Bruce Reiprich  

reiprich_bruce

 

Professor of Music Theory/Composition
Bruce.Reiprich@nau.edu
928-523-0116
Building 37, Room 233
PhD Music Composition, University of Iowa
MM Music Theory, Eastman School of Music
BM Music Theory, Eastman School of Music
Personal Webpage  

A former faculty member of the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and Wilkes University, Reiprich joined the Northern Arizona University faculty in 1999 and served as coordinator of music theory and composition from 2002 to 2007. Reiprich has studied Schenkerian music theory privately with David Gagné, a co-author of The Analysis of Tonal Music: A Schenkerian Approach.

In 2003, he received the Teacher-of-the-Year Award from the College of Fine Arts of NAU. He also serves as co-chair of Region VII of the Society of Composers, Inc. and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Living Music Foundation, Inc.  

He has been a judge for numerous composition contests including various Music Teachers National Association and Society of Composers’ student competitions. During the summer, he has served as composer-in-residence at the Performing Arts Institute of Wyoming Seminary in Kingston, Pennsylvania.

Bruce Reiprich’s music has been described as “post-romantic radiance” (Danbury News-Times), “a deeply personal mediation on the poet’s feelings” (San Francisco Classical Voice), “very powerful” (All Music Guide), “lovely and evocative” (Guitar Review—New York), “very impressive” (Cumhuriyet—Turkey), and “of special interest” (Guitar International—England). With compositions that span the gamut from overt tonality and metric regularity to atonality and pronounced rhythmic flexibility, he explores the beauty of lyrical lines, lush harmonies and colorful textures. Composers as diverse as Toru Takemitsu, György Ligeti, Luigi Nono, and Samuel Barber have been particularly influential in the development of his own style.

Much of Reiprich’s music is a reflection upon images of nature found in the Turkish poetry of Oguz Tansel and in classical Chinese and Japanese poetry. Recently, he has been influenced by the long sentences with spiraling subordinate clauses that Marcel Proust employed in his Remembrance of Things Past. Ultimately, it is the serene and contemplative—the unexpected moment of self-contained and quiescent beauty in nature and art—that serve as Reiprich’s inspiration.