Richard St. Clair

In the 17th c. St. Clairs (or Sinclairs) emigrated from the British Isles to New England as part of the early colonization of North America. Richard St. Clair's maternal ancestors emigrated from Norway and Sweden to the American Upper Midwest (in particular, Minnesota) in the latter part of the 19th century along with hundreds of thousands of other Scandinavians who settled there at that time. So many Norwegian immigrants settled in the Upper Midwest that it is locally referred to as "Little Norway." His paternal ancestors hailed from England and Scotland and were both riders on the Mayflower as well as military men in the American War of Independence.

Writing in New Music Connoisseur (2005), Cleary commented as follows on St. Clair's 2005 cycle, "Songs from the Chinese":

Of St. Clair's The Lamentations of Shinran for Soprano, Tenor and String Quartet, Boston Phoenix music reviewer Lloyd Schwartz wrote in February 2000:

Of his 1994 freely atonal cycle Moon Flowers: Album of 50 Haiku-Moments for Solo Piano on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the death of the great haiku poet, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), noted haiku poet Dee Evetts wrote

In 1970 St. Clair made a solo piano appearance in a recital of his own music in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Reviewer Ned Brown made the following prophetic observations:

St. Clair, following in his father's footsteps, began his studies at Harvard University in Cambridge (Massachusetts) where in 1969 he earned his Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) with honors in music composition, the first of many Harvard students to write a musical work in lieu of a thesis. While an undergraduate he studied piano techniques (sight-reading and figured bass) with Luise Vosgerchian, harmony with James Haar and John MacIvor Perkins, counterpoint with James Yannatos and Alejandro Enrique Planchart, form and analysis with Luciano Berio, and composition with Billy Jim Layton and Leon Kirchner. In graduate school at Harvard he went on to earn his Master of Arts (A.M.) in 1973 and his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in 1978, both degrees in music composition. During his student years he was awarded several prizes for his compositions. At Harvard he studied composition with Roger Sessions, Leon Kirchner, Earl Kim, and David Del Tredici. He studied piano privately with Paul Lundquist, Earnest Harris, and Leonard Shure. As a graduate student he was persuaded by a fellow student at Harvard to study piano with Margaret Chaloff in Boston. After a few lessons it became evident to him that she was grooming him for a career as a concert pianist, against which St. Clair rebelled and decided to continue his aspirations as a composer. He made his debut as a composer with his performance of his avant-garde Piano Piece no. 1 at the Marlboro Music Festival in 1967 as an invitee of his teacher, Leon Kirchner; there he was encouraged by Director Rudolf Serkin to continue to pursue a career in composition. Serkin's laconic comment on St. Clair's Piano Piece No. 1, "It has line." Both Shure and Serkin discouraged St. Clair from pursuing a career as a concert pianist, though St. Clair occasionally performed his own piano compositions in concert. Although his student years were turbulent, he emerged as a successful composer of broad stylistic tastes.

In 1969 and 1970 he taught piano at the New England Conservatory in Boston (Massachusetts), and from 1973 to 1977 he taught music history and composition at his alma mater, Harvard University. He also served on the music faculty of Phillips Exeter Academy and Phillips Academy (Andover). Since the late 1970s he has lived a mainly reclusive life, occasionally emerging to present his compositions in concert.

A turning point in his musical life came in 1963 when he attended on scholarship the International Music Camp in the International Peace Garden on the North Dakota-Canada border. Amidst the intense musical environment, his performances at the piano, together with his then piano teacher Paul Lundquist, were noticed by Professor Earnest Harris, head of the piano department at Moorhead State College (later renamed Minnesota State University Moorhead). Harris, steeped in the pedagogic tradition of Theodor Leschetizky and Carl Czerny and a former pupil of Leonard Shure, gave him a full scholarship to study piano, culminating in his brilliant senior solo recital in Grand Forks the following spring, playing the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.

Richard Collins St. Clair (born September 21, 1946) is an American composer, pedagogue, poet and pianist.

Composer David Cleary, writing of the same work in 21st Century Music said,

Music ran through his family. His maternal great-grandfather Ludvig Svendsen Bogen played in the Norwegian King's Band and his grandfather Sven Fredrik Bogen was a band conductor who played and taught many different instruments; his maternal grandmother was a piano teacher who was reputed for being able to transpose any song into any key. His paternal grandmother was a gifted pianist. His father, Foster York St. Clair (1905–1994) – a Harvard-educated English literature scholar, university professor and poet – and his mother, Elna Ruth Bogen St. Clair (1912–1974) – a business college teacher – were both amateur musicians and classical music-lovers. St. Clair from a very early age fell in love with the music of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky, which were played in his home on fragile 78-rpm records. At age 4 he began taking piano lessons. By age 16 he was starting to write music, mainly for chorus and organ, inspired by Gustav Holst, Flor Peeters and Paul Hindemith.