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Leroy Anderson
June 29, 1908 - May 18, 1975
born in Cambridge, MA, composed during the Modern period
Biography
Anderson has been called the "most famous unknown composer" because his music has rooted itself in American culture, becoming as iconic as the flag and apple pie.

He was born into a family of first-generation Swedish immigrants. In 1919, he began his music and piano studies at the New England Conservatory of Music. At Harvard, he studied composition with George Enescu and Walter Piston and earned his M.A. in 1930. He then served as director of the Harvard University Band (1931 - 1935) while pursuing studies in German and the Scandinavian languages. At the same time, he tutored at Radcliffe College and was an organist, instrumentalist, and conductor in Boston. One of his orchestral pieces from this time is the Harvard Fantasy (1936), which was revised in 1969 as A Harvard Festival. His orchestrations and arrangements in Boston and New York (1935 - 1942) were noticed by Arthur Fiedler, then music director of the Boston Pops, who asked Anderson to compose original works for that orchestra. This suggestion led to the miniature tone poem Jazz Pizzicato for string orchestra (1938), followed that same year by Jazz Legato also for strings. In 1942, Anderson married Eleanor Firke and they moved to Woodbury, CT, where they raised four children.
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