His Prophecies are the Arias of their Time.

It's the birthday of American pianist and composer William Bolcom, born in Seattle Washington (1938). Bolcom was something of a musical prodigy: by the time he was 11, he was studying composition and piano privately at the University of Washington.

Bolcom has composed over 300 symphonic works and chamber pieces. He performs often with his wife, the mezzo-soprano Joan Morris. They've recorded popular parlour and vaudeville songs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Bolcom has also composed several operas based on literary works, like Frank Norris's novel McTeague, Arthur Miller's play, A View from the Bridge, and Robert Altman's film, A Wedding.

When he was seventeen, he began what would become a thirty-year-long process of setting poet William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience to music. It became a three-hour long composition for soloists, choruses, and orchestra. Along the way, he realized he wanted to bridge the gap between "popular" and "serious" music, so he incorporated elements of jazz, folk, soul, reggae, and vaudeville. The world premiere was held at Stuttgart Opera in 1984. On Blake's work, Bolcom said, "I've been looking at these texts since I fell in love with them at 17. I thought that maybe they would make more sense sung than spoken. Singing spreads them out. When I read these poems aloud, they make a weird kind of sense. But people have gotten all 'aw, shucks' about reading poetry aloud today. It's like listening to a bank draft. T. S. Eliot was like that. Blake is kind of a gloss on Handel. His prophecies are the arias of their time."

William Bolcom won the Pulitzer Prize (1988) for 12 New Etudes for Piano.

-Writer's Almanac