Peter Child

Peter Burlingham Child (born 6 May 1953) is a British composer, teacher, and musical analyst. He is Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was a composer in residence with the New England Philharmonic.

Education and career Child took his first composition lessons at the age of 12 with Bernard Barrell. Child then studied Kamatic music in Madras, India for one year on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. where his teachers included Arthur Berger, Martin Boykan, and Seymour Shifrin. Child wrote five new compositions for that orchestra, including Washington Park, a work inspired by the city's Washington Park Historic District.

Composer Child composes music for orchestra, chorus, computer synthesis, voice, and chamber groups. Among his works are Embers (1984), a one-act chamber opera based on the play by Samuel Beckett, and Clare Cycle (1984), four settings from the poetry of John Clare.

Among the musical ensembles that have performed his music are the John Oliver Chorale, the Pro Arte Orchestra, the Lydian String Quartet, Collage, Parnassus, New York New Music, New Millennium Ensemble, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Lontano (Great Britain), Interensemble (Italy), Speak Percussion (Australia), Emory University Wind Ensemble and Percussion Ensemble, and Boston Musica Viva. including a string quartet commissioned in honor of the birth of Gombosi's son Andrew.

Awards Child is the recipient of many music awards, including the 1994 Gyorgy Kepes Fellowship Prize awarded by the MIT Council for the Arts, the 2001 Music of Changes Award, and the 2004 Levitan Award in the Humanities from MIT. His compositions have earned the 1978 Margaret Grant Memorial Prize from Tanglewood, the 1979 First Prize from East and West Artists, the 1980 Recording Prize from WGBH Radio, the 1983 New Works Prize from the New England Conservatory, and the 1983 New England Composers Prize from the League-International Society for Contemporary Music, Boston. He has recently relocated to Norway with his wife Lina and their daughter Elsie Ruth. From a previous marriage to Sheila Perry Brachfeld-Child, he has two daughters, Madeleine and Rachel.

Works

Musical analysis

Musical compositions