Christian Wolff

 
Christian Wolff was born in 1934 in Nice, France, to the German literary publishers Helen and Kurt Wolff, who had published works by Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, and Walter Benjamin. After relocating to the U.S. in 1941, they helped to found Pantheon Books with other European intellectuals who had fled Europe during the rise of fascism. The Wolffs published a series of notable English translations of European literature, mostly, as well as an edition of the I Ching that came to greatly impress John Cage after Wolff had given him a copy.
Wolff became an American citizen in 1946. When he was sixteen his piano teacher Grete Sultan sent him for lessons in composition to the new music composer John Cage. Wolff soon became a close associate of Cage and his artistic circle, which included the fellow composers Earle Brown and Morton Feldman, the pianist David Tudor, and the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham. Cage relates several anecdotes about Wolff in his one-minute Indeterminacy pieces.
 
Christian Wolff - A Complete Anthology of Solo and Duo Violin Pieces (CD)
2023
Black Truffle
The complete anthology of solo and duo violin pieces by legendary American experimental composer Christian Wolff, performed by the New York violin duo String Noise (Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris).
Christian Wolff - Preludes, Variations, Studies and Incidental Music (2 CD)
2019
Sub Rosa
These recordings performed by pianist Philip Thomas reveal Wolff as a composer fully exploring, in different ways, the continuum between music which is highly fragmented, embracing extended silences—composed or indeterminate—to that which is more progressive and seemingly driven, albeit taking in disarming and unconventional routes.
Christian Wolff - Pianist: Pieces - Performed by Philip Thomas (3 CD)
2014
Sub Rosa
sold out
As a body of repertoire, these 150 pieces of Christian Wolff are remarkable for their freshness of musical thought and energy (John Cage considered Wolff to be the most “musical” of the experimental composers).


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