Robert W. Wason

Biography

Beginning his musical career as a composer and jazz pianist, Robert Wason studied music composition and piano at the Hartt School of the University of Hartford (BMus ’67; MMus ’69), joining the Hartt Faculty as an Instructor in Theory and Composition in 1969. During his Hartford years, he worked four to six nights a week playing various gigs, and accompanied many touring artists, such as Buck Clayton, Sammy Davis Jr., Bobby Vinton, and the Four Tops. In the mid 70s he went on to do work in music theory at Yale University (MPhil ’78; Ph.D. ’81), and also studied at the University of Vienna and the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna (Fulbright Scholar, 1979-80). A recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Paul Sacher Foundation, and the German Academic Exchange (DAAD), he has also taught at Trinity College (Hartford), Clark University, the University of North Texas, and has been guest professor at the University of Basel (Switzerland), the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), and SUNY Buffalo. He is the author of a standard work on the history of music theory in the nineteenth century (Viennese Harmonic Theory from Albrechtsberger to Schenker and Schoenberg [Ann Arbor: 1985; reprint, Rochester: 1995), and more than twenty-five articles and reviews on the history of music theory, twentieth-century music, and more recently, jazz, in many journals and collections published here and abroad. He has also managed to keep two hands in performance, at least part time, through various projects as a vocal accompanist, including songs of Anton Webern (with soprano Elizabeth Marvin, currently Associate Director and Dean of Eastman), and turn-of-the-(last)-century German Lieder from Munich, with soprano Valerie Errante, Associate Professor of Voice at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. The collaboration with Prof. Errante also led to concerts of both ‘popular’ and ‘art’ songs by the Rochester composer, Alec Wilder (1909-1980), available on the Errante/Wason CD Songs of Alec Wilder (Albany Records; Troy 404).