Irving Fine

Fine was a member of a close-knit group of Boston composers in the mid-20th century who were sometimes called the "Boston School." Other members of the Boston School included Arthur Berger, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, and Harold Shapero.

Fine was born in Boston, Massachusetts, where he studied piano, and received both bachelor's and master's degrees from Harvard University, where he was a pupil of Walter Piston. Fine was a conducting pupil of Serge Koussevitzky, served as pianist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and studied composition with Nadia Boulanger at the Fontainebleau School of Music in Paris and at Radcliffe College. From 1939 until 1950, he taught music theory at Harvard and conducted its Glee Club, becoming a close associate of Leonard Bernstein, Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland. From 1950, he taught at Brandeis University, where he was Walter S. Naumburg Professor of Music and founded the School of Creative Arts. Between 1946 and 1957, he also taught composition at the Tanglewood Music Festival in the Berkshires. Irving Fine died in Natick, Massachusetts in August 1962. He was 47 years of age. The cause of death was heart disease.

• Toccata concertante, 1947 • Serious Song: A Lament, strings, 1955 • Blue Towers, 1959 • Diversions, 1959–60 • Symphony, 1962

• Three Choruses from Alice in Wonderland, 3–4 voices, piano, 1942; arrangement with orchestra, 1949 • The Choral New Yorker, S, A, Bar, 3–4 voices, piano, 1944 • A Short Alleluia, SSA, 1945 • In gratio jubilo, hymn, small orchestra, 1949 • The Hour-Glass (B. Jonson), song cycle, SATB, 1949 • Old American Songs (trad.), 2–4 voices, piano, 1952 • An Old Song (Yehoash, trans. M. Syrkin), SATB, 1953 • Three Choruses from Alice in Wonderland (L. Carroll), 2nd ser., SSA, piano, 1953 • McCord's Menagerie (McCord), TTB, 1957

• Mutability (I. Orgel), cycle, Mez, piano, 1952 • Childhood Fables for Grown-ups (G. Norman), Mez/Bar, piano/orchestra, 1954–5

• Sonata, violin, piano, 1946 • Music for Piano, 1947 • Partita, wind quintet, 1948 • Notturno, strings, harp, 1950–51 • String Quartet, 1952 • Children's Piano Pieces, 1956 • Fantasia, string trio, 1956 • Hommage à Mozart, piano, 1956 • Romanza, wind quintet, 1958

A biography, Irving Fine: An American Composer in His Time, by author, composer, and pianist Phillip Ramey, was published in 2005 by the Library of Congress and Pendragon Press, and received the 2006 Nicolas Slonimsky Award for Outstanding Musical Biography from ASCAP.