Gerald Strang

Gerald Strang was born in 1908, in Alberta, Canada, where his family had settled during the early 1900s. He pursued his music education in the United States, studying at Stanford University and later earning a PhD from the University of Southern California in 1948. A key influence on Strang’s early career was his work with Arnold Schoenberg, an Austrian composer who developed new methods of musical composition. Between 1936 and 1938, Strang worked as Schoenberg’s teaching assistant at UCLA. He also served as a trusted editor and collaborator, helping Schoenberg overcome language challenges by clarifying terminology and phrasing for Fundamentals of Musical Composition. Strang wrote the preface and edited the published text, ensuring Schoenberg’s ideas remained clear and accessible. 

Strang began his career composing instrumental works and was part of the early Californian modernist movement, influenced by pioneers like Henry Cowell. His early compositions incorporated tone clusters and polyrhythms, demonstrating a strong formal structure unified by clear technical ideas. In the 1960s, Strang expanded his practice to include electronic and computer music, drawn to the new possibilities that technology made available. He worked extensively at Bell Labs in New Jersey, composing pieces on the IBM 7090 and 7094 computers, pioneering the use of computer synthesis in music. He was fascinated by the intersection of music and technology, and began developing new composing routines and computer instruments that made it possible to create complex musical structures with a level of precision and efficiency that hadn’t been achievable before. He was intrigued by the ability to control every parameter of sound. Computers offered what he called a “macro-control” over composition, allowing the composer to shape structures through high-level rules and systems. He composed some of the earliest computer-generated works, exploring new possibilities for sound using technology.

Strang founded the music department at San Fernando Valley State College and later chaired the music department at California State University, Long Beach. Throughout his academic career, he actively taught music and electronic composition, integrating emerging technologies into his curriculum and mentoring a generation of composers in electronic and computer music. Strang passed away in 1983.