Robert Cogan

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Robert Cogan (1930 – August 19, 2021) was an American music theorist, composer and teacher.^[1]

He studied at the University of Michigan (B.M., 1951; M.M., 1952); Princeton University (M.F.A., 1956); Royal Conservatory of Brussels; Berkshire Music Center, Tanglewood; and the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hamburg. His principal teachers included Nadia Boulanger, Aaron Copland, Ross Lee Finney, Philipp Jarnach and Roger Sessions.

For more than three decades Cogan was Chair of Graduate Theoretical Studies and Professor of Composition at New England Conservatory, Boston. He also was a visiting Professor at the Berkshire Music Center; at State University of New York at Purchase; at the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, and Shanghai Conservatory; and at IBM Research.

As speaker and/or composer Cogan was programmed in Belgium, Brazil, Canada (), China, France (IRCAM), Paris; Avignon and Nice Festivals), Germany (Darmstadt summer school for new music); North and West German Radios; Zinzig Festival; University of Bielefeld), Great Britain (Universities of Edinburgh, London, and Southampton), Italy (Gubbio and Prix Italia festivals; Italian Society for Musical Analysis; Rockefeller Bellagio Study Center), Korea (), the Netherlands (International Computer Music Association), Russia, Sweden (), Switzerland (), and Yugoslavia (Belgrade Radio-Television). In the United States he appeared under the auspices of the American Society for Aesthetics; ; Ford, Morse, Rockefeller, and ; ; League of Composers; Music Educators National Conference; Music Teachers National Association; ; Society for Ethnomusicology; and Society for Music Theory; as well as in universities throughout North America.

Performers of Cogan's works include the conductors Tamara Brooks, Lorna Cooke deVaron, , Jacques-Louis Monod, Fredrick Prausnitz, Gunther Schuller, and Leopold Stokowski; the Cleveland Orchestra, , and ; pianists Geoffrey Burleson, Marilyn Crispell, David Del Tredici, David Hagan, Robert Henry, and Ellen Polansky; instrumentalists Esther Lamneck, Alexei Ludewig, and Stephanie Key; and singers Jan De Gaetani, Elizabeth Keusch, Joan Heller, Jane Bryden, and Maria Tegzes. His music appears on the Delos, Golden Crest, Leo, Music and Arts, Neuma, and Spectrum recording labels.

Cogan resided in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his partner, composer and theorist Pozzi Escot.

Selected compositions[]

Publications[]

• Cogan, Robert (1984): New Images of Musical Sound Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
• Cogan, Robert and Escot, Pozzi: Sonic Design: The Nature of Sound and Music Prentice-Hall
• Cogan, Robert and Escot, Pozzi: Sonic Design: Practice and Problems Publication Contact International ^[2]

He also published in numerous journals including College Music Symposium, Interface, Journal of Music Theory, Musical Quarterly, Perspectives of New Music, and Sonus.

References[]

• Music Theory Online review of Robert Cogan, *New Images of Musical Sound*, (Harvard University Press, 1984) by Stephen W. Smoliar (May 1995) ISSN 1067-3040, accessed 9 February 2010
• Computer Music Journal review by Benjamin R Levy of the Electroacoustic Music Festival at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA, 20-22 February 2002, accessed 9 February 2010

External links[]

• Sonus website, featuring music and publications of Robert Cogan & Pozzi Escot
• Robert Cogan page at New England Conservatory website
• University of New England lecture notice for Robert Cogan & Pozzi Escot, accessed 9 February 2010