Description
Musical compositions and published writings by
composer Michael Seyfrit (1947-1994), including four instrumental compositions,
a guide to the Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection at the Library of Congress,
and the piano and vocal scores and other materials relating to the musical
The Desert Peach, written with Donna Barr and T.
Brian Wagner.
Background
Michael Seyfrit, composer, instrumentalist, writer, and teacher, was
born in Lawrence, Kansas, on December 16, 1947, and was raised in Pasco,
Washington, and Piqua, Ohio. He earned a B.Mus. and an M.Mus at the University
of Kansas, a second M.Mus. at The Julliard School (1972), and a D.M.A. at the
University of Southern California (1974). Seyfrit did research and historical
orchestrations for the Smithsonian Institution s Divisions of Musical
Instruments and Performing Arts, and served as a curator of musical instruments
at the Library of Congress for four years, during which time he compiled volume
1 of the catalogue of musical instruments in the Dayton C. Miller Flute
Collection (1982). He also wrote the articles on woodwind instruments for the
1986 edition of The New Harvard Dictionary of
Music. As a composer, Seyfrit received the Charles Ives Scholarship from
the national Academy of Arts and Letters. Seyfrit was also active as an
instrumentalist on recorder, baroque oboe, and baroque flute, and performed and
recorded with the Smithsonian Chamber Players, as well as Hesperus, Wondrous
Machine, the Berkeley Collegium Musicum, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, and
the Early Music Guild of Oregon. He spent his final years working as a computer
programmer. He died of AIDS in Portland, Oregon, on May 29, 1994, at the age of
46.
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