Richard Wernick, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who served an influential tenure on the music faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, died on April 25 at his home in Haverford. He was 91.
His son Adam confirmed his death, citing age-related causes.
Wernick was a prolific composer who developed a unique and uncompromising style, perhaps best described by the composer himself, in an oral history interview for the Milken Archive of Jewish Music. “I find this mixture of old and new, consonant and dissonant, tonal and nontonal, a comfortable one in which to live and create,” he said.
But “comfortable,” to be clear, related more to his creative environment than the dimensions of his work. “My music is not accessible. It’s tough, it’s chromatic, it’s uncompromising.” Wernick said in the interview, adding: “It’s not a warm bath!”
It did, however, find a warm reception from the arts establishment. In addition to the Pulitzer, which Wernick won in 1977 for Visions of Terror and Wonder, a piece for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, his accolades include a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the Ford Foundation. He was the first two-time winner of the prestigious Kennedy Center Friedheim Award — for his Violin Concerto in 1986, and his String Quartet No. 4 in 1991. (He came in second in 1992, for his Piano Concerto.) In 2006, Wernick received the Composer of the Year Award from the Classical Recording Foundation.
During the 1980s and ‘90s, Wernick served as music advisor to Riccardo Muti and The Philadelphia Orchestra, a fertile relationship that inspired “. . . and a time for peace” (“v’yet shalom”). Muti conducted its 1995 premiere at the Ravenna Music Festival in Italy, with the Orchestra Filarmonica Della Scala and mezzo-soprano Freda Herseth. In 2016 the work received its United States premiere at Carnegie Hall, with Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra.
Richard Frank Wernick was born on Jan. 16, 1934 in Newton, Mass., near Boston. His musical talent bloomed early, with piano studies at age 11. His later mentors are among the most distinguished composers and educators in the classical music world. As a student at Brandeis University, he worked with Irving Fine, Harold Shapero, and Arthur Berger. Wernick earned his master’s degree from Mills College, where he studied with Leon Kirchner.
In 1954 and 1955, he spent two summers at Tanglewood, where he studied with Boris Blacher, Aaron Copland, and Ernst Toch, and conducted with Leonard Bernstein. While at Tanglewood, he also met a bassoon student, Beatrice Messina; they married in 1956. Bea later helped found the Community Youth Orchestra of Delaware County and the Suburban Music School in Media, PA. She survives Wernick, along with his sons Adam — a writer, composer and sound designer based in St. Paul, Minn. — and Lew, a guitarist who now lives and works in London. A third son, Peter, died in 1986.
One of Wernick’s first positions was as music director and composer-in-residence for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, for the 1957-58 season. He spent the next six years in New York City, writing for television, film, and Off-Broadway theater. That time also saw Wernick teaching at the Metropolitan Music School, State University of Buffalo, and the University of Chicago.
In 1968, he was recruited by fellow composer George Crumb to the University of Pennsylvania, where he enjoyed a long career as the Irving Fine Professor of Music, and conducted the Penn Contemporary Players. He served as chair of the music department, and as a mentor to generations of young composers. He retired in 1996, and later donated his papers to the Penn Libraries.
Ironically, Wernick’s most-lauded work, Visions of Terror and Wonder, has never received a commercial recording. Commissioned by the Aspen Music Festival’s Conference on Contemporary Music, it received its premiere at the festival in 1976. A few years later, conductor Richard Dufallo and the American Symphony Orchestra gave the New York premiere at Carnegie Hall, with mezzo-soprano Jan de Gaetani. In his New York Times review, Joseph Horowitz commented on the half-hour score, which uses excerpts from the Koran, the Old and New Testaments, with texts in Arabic, Greek, and Hebrew:
Although it generally dispenses with tonality and motivic repetition, the new work seems relatively traditional in terms of instrumentation and texture. In fact, its colorful evocation of the biblical Middle East nearly amounts to a latter‐day ‘Schelomo’ or ‘Salome.’ There are abrupt, staccato fanfares for muted trumpets; shrill, chattering choruses for massed woodwinds, and gaudy sprays of spangles and glitter from the percussion department. The vocal line incorporates chantlike ornaments, presumably based on liturgical models.Joseph Horowitz, New York Times
Other milestones in Wernick’s considerable output include two Fromm commissions — Cadenzas and Variations (1970) and Contemplations of the Tenth Muse (1976) — and the 1971 Kaddish-Requiem (A Secular Service for the Victims of Indo-China), a skeletal tribute to the victims of the Vietnam War, scored for elements including a cantor, mezzo-soprano and sitar.
Among Wernick’s other recordings are compendiums on the Bridge label, highlighting his chamber works and solo guitar pieces, plus his Violin Concerto (1984), Piano Concerto (1989-90) and Symphony II (1993). Most recently, the Network for New Music paid tribute to Wernick in a concert titled Companions, featuring his Duo for Cello and Piano (2001) as well as short works by his son, Adam, and other composers who studied with him.
Wernick’s eclectic style drew on influences from around the world, and a wry sense of humor was never far away. Of the four movements of his Suite No. 2 for solo cello, the third is titled, “Oy, Gavotte!” In a 2021 interview with Thomas Schuttenhelm of the Network for New Music, Wernick recalled Stravinsky’s answer, after being asked to define inspiration. The elder statesman replied, “It’s the rubber end of the pencil.”
