Maxfield, Richard, 1927-1969

Biography

Richard Maxfield (1927 - 1969) was born in Seattle, Washington. His musical aptitude was revealed at a young age, playing both piano and clarinet, the latter in the Seattle All-Youth Orchestra. He also began composing in high school, largely exploring neoclassical and twelve-tone serialism. After a year in the Navy, he enrolled at Stanford University (where reportedly campus station KZSU played his music) but transferred in 1947 to U.C. Berkeley to study with Roger Sessions after having heard his music on the radio. Graduating in 1951, Maxfield traveled to Europe on a scholarship, where he was introduced to Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono, and the electronic tape music which would guide his work from then on. Maxfield also studied with Krenek, Babbitt, Copland, Maderna, and Dallapiccola, but was ultimately influenced the most by the work of John Cage, whom he met through Christian Wolff in 1958. Maxfield would employ chance as a compositional tool, at times drawing strips of tape from a glass bowl. Unlike some aleatoric composers, however, Maxfield would further edit works according to what he thought worked best.

Maxfield's music was presented at Fluxus events, the Living Theatre, and other New York City loft performances beginning in the late 1950s. He composed music for dance, and was musical director of the James Waring Dance Company. Maxfield was friend and mentor to La Monte Young, who first performed his works in New York in 1960. Young's MELA Foundation is custodian for Maxfield's archive.

Outside of composing, Maxfield wrote essays, produced a film ("An Introduction to New Music"), and worked as freelance audio engineer (one regular client was Westminster Records from 1960 to 1962), but he was far more involved with music education. In fact, New Grove's Dictionary of Music calls him "the first teacher of electronic music techniques in the United States." Maxfield taught at the New School in New York City in 1959 (taking over a class taught by Cage) and later at San Francisco State in 1966 and 1967. He moved to Los Angeles the following year. On June 27, 1969, Richard Maxfield, then 42 years old, jumped out of a window at the Figueroa Hotel.

From the guide to the Richard Maxfield Collection, 1959-1964, (Archive of Recorded Sound)