Paul Fromm (September 28, 1906 – July 4, 1987) was a Jewish Chicago wine merchant and performing arts patron through the Fromm Music Foundation.[1] The Organum for Paul Fromm was composed by John Harbison in his honor.[2]

Early life

Born in Kitzingen, Germany to a prominent family of vintners, Fromm was an early supporter of contemporary classical music in that country after he was exposed to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in the early 1920s. He attended concerts at the Donaueschingen Festival further deepening his appreciation of the genre.[3] A Jew, he was forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1938 and immigrated to the United States where he settled in Chicago where he co-founded a wine importing firm, the Geeting and Fromm Corporation in 1939 and then founded the Great Lakes Wine Company in 1943.[3]

Patronage

By 1952, his business was sufficiently well established to allow him to focus on establishing the Fromm Music Foundation,[4] which financially supporting young composers through grants awarded on the recommendation of its staff of musicians and experts. Fromm's protégés include Benjamin Lees, Ben Weber and Elvin Epstein.[1]

A "Paul Fromm Concert" of contemporary classical music is performed annually at the University of Chicago in his memory.[5] The Paul Fromm Award is given annually by the Tanglewood Music Center in his name. During the period 1984-89, Earle Brown, then president of the Fromm Music Foundation, recommended many American composers for commissions including Daniel Asia, David Lang, William Susman, Henry Brant and Steve Reich.

Paul Fromm was married to University of Chicago psychology professor and writer Erika Fromm whom he met in Germany in 1936 and married in 1938 shortly before emigrating to the United States.[6]

Fromm's 1966 article "A Contemporary Role for American Music Libraries"[7] inspired the major compendium of Boston-area composers and compositions called the Boston Composers Project.[8]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Music: Rescuer of Necktie Salesmen". 23 July 1956. Archived from the original on December 14, 2008. Retrieved 25 August 2017 – via www.time.com.
  2. ↑ "John Harbison - Organum for Paul Fromm (1981) - Music Sales Classical". www.schirmer.com. Retrieved 25 August 2017.
  3. 1 2 Archived 2007-06-29 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ↑ "Classical Music". www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org. Retrieved 25 August 2017.
  5. ↑ "Events". University of Chicago Magazine. February 1995. Retrieved 25 August 2017.
  6. ↑ "Fromm, challenged Freud, helped pioneer hypnosis". chronicle.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 25 August 2017.
  7. ↑ Fromm, Paul (1966). "A Contemporary Role for American Music Libraries". Perspectives of New Music. 4 (2): 141–142.
  8. ↑ The Boston composers project : a bibliography of contemporary music. Linda Solow Blotner, Mary Wallace Davidson, Brenda Chasen Goldman, Geraldine Ostrove, Boston Area Music Libraries. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 1983. ISBN 0-262-02198-6. OCLC 9576366.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)


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