Stout, Alan

Alan Stout (b. 1932) is an American composer. He studied concurrently at Johns Hopkins University (BS 1954) and the Peabody Conservatory. After a year at the University of Copenhagen, he completed his formal musical training at the University of Washington (MA 1959). His teachers included Henry Cowell, Wallingford Riegger, Vagn Holmboe, and John Verrall. In 1962 he joined the Northwestern University School of Music. His diverse musical interests are reflected in the various societies to which he belongs. He is a founding member of the International Gong Society and the International Double Reed Society, a patron of the Schoenberg Institute, and a member of the board of directors of the International Percy Grainger Society. In addition, he has completed numerous performance editions and realizations of unfinished works of composers such as Charles Ives, Anton Webern, and Percy Grainger. He is also an advocate of Scandinavian music.

A prolific composer, Stout has written over 100 works. His style exhibits a blend of American experimentalism and more traditional writing. Often based on a relaxed application of the 12-note system, his music makes use of tone clusters, transcriptions of natural phenomena, and rhythmic notations that allow performers a certain degree of rhythmic flexibility. A consistent concern for timbre is also characteristic of his music. Many of his works revise and re-use material from earlier compositions. The Music for Oboe and Piano (1966) and the Music for Flute and Harpsichord (1967), for example, rework sections of the Second Symphony (1951–1966). That work, as well as the George Lieder (1962), the Fourth Symphony (1970) and Passion (1975) were given premières by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Adapted from Kathryn Gleasman Pisaro's article in Grove Music Online.