ||
| 1991 | Shulamit Ran |
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Shulamit Ran (Hebrew: שולמית רן; born October 21, 1949 in Tel Aviv, Israel) is an Israeli-American composer. She moved from Israel to New York at 14, as a scholarship student at the Mannes College of Music. Her Symphony (1990) won her the Pulitzer...
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Symphony | ||
| 1988 | William Bolcom |
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William Elden Bolcom (born May 26, 1938) is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, two Grammy Awards, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America....
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12 New Etudes for Piano | ||
| 1986 | George Perle |
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George Perle (May 6, 1915 – January 23, 2009) was a composer and music theorist. He was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. A student of Ernst Krenek, Perle composed with a technique of his own devising called "twelve-tone tonality," which is different...
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Wind Quintet No. 4 | ||
| 1985 | Stephen Albert |
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Stephen Albert (6 February 1941 – 27 December 1992) was an American composer. Born in New York City on 6 February 1941, Albert began his musical training on the piano, French horn, and trumpet as a youngster. He first studied composition at the age...
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Symphony RiverRun | ||
| 1984 | Bernard Rands |
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Bernard Rands (born Sheffield, England, 2 March 1934) is a composer of contemporary classical music.
Rands studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt,...
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Canti del Sole | ||
| 1983 | Ellen Zwilich |
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Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (born April 30, 1939, in Miami, Florida) is an American composer, the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her early works are marked by atonal exploration, but by the late 1980s she had matured to a post...
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Three Movements for Orchestra (Symphony No. 1) | ||
| 1982 | Roger Sessions |
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Roger Huntington Sessions (28 December 1896 – 16 March 1985) was an American composer, critic and teacher of music.
Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. He studied music at...
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Concerto for Orchestra | ||
| 1980 | David Del Tredici |
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David Del Tredici, born March 16, 1937 in Cloverdale, California, is an American composer.
After making his piano debut with the San Francisco Symphony at 17, he went on to receive a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.F.A. in...
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In Memory of a Summer Day | ||
| 1978 | Michael Colgrass |
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Michael Colgrass (b. April 22, 1932, Chicago, Illinois) is an American-born musician, composer, and educator.
His musical career began in Chicago as a jazz musician (1944 - 49). He graduated from the University of Illinois (1954) with a degree in...
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Deja Vu | ||
| 1977 | Richard Wernick |
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Richard Wernick (born January 16, 1934) in Boston, Massachusetts is a US composer.
Wernick studied with Irving Fine, Harold Shapero, Arthur Berger, Ernst Toch, Aaron Copland, and Boris Blacher at Brandeis University, and with Leon Kirchner at Mills...
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Visions of Terror and Wonder | ||
| 1976 | Ned Rorem |
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Ned Rorem (born October 23, 1923) is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer and diarist. He is best known and most praised for his song settings.
He was born in Richmond, Indiana and received his early education in Chicago at the University of...
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Air Music | ||
| 1975 | Dominick Argento |
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Dominick Argento (b. October 27, 1927, York, Pennsylvania) is an American composer, best known as a leading composer of lyric opera and choral music. Among his most prominent pieces are the operas Postcard from Morocco, Miss Havisham's Fire, and The...
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From the Diary of Virginia Woolf | ||
| 1974 | Donald Martino |
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Donald Martino (May 16, 1931 – December 8, 2005) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer.
Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Martino studied composition with Ernst Bacon, Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, and Luigi Dallapiccola. Most of his mature...
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Notturno | ||
| 1973 | Elliott Carter |
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Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. (born December 11, 1908) is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a...
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String Quartet No. 3 | ||
| 1972 | Jacob Druckman |
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Jacob Druckman (June 26, 1928 – May 24, 1996) was an American composer born in Philadelphia. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Druckman studied with Vincent Persichetti, Peter Mennin, and Bernard Wagenaar. In 1949 and 1950 he studied with Aaron...
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Windows | ||
| 1971 | Mario Davidovsky |
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Mario Davidovsky (born March 4, 1934) is an Argentine-American composer. Born in Argentina, he emigrated in 1960 to the US, where he lives today. He is best known for his series of compositions called Synchronisms, which in live performance...
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Synchronisms No. 6 | ||
| 1970 | Charles Wuorinen |
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Charles Wuorinen (b. June 9, 1938 in New York City) is an American composer. Wuorinen is a prolific composer in all genres and a high profile proponent of contemporary music. In 1970, Wuorinen became the youngest composer to win the Pulitzer Prize...
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Time's Encomium | ||
| 1969 | Karel Husa |
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Karel Husa (born August 7, 1921 in Prague) is a Czech-born classical composer and conductor, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize and 1993 Grawemeyer Award in Music. In 1954 he came to the United States and became American citizen in 1959.
Husa learned...
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String Quartet No. 3 | ||
| 1968 | George Crumb |
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George Crumb (born October 24, 1929) is an American composer of modern and avant-garde music. He is noted as an explorer of unusual timbres and extended technique. Examples include spoken flute (one speaks while blowing into the instrument) and...
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Echoes of Time and the River | ||
| 1967 | Leon Kirchner |
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Leon Kirchner (January 24, 1919 – September 17, 2009) was an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Kirchner was born in Brooklyn,...
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Quartet No. 3 | ||
| 1966 | Leslie Bassett |
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Leslie Bassett (born January 22, 1923 in Hanford, California) is an American composer of classical music, and the University of Michigan’s Albert A. Stanley Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Composition. Bassett received the 1966...
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Variations for Orchestra | ||
| 1963 | Samuel Barber |
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Samuel Osborne Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981) was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music....
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Piano Concerto | ||
| 1962 | Walter Piston |
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Walter Hamor Piston Jr., or more simply Walter Piston, (January 20, 1894 – November 12, 1976) was a notable American composer of classical music, music theorist and influential professor of music at Harvard University whose many students included...
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Symphony No. 7 | ||
| 1960 | Elliott Carter |
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Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. (born December 11, 1908) is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a...
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String Quartet No. 2 | ||
| 1959 | John La Montaine |
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John La Montaine (b. Oak Park, Illinois, United States, 17 March 1920) is an American composer who won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Piano Concerto no. 1, Op. 9, "In Time of War" (1958), which was premiered by Jorge Bolet.
His teachers...
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Piano Concerto | ||
| 1958 | Samuel Barber |
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Samuel Osborne Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981) was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music....
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Vanessa | ||
| 1957 | Norman Dello Joio |
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Norman Dello Joio (January 24, 1913 – July 24, 2008) was an American composer.
He was born Nicodemo DeGioio in New York City to Italian immigrants; the spelling "Gioio" was later anglicized to "Joio". He began his musical career as organist and...
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Meditations on Ecclesiastes | ||
| 1956 | Ernst Toch |
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Ernst Toch (German pronunciation: [ˈtox]; 7 December 1887 Vienna — 1 October 1964 Santa Monica) was a composer of classical music and film scores.
Toch, born in Vienna in the family of a humble Jewish leather dealer when the city was at its 19th...
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Symphony No. 3 | ||
| 1955 | Gian Carlo Menotti |
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Gian Carlo Menotti (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007) was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera Amahl and the...
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The Saint of Bleecker Street | ||
| 1954 | Quincy Porter |
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Quincy Porter (7 February 1897 – 12 November 1966) was an American composer and teacher of classical music.
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, he went to Yale University where his teachers included Horatio Parker and David Stanley Smith. Porter...
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Concerto Concertante | ||
| 1952 | Gail Kubik |
Gail Thompson Kubik (September 5, 1914, South Coffeyville, Oklahoma – July 20, 1984, Covina, California) was an American composer, motion picture scorist, violinist, and teacher. He studied at the Eastman School of Music, the American Conservatory...
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Symphony Concertante | |||
| 1951 | Douglas Stuart Moore |
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Douglas Stuart Moore (August 10, 1893 – July 25, 1969) was an American composer, educator, and author. He wrote for music the theater, film, ballet and orchestra, but his greatest fame was for his two operas The Devil and Daniel Webster (1938) and...
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Giants in the Earth | ||
| 1950 | Gian Carlo Menotti |
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Gian Carlo Menotti (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007) was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera Amahl and the...
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The Consul | ||
| 1949 | Virgil Thomson |
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Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 - September 30, 1989) was an American composer and critic from Kansas City, Missouri. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist , a...
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Louisiana Story | ||
| 1948 | Walter Piston |
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Walter Hamor Piston Jr., or more simply Walter Piston, (January 20, 1894 – November 12, 1976) was a notable American composer of classical music, music theorist and influential professor of music at Harvard University whose many students included...
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Symphony No. 3 | ||
| 1947 | Charles Ives |
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Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer. He is widely regarded as one of the first American composers of international significance. Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his...
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Symphony No. 3 | ||
| 1946 | Leo Sowerby |
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Leo Sowerby (May 1, 1895–July 7, 1968), American composer and church musician, was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1946, and was often called the “Dean of American church music” in the early to mid 20th century.
Sowerby was born in...
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The Canticle of the Sun | ||
| 1945 | Aaron Copland |
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Aaron Copland (November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American nationalist composerof concert and film music, as well as an accomplished pianist. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely known as "the...
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Appalachian Spring | ||
| 1944 | Howard Hanson |
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Howard Harold Hanson (October 28, 1896 – February 26, 1981) was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music. Director for 40 years of the Eastman School of Music, he built a high quality school...
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Symphony No. 4 | ||
| 1943 | William Schuman |
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William Howard Schuman (August 4, 1910–February 15, 1992) was an American composer and music administrator.
Born in the Bronx in New York City to Samuel and Rachel Schuman, Schuman was named after the twenty-seventh U.S. president, William Howard...
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Secular Cantata No. 2 | ||
