Otto Luening

Otto Luening (born June 15, 1900, Milwaukee, Wis., U.S.—died Sept. 2, 1996, New York, N.Y.) was an American composer, conductor, composition teacher, and flutist noted for his innovative experiments in composition employing the tape recorder.

Luening’s father moved their family from Milwaukee to Munich in 1912 and to Zürich in 1917. Luening studied at conservatories in Munich and Zürich and with the composer Ferruccio Busoni. He moved back to the United States in 1920 and held teaching positions at the Eastman School of Music, the University of Arizona, and Bennington College. From 1944 to 1970 Luening taught at Columbia University, where he headed an innovative opera-production group that presented a total of about 40 new operas. In 1952 he began to experiment with the possibilities of magnetic tape recordings, and that year he collaborated with the composer Vladimir Ussachevsky in presenting the first concert of music for tape recorder in the United States (at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City). In the 1950s and ’60s Luening, either alone or in collaboration with Ussachevsky, composed a variety of works in which electronic sounds are integrated with the traditional orchestra. Among their pieces is the Rhapsodic Variations for Tape Recorder and Orchestra (1953), in which the tape recorder is given a solo role. In 1959 the two men founded what became the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City, which Luening codirected until 1980.

Though he was a tireless advocate of contemporary music, Luening also composed a considerable body of elegant, conservative music for traditional instruments. Among such works are the Symphonic Fantasia No. 1 (1922–24) and the Louisville Concerto (1951). Luening’s autobiography, The Odyssey of an American Composer, was published in 1980.