Jonathan Kramer
Composer & Music Theorist
Jonathan Kramer received his B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard University (1965) and his MA and PhD in music from the (1967 and 1969). His composition teachers included Karlheinz Stockhausen, Roger Sessions, Leon Kirchner, Seymour Shifrin, Andrew Imbrie, Richard Felciano, Jean-Claude Éloy, Billy Jim Layton, Edwin Dugger, and Arnold Franchetti. He studied theory with David Lewin, criticism with Joseph Kerman, and computer music with John Chowning.
Kramer was professor of composition and theory at Columbia University from 1988 until his death in 2004. He also taught at the Oberlin Conservatory, Yale University, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He held visiting appointments at Wesleyan University, King's College London, the Canberra School of Music, the School of Music at the University of Western Australia, the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio (Italy), the Center for New Music and Technology (Berkeley), May in Miami, the ISCM Summer Workshop for Composers (Poland), and the European Mozart Academy (Poland). He served four years as program annotator of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, was annotator of the Cincinnati Symphony from 1980; a collection of his program notes, Listen to the Music, was published by Schirmer Books. He was the Cincinnati Symphony's composer in residence and new-music advisor from 1984 to 1992 and served as artist in residence of the Moebius Ensemble since 1997. Kramer produced and hosted several local and national radio programs including “Frontiers of Music”, which addresses issues in contemporary music; several of broadcasts can be found on this website under “Talks”. He represented American Public Radio three times at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris.
Kramer's book The Time of Music is widely considered to by one of the preeminent works on the topic and while it is currently out of print, there are plans underway for its republication in 2016. Kramer's last book, Postmodern Music, Postmodern Listening will be released by Bloomsbury Press in August, 2016.
Notable students include Robert Carl, R. Luke DuBois, Jason Eckardt, Dalit Warshaw and Rocky J. Reuter, Duncan Neilson and Douglas Geers, Sophia Sergei, Duncan Neilson, Stefania De Kennesey, and Andrea Clearfield.
Active as a music theorist, Kramer published primarily on theories of musical time and postmodernism. At the time of his death he was working on a cello composition for the American Holocaust Museum, and this work will be completed by Czech composer Eliska Cilkova in 2017.
Two funds at Columbia University were established by his widow Deborah Bradley-Kramer, and named in honor of Kramer upon his death: The Jonathan D. Kramer Memorial Fund for Young Composers, and The Jonathan D. Kramer Legacy Fund. Another fund, The Jonathan Kramer Fund for Young Composers was also established by Bradley-Kramer, and will provide one composer annually with commissioning funds for the creation of a new composition.
