Re: Clarence Barlow to Santa Barbara

Finding good University-level composition teachers with an interest in tuning has been a steady topic on this list. In one fell swoop, it appears that an interesting opportunity will arise at UC Santa Barbara.
Clarence Barlow (the orthography of his name is variable) has just accepted an appointment to an endowed chair in composition there, starting in Fall 2006.

If you are unfamiliar with Clarence or his work, he was born in Calcutta, studied in Cologne with B.A.Zimmermann and Stockhausen, and has taught in Cologne and in Den Haag for many years. His interests include basic research into the materials of music, especially metre, tuning, and tonality, the design of algorhythmic tools for analysis and composition, and synthesis of new music from texts and and existing repertoire. Although these areas are basic, his approach often appears to be idiosyncratic, at odds with currents in music theory, but it is always that of a composer, designed to yield compositions, not all-purpose theoretical schemes.

Clarence is also something of a virtuoso with language(s) (we trade limericks and anagrams), and his humor is amazing, if sometimes escaping large portions of his audience. He's one of the few people I would recommend as a composition teacher, and UCSB is lucky to get him.

DJW

Thanks for the news, Daniel.

-Carl