Istvan Anhalt, 1919 – 2012

We are sorry to hear about the death of Istvan Anhalt, innovative Canadian composer, at the age of 92. Anhalt was the head of the music department at Queen’s University from 1971 to 1981. He also established the electronic music studio at McGill University, where he taught from 1949, the year of his arrival in Canada, to 1971.

Istvan Anhalt is the subject of two books published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Eagle Minds (2007), edited by Alan M. Gillmor, collects the correspondence between Anhalt and his friend the American composer George Rochberg. Spanning over forty years, their scintillating conversation ranges from c music and other forms of contemporary art to politics, philosophy, religion, and mysticism. In 2011, WLU Press published Centre and Periphery, Roots and Exile: Interpreting the Music of István Anhalt, György Kurtág, and Sándor Veress, edited by Friedemann Sallis, Robin Elliott, and Kenneth DeLong. This book that examines the impact place and displacement can have on the composition and interpretation of Western art music.

For more about Istvan Anhalt see the obituary on the CBC website: http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/02/27/istvan-anhalt-obit.html.

Tweet This Post

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2012 at 12:33 and is filed under WLU Press. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can trackback from your own site.