DAVID HAHN, Composer
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David Hahn

biography
I have been passionately involved with music, composition, and sound all my life. I began composing thirty years ago following a successful career as a professional performer and educator. My repertoire includes over one hundred pieces, many of which have been performed, recorded, and commissioned by established musicians. These include Concerto Alla Barocco commissioned by the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet who performed it with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Four Short Pieces performed in Carnegie Hall by guitarist Cem Duruöz, Concerto Anatolia premiered by the Antalya State Orchestra, Turkey, De Omnibus Apostolis performed by the University of Washington Singers, W Is For Weasel premiered by the Shank-Hagedorn Duo, and Kindergarten Word Ring for octaphonic speaker system, performed at the Spectrum Press Electronic Music Odyssey Concert Series in Los Angeles. I have also collaborated with artists in film, theater, spoken word, and other media, such as in Zagreb Everywhere, an unorthodox experimental video, which was shown at the Rencontres Internationales Festival in Paris and Berlin.

​I was Educated at Brown University, the New England Conservatory of Music, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and received a doctorate in musicology at Stanford University in 1993. I began my career as a performer on lute, guitar, and mandolin with such groups as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony and Opera Orchestras, Boston Musica Viva, the Seattle Symphony, Musica Nel Chiostro in Florence, and the City of London Festival. I served on the faculty at the New England Conservatory where he co-founded the Boston Renaissance Ensemble which toured extensively in the US and Europe.
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SELECTED WRITINGS

  • My interview with music critic Martin Marnoff. (.pdf file)
  • Disappearing federal funding for the arts threatens American Soul, editorial for the Seattle Times, August 2011
  • Why The World Needs Quaker Meeting, Penn Charter Alumni News, 2011.
  • Composing For The Guitar: A series of 4 articles for the Mel Bay Publishing Company web-zine Guitar Sessions; 2005
  • Corporate Coitus: Disfluencies as Compositional Building Blocks Leonardo Music Journal; MIT Press, 2005
  • Creating the Soundscape for Zagreb Everywhere Organised Sound, Cambridge University Press, July 2002
  • The Rondeaux of Guillaume de Machaut (ca.1300-1377): An Analytical Study of the Genre in the Context of Selected Ideas from Medieval Aesthetics and Philosophy. Doctoral thesis, Stanford University, 1993. Here is Chapter One: A Philosophical and Aestheitc Orientation for the Music of Guillaume de Machaut: the Roles of Ratio and Sensus.
  • Dance Music in the 16th-Century, Saltarello, and Cascarda Articles for the International Encyclopedia of Dance, Selma Jean Cohen, Ed.; University of California Press, 1999
  • A Collection of Scales, Intervals and Chords for the Renaissance Lute. Self-published; Boston, 1987
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