Dudley Buck
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Dudley Buck (March 10, 1839 – October 6, 1909) was an American musical composer.
He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of a merchant who gave him every opportunity for cultivating his musical talents. After attending Trinity College, for four years (1858-1862) he studied at Leipzig (at the Leipzig Conservatory), Dresden and Paris. On returning to America he held the position of organist at Hartford, Chicago (1869), and Boston (1871). In 1875 he went to New York to assist Theodore Thomas as conductor of orchestral concerts, and from 1877 to 1902 was organist at Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn. Meanwhile he had become well known as a composer of church music, a number of cantatas (Columbus, 1876; Golden Legend, 1880; Light of Asia, 1885, etc.), a grand opera, Serapis, a comic opera, Deseret (1880), a symphonic overture, Marmion, a symphony in E flat, and other orchestral and vocal works.
In addition, Buck also published several books, most notably the Dictionary of Musical Terms and Influence of the Organ in History, which was published in New York in 1882. However, Buck is best known today for his organ composition, "Concert Variations on the Star-Spangled Banner," Op. 23, which was later arranged into an orchestral version.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Virtual American Biographies, derived from Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, accessed October 2, 2006
