Becker, John J.

John Joseph Becker, 1886-1961, was an American composer.

John Joseph Becker was an ultramodernist composer, conductor, and educator. He was born in Henderson, Kentucky on January 22, 1886 and he spent most of his life in the Midwest. Indeed, he has been called the “Midwestern Musical Crusader”. His early teachers included Alexander von Fielitz and Wilhelm Middelschulte . Becker became an educator himself, working at the University of Notre Dame (1918-1928), St. Mary of the Spring (1928-1929), St. Thomas University (1929-1933), and Barat College of the Sacred Heart (1943-1957). He also spent six years working for the W.P.A., as the Director of the Federal Music Project for the state of Minnesota (1935-1941), before returning to academic life. Throughout his career he wrote about music and culture, as well as serving as an editor and advisor of New Music magazine alongside founder and friend, Henry Cowell . Meanwhile, he and his wife Evelyn raised four children: Mary Cecilia, John A., Eugene (Gene), and Bruce.

Becker is known as leader of an ultramodern, arguably dissonant, distinctly American style of music that broke away from European styles of composition. Along with the other four of the “American Five” ( Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, and Wallingford Riegger ) he shattered preconceived notions of composition, employing difficult techniques of counterpoint and harmony. Becker wrote seven symphonies, as well as concertos, orchestral suites, songs, and choral works (especially religious works). In Musicalia (ca.1931), Henry Cowell explains that Becker “bases his style on the art of the great early vocal polyphonists of the Catholic Church - Palestrina, Vittoria, etc.”. He named many works “soundpieces”, a literal English translation of the word “sonatas” - which gives an indication of the principles on which he based his work. Among his notable works, A Marriage with Space (1935) is often cited as most representative of his ideas of new forms for the stage by incorporating sound, light, dance, and poetry. He was honored late in his career (1958) when his Symphonia Brevis (written in 1930-1931) was performed at Carnegie Hall as part of Bernstein’s series on important American composers. John J. Becker died on January 21, 1961, one day before his 75th birthday.