Cygnus Ensemble

Frank Brickle (Biography)

Frank Brickle was awarded a Ph.D. in music composition from Princeton, where he studied with Milton Babbitt. In the late 1980's Brickle began exploring ways to use counterpoints of arrays in ways that can yield music of any weight or density, sounding nothing like his earlier high modernist work; yet this new direction preserved key aspects of 20th century musical practice, the most significant being the fact that aggregates of 12 notes remain the central structural unit in his work. He is demonstrating that music may be accessible without giving up the great wealth of compositional techniques that emerged in the last century. His most recent work, The Creation, a Townley Mystery Play is the best example to date of the clarity and simplicity of Brickle's recent music. Out of the chaotic profusion of 20th C. compositional techniques, Brickle has, in The Creation, created a language that is capable of assuming the prelapsarian tone of this mystery play. Brickle's music has been widely performed for over 30 years by artists such as Bethany Beardsley, Alan Feinberg, NYNME (the New York New Music Ensemble), the Cygnus Ensemble, Spark Trio, and many others. Guitarist Willliam Anderson has performed Brickle's solo guitar piece widely throughout Europe and Mexico. The Cygnus Ensemble's working relationship with Brickle is now approaching 20 years. In the tradition of Leonardo Da Vinci, George Antheil, Milton Babbitt and Andrew Imbrie, Brickle is a polymath--those qualities that make him a great composer also equip him to excel in other fields. Brickle was composer-in-residence at a think tank, the Center for Communications research in Princeton, where his musical researches expanded into research in abstract mathematics, computer science, and technology. He retired from this think tank in 2002 after receiving an award for his groundbreaking work in software-defined radio, which proved to have widespread applications for intelligence and surveillance. This technology is now in use by the US government, and is being developed for commercial applications. Shortly after retiring from the think tank, Brickle organized a major retrospective of the work of George Antheil (2002), with events in Antheil's hometown, Trenton, NJ, as well as in New York City and Paris. In connection with this festival, Brickle helped fund and launch Guy Livingston's Wergo recording of Antheil's piano music. Brickle has helped promote other maverick composers by advocating in favor of some of the best “downtown” composers in his own “uptown” circles. For example, Brickle pushed Morton Feldman to the ISCM board when Feldman was still controversial in that sphere, and he helped forge a link between Cygnus and Scott Johnson, whose musical sensibility, combined with acute prowess in the use of new technology, Brickle followed and admired. Throughout the 1980's Brickle promoted electronic music at museums and planetariums in a program called Music of the Spheres.