Philip Bezanson

Philip Thomas Bezanson (January 6, 1916 – March 11, 1975) was an American composer and educator. Life Born in Athol, Massachusetts, Philip Bezanson graduated from Yale University School of Music in 1940. Following military service, he enrolled in the graduate program of musical composition at the State University of Iowa. He joined its faculty in 1948 and received his PhD there in 1951. In 1954, Bezanson was appointed head of the program in musical composition, and in 1961, was made a full professor. In 1964, Dr. Bezanson was appointed to the faculty and named head of the Music Department of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He held the latter post until 1973 when he returned to full-time teaching at the University for the last two years of his life. An influential educator and composer, Philip Bezanson helped guide the Department of Music at UMass Amherst through its period of rapid expansion in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Dr. Bezanson was active as a composer, particularly from 1946 through 1975, and he received several awards, including the prestigious Fromm Foundation award for his Piano Sonata in 1953. A prolific and productive composer, Bezanson won several prestig