Luening, Otto (Clarence)

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(Clarence)

(b Milwaukee, June 15, 1900; d New York, Sept 2, 1996). American composer, teacher, conductor and flautist. His mother was an amateur singer and his father a music professor at the University of Wisconsin who had studied at the Leipzig Conservatory. Luening began composing as a child in 1906. In 1912 the family moved to Munich, where he studied theory at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik with Anton Beer-Walbrunn (1915–17) and made his début as a flautist (1916). When the USA entered World War I he moved to Zürich, where he studied at the conservatory and at the university (1919–20), and also privately with Jarnach and Busoni, who both deeply influenced Luening’s conception of music and his teaching methods. While in Zürich he played the flute in the Tonhalle Orchestra and at the Municipal Opera, and for a season was an actor and stage manager with James Joyce’s English Players Company. He made his début as composer-conductor in ...