mario Davidovsky

Mario Davidovsky (March 4, 1934 - August 23, 2019) was born in Medanos, a town in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

His main teacher was the composer Guillermo Graetzer. In 1958 he was invited to participate in the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, where he studied with Aaron Copland. Mr. Davidovsky’s interest in the fledgling field of Electronic Music was further encouraged by meeting Milton Babbitt, a faculty member that year. Learning of the imminent opening of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1959, he joined the early group of composers there and later became the Center’s director.

Davidovsky is widely recognized for his seminal contributions in the realm of electro-acoustic music. His Synchronisms #6, for piano and electronic sounds, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971. He has received commissions here and abroad from various organizations including: the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Juilliard and Emerson String Quartets, Speculum Musicae, the Parnassus Ensemble, NYNME, Chamber Society of Lincoln Center and many others. He has also received numerous grants and awards including Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships, The Kaske Prize (Germany), Naumburg Award, Asociasion Wagneriana and Asociasion Amigos de la Musica (Argentina).

Mr.Davidovsky is the Fanny P. Mason Prof. Emeritus at Harvard University, former MacDowell Professor of Music at Columbia University, and the director of the Composers Conference and Chamber Music Center at Wellesley College. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been recorded by Columbia Records, CRI, New World Records, Wergo, Nonesuch, Finnadar, Turnabout, Bridge Records, DDG, Albany Records, and published by C.F.Peters Corp., E.B.Marks Corp. and McGinnes & Marx.