Paul Moravec

Moravec was born in Buffalo, New York, and subsequently attended the Lawrenceville School, graduating in 1975. He received his B.A. in composition from Harvard University in 1980; while there, he performed with the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, one of the Holden Choirs. He won the Prix de Rome and studied at the American Academy in Rome after graduating. He then received the Master of Music (1982) and Doctor of Musical Arts (1987) in composition, both from Columbia University. Moravec has taught at Dartmouth College (1987–96) and Hunter College (1997–98). He suffered from clinically diagnosed depression that worsened during the time immediately surrounding his departure from Dartmouth College, and underwent electroshock therapy. In 2004, Moravec received the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his work Tempest Fantasy. This prestigious award raised Moravec's profile significantly, and he was appointed to several residencies. He was named the new honorary composer-member of the New York Composers Circle in September, 2006. He was also appointed the composer in residence for the 2007-2008 academic year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In addition to his Pulitzer Prize, Moravec has received a Composer Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, and the Charles Ives Prize and Goddard Lieberson Awards in American Composition. He has been commissioned by such ensembles as the Dessoff Choirs, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, and the Harvard Glee Club. ==Musical style==

Moravec has been placed into a group called "new tonalists" by the critic Terry Teachout, who describes them as composers who are "neither embarrassed nor paralyzed by tradition. Rather they accept it as a given." Critic Jens F. Laurson described Moravec's Pulitzer Prize-winning Tempest Fantasy as "remarkably accessible music. Picturesque, conventionally beautiful at times, but without pandering to the ears’ lowest harmonic expectations. [It is] music that works with all the traditional tools from the composer’s workshop[,] which have changed surprisingly little since Bach - but Moravec uses them to create music anew." He named Federico Mompou, Claude Debussy, Paul Hindemith, Francis Poulenc, and Elliott Carter as clear musical influences in Moravec's music. He also noted a clear disparity between Moravec's music and that of minimalist composers Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Critic Victor Carr Jr. characterizes Moravec's musical language as "generally tonal--and although it's not consistently melodic, it's always accessible. More than that, it's highly engrossing[.]" ==Musical works==

His best-known pieces include the Pulitzer-winning, Shakespeare-inspired Tempest Fantasy, a 30-minute chamber work scored for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, which was premiered on May 2, 2003, at the Morgan Library in New York City by David Krakauer and Trio Solisti, for whom it was written; Northern Lights Electric, a 1994 work that combines a musical illustration of the Northern Lights with a musical depiction of electric light; and the 1998 cantata Fire/Ice/Air, which contrasts the journeys of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, on his expedition to the Antarctic, and Charles Lindbergh, on his trans-Atlantic flight. ==Notes==