75th & 80th Birthday Concerts

The Contemporary Chamber Players performed a concert featuring specially commissioned works for each of Paul Fromm’s 75th and 80th birthdays.

Below are some recordings of Paul Fromm's 75th birthday celebration concert held at the University of Chicago on January 22, 1982. The recordings have been converted from reel-to-reel audiotape and are from the archives held at Harvard University's Houghton Library.

Birthday Concert Audio

John Harbison
Organum for Paul Fromm (1981)
Performed by the Contemporary Chamber Players

Composer note:
Oragnum, a greeting prelude for Paul Fromm, was one of a number of compositions commissioned by the University of Chicago to mark Paul Fromm’s seventy fifth birthday. The piece is ceremonial, heard as one simultaneous sculpture in space. All the sounds are choir sounds, and the chords, enclosed within the melody (hence the title Organum) are like smooth surfaces turned to the light – at least so it was meant.

In 1973, when he commissioned me to write Elegiac Songs, for Jan DeGaetani, I followed a dark inward course. In the present instance, offering something in return, I thought about Paul Fromm, his enthusiasm, encouragement and simplicity, and this quiet celebration in bell sounds was the result.

Birthday Concert Images