George Perle

George Perle (6 May 1915 – 23 January 2009) was an American composer and music theorist. As a composer, his music was largely atonal, using methods similar to the twelve-tone technique of the Second Viennese School. This serialist style, and atonality in general, was the subject of much of his theoretical writings. His 1962 book, Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern remains a standard text for 20th-century classical music theory. Among Perle’s awards was the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Wind Quintet No. 4. Life and career Perle was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, to Russian Jewish parents. He graduated from DePaul University, where he studied with Wesley LaViolette and received private lessons from Ernst Krenek. Later, he served as a technician fifth grade in the United States Army during World War II. He earned his doctorate at New York University in 1956. Perle composed with a technique of his own devising called “twelve-tone tonality”. This technique was different from, but related to, the twelve-tone technique of the Second Viennese School, of which he was an “early admirer” and whose techniques he used aspects of