HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Earl Kim, Professor of Music Emeritus, Dies at 78

His compositions have been performed by an array of artists, including Perlman, Mehta and Ozawa

Earl Kim, the james Edward Ditson Professor of Music Emeritus. Photo by Laura Wulf.

Memorial services for Earl Kim, the James Edward Ditson Professor of Music Emeritus, took place in the John Knowles Paine Concert Hall of the Music Building last Sunday. The 78-year-old composer died of cancer on Nov. 19 at his Cambridge home.

A master of exquisitely calibrated sonorities balanced by eloquent silence, Kim demonstrated a special gift for placing words into economical but evocative settings. He most frequently drew inspiration from Samuel Beckett, whose words he infused with uncanny insight.

Shortly before a special May 1990 concert honoring Kim at Sanders Theatre, composer Jeff Nichols (then one of Kim's Ph.D. dissertation advisees) described his mentor as "an incredibly eloquent man [who can] penetrate the often-abstruse approaches that composers use these days and get down to very concrete musical issues without losing sight of the subtleties involved in a real piece" (Harvard University Gazette, April 27, 1990).

Kim also succeeded in being "tonal in a way that could only be happening now," Nichols added. "He creates tonal attractions with materials that are quite contemporary in their structures. I don't quite understand the secret of how he does it."

Kim's works range from solo piano pieces, chamber music, and song cycles to the short Beckett-based opera Footfalls (1981) and extended multimedia theater works such as Exercises En Route (1971; for soprano, chamber ensemble, dancers, three actresses, and film) and Narratives (1979; for woman's voice, high soprano, teleprojected actor, chamber ensemble, television, and lights). This year, the Boston Chamber Music Society premiered The White Hour, Kim's last major work.

A distinguished roster of groups and performers brought Kim's works to life: actress Irene Worth, violinist Itzhak Perlman (who premiered Kim's Violin Concerto in 1979 and his Caprices for Solo Violin in 1980), conductors Zubin Mehta and Seiji Ozawa, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Marlboro Music Festival, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Several of his works were also broadcast over radio (U.S. and Europe) and national television (U.S.).

Active in the concert hall as well, Kim collaborated as a pianist with singers such as Benita Valente and Bethany Beardslee. From 1977 to 1981, he conducted Cambridge's Ariel Chamber Ensemble.

A student of Roger Sessions, Ernest Bloch, and Arnold Schoenberg, Kim in turn taught composers such as Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, and Bernard Rands (now Harvard's Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music) at Princeton during the 1960s and frequently served as a composer-in-residence at major music centers and festivals (Aspen, Dartmouth, Marlboro, Tanglewood) and academic institutions (Brandeis, Hartt College, Princeton).

Born on Jan. 6, 1920, in Dinuba, Calif., Kim attended the University of California, Los Angeles (1940-41), studying composition and theory with Schoenberg. He went on to study with Bloch and Sessions at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his master's degree in 1952. He taught at Princeton University from 1952 until 1967, when he came to Harvard.

Kim assumed the Ditson Professorship of Music in 1971 and retired in 1990, when he also resigned as co-chair of a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) music panel to protest congressional restrictions (enumerated in the "Helms amendment") on artistic freedom in NEA-funded projects. Kim had earlier been politically active as a co-founder and president of Musicians Against Nuclear Arms (1981-84) and participated in a 1983 benefit concert for Physicians for Social Responsibility at New York's Avery Fisher Hall.

His many honors included a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1965), a Brandeis Creative Arts Award (1971), and commissions from the Koussevitzky, Fromm, and Naumburg foundations.

Kim leaves his wife, violinist Martha Potter, and daughter Eva of Cambridge; Shawna Kent (daughter from his first marriage) of New York City; two grandchildren; and a brother, Yin Kim, of California.

The family requests that contributions in Kim's memory be made to the musical ensemble of one's choice or to Radcliffe's Bunting Institute.