about the composer

During his lifetime, Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961) was regarded as one of the prominent modernist composers of the United States. He once described his embrace of the avant garde:

"I felt the need to express musical ideas for which the older techniques were inadequate. I found the new atonal idiom, with its fresh possibilities in sonority and rhythm, creatively stimulating and more expressive of the feelings I wished to convey in music." (Riegger)

Riegger was born in Albany, Georgia and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana and New York City. He studied cello with Alvin Schroeder and composition with Percy Goetschius at the Institute of Musical Art (now Juilliard School of Music), and was a member of its first graduating class in 1907. He continued his education in Germany at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, where he studied cello with Robert Haussman and Anton Hekking and composition with Max Bruch and Edgar Stillman-Kelley. Riegger then divided his time between the US and Europe, serving as principal cellist for the St. Paul Symphony Orchestra (1911-1914), then pursuing a conducting career with a number of orchestras in Germany.

With the advent of American involvement in World War I in 1917, Riegger returned to the US to live permanently, beginning to compose seriously and taking a series of teaching positions at Drake University in Iowa, the Institute of Musical Art, and Ithaca College in New York. From 1928 he based himself in New York City, where he made the acquaintance of many prominent composers including Henry Cowell, Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, and Edgard Varèse. In the 1930's Riegger became known for the great number of works he wrote for modern choreographers Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, Doris Humphrey, and Jose Limon. From 1941 onward Riegger devoted himself solely to instrumental music, which gave him even wider recognition; his Symphony No. 3 (1946-1947) received the New York Music Critics' Circle Award and a Naumburg Foundation Recording Award.

Riegger's music is available on the ASV, Bridge, CRI, Music & Arts, New World, and Premier labels.