“Charles Wuorinen, winner of the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in Music and composer of the operas ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories,’ died from injuries sustained in a fall last September. He was 81,” reads an unsigned Thursday (3/12) Associated Press obituary. “Wuorinen, who composed more than 270 works, died Wednesday at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center…. Known for much of his career as an admirer of the 12-tone system of composition, Wuorinen was opinionated…. Born in New York on June 9, 1938, … Wuorinen received a bachelor’s degree from Columbia [University] in 1961 and a master’s in music two years later. He won the New York Philharmonic’s Young Composers’ Award when he was 16…. Wuorinen was 32 when he won the Pulitzer for ‘Time’s Encomium,’ a four-channel work for synthesized sound that became the first electronic composition to earn the honor…. James Levine … commissioned five works by Wuorinen, including his Fourth Piano Concerto for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and pianist Peter Serkin for its premiere in 2003…. His last completed work was his Second Percussion Symphony, debuted by Miami’s New World Symphony last September. He is survived by his husband of 32 years, Howard Stokar.”
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