FOSS, LUKAS

born Aug. 15, 1922, Berlin original name Lukas Fuchs German-born U.S. composer, pianist, and conductor, widely recognized for his experiments with improvisation and aleatoric (chance) music. He studied in Berlin and Paris and, after moving to the United States in 1937, with the composers Randall Thompson and Paul Hindemith and the conductors Serge Koussevitzky and Fritz Reiner. Foss published his first work at age 15, and in 1945 he became the youngest composer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1957, while professor of composition and orchestra director at the University of California at Los Angeles, he founded the Improvisation Chamber Ensemble, the vehicle of many of his experiments in aleatoric and stochastic (mathematical probability) music. From 1963 to 1970 he was conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. He founded (1963) and became director of the Center for Creative and Performing Arts at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and he was named music director and conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonia (later Brooklyn Philharmonic) in 1971. He was appointed music director and Conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in 1981. Foss's early works are Neoclassicaltonal and well-organized in harmony and counterpoint. Among these works are symphonic music (Ode; first performed, 1945), ballet (Gift of the Magi; 1945), concerti (Second Piano Concerto; 1951, rev. 1953; Music Critics' Award, 1954), opera (Griffelkin; commissioned by and first performed on NBC-TV, 1955), cantatas, and chamber music. His later chamber pieces (Echoi, 1963; Elytres, 1964) are avant-garde in their treatment of the ordering of musical events by means of chance operations and in the variety of controls over musical formcontrols determined to a large extent by the performers during the actual performance. Later works include Divertissement for string quartet (1972), Cave of the Winds for wind quintet (1972), the orchestral work Folksong (1975), and American Cantata (1977) for tenor, soprano, two speakers, chorus, and orchestra.