Robert Suderburg

Suderburg's compositions have been published by Theodore Presser and performed nationally and internationally by major orchestras, ensembles, and solo artists, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Seattle and North Carolina symphonies, and the Philadelphia String Quartet. His works and performances have been recorded by Columbia, Vox and Delfon, among others. Suderburg taught music at Williams College beginning in 1985, became composer-in-residence there in 1986, and served as Chair of the Music Department from 1986 to 1995. He retired in 2001. Suderburg conducted and taught at Bryn Mawr, the Philadelphia Musical Academy, the University of Pennsylvania, and the City University of New York. He also served as Co-director of the Contemporary Group at the University of Washington (1966–74), and President of the Cornish Institute in Seattle (1984–85). He served on many boards and panels, including the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Composers Panel from 1975 to 1981. He received fellowships, awards, and prizes including two Guggenheim Fellowships, two NEA Fellowships, numerous ASCAP awards, awards from the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Music Center, the USIA award, and others.

After teaching at Bryn Mawr College, the Philadelphia Academy of Music, and the University of Pennsylvania, in 1966 he was appointed professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he also became associate director of the University of Washington's Contemporary Group, and taught there until 1974. From 1974 to 1984 he was chancellor of the North Carolina School of the Arts, and in 1985 joined the music faculty of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He served as chair of the department from 1986 to 1995. In 1994 he was appointed to a named chair, and continued to teach until his retirement in 2001.

Suderburg's earlier compositions were serial, but in the late 1960s he abandoned twelve-tone technique and turned to a highly personal, lyrical, basically neoromantic style. His musical language is largely modal, with Phrygian and Lydian predominating, and occasionally adopts scale patterns characteristic of non-Western traditions, such as those of Japanese koto music. Rising major sevenths and minor ninths are favoured melodic intervals, and his harmonies frequently feature sounds derived from the major-seventh and major-seventh with added fourth chords. He tends to use moderate to slow underlying tempos, but with active and pliable surface rhythms, suggesting improvisation.

The son of a jazz trombonist, Suderburg studied composition with Paul Fetler at the University of Minnesota, where he received a BA in 1957. He did post-graduate studies with Richard Donovan at Yale University (MM 1960), and with George Rochberg at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his PhD in 1966 with a dissertation, "Tonal Cohesion in Schoenberg's Twelve-tone Music".

Robert Charles Suderburg (28 January 1936 in Spencer, Iowa – 22 April 2013 in Williamstown, Massachusetts) was an American composer, conductor, and pianist.