American Composer Harold Meltzer has Died, Aged 58

Meltzer received commissions from some of America's foremost contemporary music ensembles, and was founder and co-director of the Sequitur Ensemble

The American composer Harold Meltzer has passed away at the age of 58.

Born in Brooklyn in 1966, Meltzer grew up in Long Island. He graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College, where he studied with Lewis Spratlan, and went on to learn from Alexander Goehr at the University of Cambridge and Martin Bresnick, Anthony Davis, and Jacob Druckman at the Yale School of Music.

Meltzer described his own compositional style as being inspired by objects like architectural spaces, postmodern fairy tales, and messages in fortune cookies.

His works were commissioned by ensembles such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Fromm and Koussevitzky Music Foundations, New Music USA, the Library of Congress, Boston Chamber Music Society, Concert Artists Guild, the ASCAP Foundation for the New York Festival of Song, and the Brooklyn Art Song Society, among others.

Meltzer was the founder of the new music ensemble Sequitur, and for fifteen years, he served as its co-director.

In 2009, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his sextet Brion — and his other honors include the Rome Prize, the Barlow Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and both the Arts and Letters Award in Music and the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

A devoted pedagogue, Meltzer taught at Amherst College, Vassar College, and Syracuse University.

In 2019, Meltzer suffered a stroke, and his health sadly never recovered. He is survived by his wife and children.

Our condolences to Mr. Meltzer's family, friends, and colleagues.