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Birth nameAlexander Lafayette Chew Wilder BornFebruary 16, 1907 (1907-02-16) OriginRochester, New York, United States GenresClassical music, popular music DiedDecember 24, 1980, Gainesville, Florida, United States MoviesLot in Sodom, Ghost Ship, The Sand Castle, OPEN THE DOOR AND SEE ALL THE PEOPLE AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada CompositionsI'll Be Around, I'll Be Around, Moon and Sand, Moon and Sand, While We're Young, While We're Young, Windy Nights, Windy Nights, Where Is the One?, Where Is the One?, Who Can I Turn To, Who Can I Turn To, Where Do You Go?, Where Do You Go?, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, South - To a Warmer Place, South - To a Warmer Place, Flute and Bongos no 1, Flute and Bongos no 1, Blue, Blue, Douglas Mountain, Douglas Mountain, River Run, River Run, When I Am Dead My Dearest, When I Am Dead My Dearest, All the Cats Join In, All the Cats Join In, I See It Now, I See It Now, Chick Lorimer, Chick Lorimer, A Long Night, A Long Night, Low in the Lehigh Valley, Low in the Lehigh Valley, Gray, Gray, The Wrong Blues, The Wrong Blues, Seal Lullaby, Seal Lullaby Similar PeopleLoonis McGlohon, Frank Sinatra, Thelma Carpenter, Hugh Martin, Mitch Miller
EducationEastman School of Music
A child is born by thad jones and alec wilder
Alec Wilder (born Alexander Lafayette Chew Wilder in Rochester, New York, February 16, 1907; d. Gainesville, Florida, December 24, 1980) was an American composer.
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Biography
His family was prominent in Rochester; a downtown building (at the "Four Corners") bears the family's name. As a young boy, he traveled to New York City with his mother and stayed at the Algonquin Hotel. It would later be his home for the last 40 or so years of his life. He attended several prep schools, unhappily, as a teenager. Around this time, he hired a lawyer and essentially "divorced" himself from his family, gaining for himself some portion of the family fortune.
He was largely self-taught as a composer; he studied privately with the composers Herman Inch and Edward Royce, who taught at the Eastman School of Music in the 1920s, but never registered for classes and never received his degree. While there, he edited a humor magazine and scored music for short films directed by James Sibley Watson. Wilder was eventually awarded an honorary degree in 1973.
He was good friends with Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett and other luminaries of the American popular music canon. Among the popular songs he wrote or co-wrote were "I'll Be Around" (a hit for the Mills Brothers), "While We're Young" (recorded by Peggy Lee and many others), "Blackberry Winter", "Where Do You Go?" (recorded by Sinatra) and "It's So Peaceful in the Country". He also wrote many songs for the cabaret artist Mabel Mercer, including one of her signature pieces, "Did You Ever Cross Over to Sneden's?". Unusually for a composer, Wilder occasionally wrote his own lyrics including for his most famous song 'I'll Be Around'. Other lyricists he worked with included Loonis McGlohon, William Engvick, Johnny Mercer and Fran Landesman.
In addition to writing popular songs, Wilder also composed classical pieces for exotic combinations of orchestral instruments. The Alec Wilder Octet, including Eastman classmate Mitch Miller on oboe, recorded several of his originals for Brunswick Records in 1938-40. His classical numbers, which often had off-beat, humorous titles ("The Hotel Detective Registers"), were strongly influenced by jazz. He wrote eleven operas; one of which, Miss Chicken Little (1953), was commissioned for television by CBS. Sinatra conducted an album of Wilder's classical music. Wilder also arranged a series of Christmas carols for Tubachristmas.
Wilder wrote the definitive book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950 (1972). He was also featured in a radio series based on the book, broadcast in the middle to late 1970s. With lyricist Loonis McGlohon (his cohost on the radio series) he composed songs for the Land of Oz theme park in Banner Elk, North Carolina.
Wilder loved puzzles: he created his own cryptic crosswords, and could spend hours with a jigsaw puzzle. He also loved to talk (he had an encyclopedic knowledge of the world) and most of all, laugh. Displeased with how Peggy Lee improvised the ending of While We're Young, he wrote her a note: "The next time you come to the bridge [of the song], jump!" Pianist Marian McPartland told the story of this "alleged" comment to Tony Bennett on her "Piano Jazz" radio show in 2004.
Wilder is buried in a Catholic cemetery in Avon, New York, outside Rochester.
Selected works
Opera
The Lowland Sea (1952)
Miss Chicken Little (1953)
Sunday Excursion (1953)
Kittiwake Island (1954)
The Long Way (1955)
The Impossible Forest (1958)
The Truth about Windmills (1973)
The Tattooed Countess (1974)
The Opening (1975)
The Churkendoose (?)
Rachetty Pachetty House (?)
Herman Ermine in Rabbit Town (?)
Musicals
Pinocchio (1957)
Hansel and Gretel (1958)
Miss Chicken Little (1953).
Nobody’s Earnest (1978).
Film Music
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)
Lot in Sodom (1933)
Make Mine Music (1946)
Albert Schweitzer (1957), documentary by Jerome Hill
The Sand Castle (1961), directed by Jerome Hill
Open the Door and See All the People (1964), directed by Jerome Hill
Large Ensemble
A Child’s Introduction to the Orchestra (1954). Text by Marshall Barer. A musical primer. Eighteen movements featuring individual instruments of the orchestra. [Ludlow]
Children’s Plea for Peace (1968). Children’s SSAA chorus, narrator and wind ensemble. Text by Wilder, adapted from writings of Avon, New York schoolchildren. Dedicated to Rev. Henry Atwell. [Margun]
Songs (selected list)
A Child Is Born (lyrics only)
A long night
Be a Child
Blackberry Winter
Ellen
Give Me Time
I'll Be Around
It's So Peaceful In The Country
Lovers And Losers
Mimosa And Me
Moon And Sand
Rain Rain
That's My Girl
The April Age
The Rose On The Wind
The Starlighter
The Winter Of My Discontent
Trouble Is A Man
Walk Pretty
Where Do You Go
While We're Young
Who Can I Turn To
Chamber music and Solo Instruments
Air for Bassoon and Strings (1945). For Harold Goltzer
Air for Flute and Strings (1945). For Julius Baker.
Air for Oboe and Strings (1945). For Mitch Miller.
Brass Quintets: No 1 (1959) For the New York Brass Quintet; No 2 (1961); No. 3 (1970); No. 4 (1973) For Harvey Phillips; No. 5 (1975) For the Tidewater Brass Quintet; No. 6 (1977) For the Tidewater Brass Quintet; No. 7 (1978) For Frances Miller; No. 8 (1980) For Frances Miller.
Concerto No. 1 for Trumpet and Wind Ensemble (1967). For Doc Severinson.
Concerto for Euphonium and Wind Orchestra (1981; written in 1971). For Barry Kilpatrick
Effie Suite (1960) for Tuba, Vibraphone, Piano and Drums. For Harvey Phillips
Fantasy for Piano and Wind Ensemble (1974). For Marian McPartland
Jazz Suite for Four Horns (1951). Four horns with harpsichord, guitar, bass, drums.
Octets (1939–41) Flute/Clarinet 2, oboe/English horn/, clarinet 1, bass clarinet, bassoon, harpsichord, bass, drums: Bull Fiddle In A China Shop; The Children Met the Train; Concerning Etchings; Dance Man Buys A Farm; A Debutante’s Diary; Her Old Man Was Suspicious; His First Long Pants; House Detective Registers; It’s Silk, Feel It!; Kindergarten Flower Pageant; Little Girl Grows Up; Neurotic Goldfish; She’ll Be Seven In May; Such A Tender Night; Walking Home In Spring.
Seven Duets for Horn and Bassoon.
Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano (1960). For Donald Sinta.
Sonata for Bass Trombone and Piano (1969). For George Roberts
Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (1963). For Glenn Bowen.
Sonata for Euphonium and Piano (1968)
Sonata for Trumpet and Piano (1963). For Joe Wilder.
Sonata for Viola and Piano (1965)
Suite for Unaccompanied Flute (1975). For Virginia Nanzetta.
Suite No. 2 for Tenor Saxophone and Strings (1966). For Zoot Sims. [Margun]
Suites for Tuba and Piano: Suite No. 1 (1960) for Harvey Phillips; Suite No. 2 (Jesse Suite), *Suite No. 3 (Suite for Little Harvey) and Suite No. 4 (Thomas Suite)
Three Ballads for Stan [also exists in Wilder’s piano reduction as Suite No. 1 for Tenor Saxophone and Piano] (1963). For Stan Getz. [Margun]
Twelve Duets for Horn and Bassoon.
Woodwind Quintets: No. 1 (1954) For the New York Woodwind Quintet; No. 2 (1956); No. 3 (1958); No. 4 (1959) For Bernard Garfield; No. 5 (1959); No. 6 (1960); No. 7 (1964); No. 8 (1966) [also known as Suite For Non-Voting Quintet; No. 9 (1969); No. 10 (ca. 1968); No. 11 (1971) For John Barrows; No. 12 (1975) For the Wingra Quintet; No. 13
Discography
Alec Wilder Octet (Columbia, 1951)
Albums as Composer
By Bob Brookmeyer
7 x Wilder (Verve, 1961)
By Jackie Cain and Roy Kral
An Alec Wilder Collection (Audiophile, 1990)
By Meredith D’Ambrosio
Another Time (Palo Alto, 1981)
By Valerie Errante and Robert Wason
Songs of Alec Wilder (Troy)
By Eileen Farrell
Eileen Farrell Sings Alec Wilder (Reference)
By Ghost Train Orchestra
Book of Rhapsodies (Accurate, 2013)
Book of Rhapsodies Vol. II (Accurate, 2017)
By Roland Hanna
Roland Hanna Plays the Music of Alec Wilder (Tokuma [Japan], 1978)
By Vic Juris
Music of Alec Wilder (Double Time, 1996)
By Bob Levy
Blackberry Winter: Songs by Alec Wilder (Mark)
By Dave Liebman
Lieb Plays Wilder (Daybreak, 2003)
By Mundell Lowe
New Music of Alec Wilder (Riverside, 1956)
By Marian McPartland
Marian McPartland Plays the Music of Alec Wilder (Jazz Alliance)
By Diana Robinson
Music of Alec Wilder (Multi Media Library)
By Bob Rockwell
Bob’s Wilder (Stunt, 2003)
By Ben Sidran
Walk Pretty: The Songs of Alec Wilder (Go Jazz, 2002)
By Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra Conducts the Music of Alec Wilder (Columbia, 1946)
