Obituary: Composer Harold Meltzer, 58

In Monday’s (8/19) New York Times, Alan Kozinn writes, “Harold Meltzer, a composer who set aside a career as a lawyer to create a highly regarded body of energetic, colorful chamber, vocal and orchestral scores that mixed accessibly melodic themes and rich ensemble textures with the sharp-edged angularity of modernism, died on Aug. 12 in Manhattan. He was 58. Hilary Meltzer, his wife, said that his death, in a hospital, was caused by respiratory failure, a complication of a variety of medical problems he had withstood since having a stroke in 2019. Mr. Meltzer, who was also a director … of Sequitur, a new-music ensemble, cut an imposing figure at contemporary music concerts in the 1990s and 2000s…. His music was impossible to pigeonhole, mainly because each work was his response to a different set of challenges. In ‘Virginal’ (2002), for harpsichord and 15 other instruments, he wanted to pay tribute to … Elizabethan composers … When the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra gave the premiere of Mr. Meltzer’s ‘Vision Machine’ at Carnegie Hall in 2016, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim wrote …  that the work ‘deftly captures the interaction of the architecture and its environment …’ ‘Brion’ (2007-8), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009, is a lively conversation between pairs of blown, plucked and bowed instruments. ‘Guangzhou Circle’ (2015-16) juxtaposes traditional Chinese instruments … and a Western percussion quartet.”