Biography

John McGuire was born on 27 June 1942 in Artesia, California. He studied composition with Robert Gross at Occidental College in Los Angeles (B.A. 1964), Ingolf Dahl at the University of Southern California and Seymour Shifrin at the University of California, Berkeley (M.A. 1970), and privately with Karl Kohn.

In 1966 he moved to Germany. He studied composition, counterpoint and orchestration with Krzysztof Penderecki at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen, and took part in Karlheinz Stockhausen's composition studios at the Darmstadt summer courses in 1967 and 1968. In the early 1970s he attended Gottfried Michael Koenig's lectures on algorithmic composition at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht. His first tape piece, Pulse Music I (1975–76), was realized at the electronic music studio of the Musikhochschule Köln. For many years he was closely associated with the Feedback Studio in Cologne, led by Johannes Fritsch.

In 1965 he was awarded the Nicola de Lorenzo Prize in Music Composition at UC Berkeley. In 1971 he received first prize at the Gaudeamus International Composers Competition in Amsterdam for Decay for Eight French Horns. His other early honors include the Alfred E. Hertz Traveling Scholarship, a Fulbright Scholarship for study in Germany, and scholarships from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. He played orchestral piano with the radio orchestra in Saarbrücken from 1972 to 1975, was organist of St. Nikolaus von Tolentino in Rösrath from 1979 to 1982, and was composer-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf in 1995.

He has lived in New York since returning to the United States in 1998. From 2000 to 2006 he taught composition and music theory at Columbia University. He is married to the soprano Beth Griffith.

The music

McGuire's music is built from steady pulses and repetition, often in layers made distinct by timbre, register and tempo. The ratios are simple: in Jump Cuts, for instance, three tempi stand in the ratios 2:3:5, the key centers move around the circle of fifths, and every proportion derives from the Fibonacci series. From Stockhausen's serialism he took parametric thinking, which he applied to tonal harmonies and steady pulses; he has never written twelve-tone music.

Several works were realized electronically in Cologne, at the studios of the Musikhochschule Köln (Pulse Music I and 108 Pulses, 1975–76) and of West German Radio (Pulse Music III, Vanishing Points and A Cappella). Work in the electronic studios shaped the montage technique of his instrumental music. Single pieces often take years to complete. The string trio, sometimes doubled into a sextet, recurs from the String Trio of 1963–64 to Jump Cuts, Double Bars and Playground.