Robert Starer

Robert Starer worked in piano performance, music education, music composing, composed musical work and music composition. He was employed by Brooklyn College and City University of New York. He belonged to American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Robert Starer is recorded as having received Guggenheim Fellowship and Arts and Letters Award in Music. American composer and pianist.

In World War II he served in the British Royal Air Force, and in 1947 he settled in the United States. He studied composition at the Juilliard School in New York City with Frederick Jacobi, then with Aaron Copland in 1948 and received a postgraduate degree from Juilliard in 1949. Starer became an American citizen in 1957. Starer taught at the Juilliard School, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where he became a distinguished professor in 1986. He lived with writer Gail Godwin for some thirty years; the two collaborated on several librettos. Starer was prolific and composed in many genres. His music was characterized by chromaticism and driving rhythms. His vocal works, whether set to English or Hebrew texts, were particularly praised. He composed the score for Martha Graham's 1962 ballet Phaedra. He also wrote four operas, The Intruder (1956), Pantagleize (1967), The Last Lover (1975), and Apollonia (1979). Notable concertos include Violin Concerto which was written for Itzhak Perlman and recorded by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, conductor, and his Cello Concerto, commissioned by Janos Starker and recorded by Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor. One of Starer's better-known pieces is Even and Odds for young pianists. He is also known for his pieces entitled Sketches in Color, as well as his sight-reading training manual, Rhythmic Training. Among Starer's students was Talib Rasul Hakim. Starer died on April 22, 2001, in Kingston New York, and he is buried in Artists Cemetery, Woodstock, Ulster County, New York.

Robert Starer studied at Juilliard School and Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. The field of work recorded is piano performance, music education and music composing. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are opera. Employment is recorded with Brooklyn College and City University of New York. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship and Arts and Letters Award in Music.

• Jaques Cattell Press (Ed.): Who's who in American Music. Classical. First edition. R. R. Bowker, New York, 1983. • Darryl Lyman: Great Jews in Music. J. D. Publishers, Middle Village, New York, 1986. • Stanley Sadie, H. Wiley Hitchcock (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of American Music. Grove's Dictionaries of Music, New York, New York, 1986.