John J. Becker

John J. Becker (b. Henderson, Kentucky, January 22, 1886 – d. Wilmette, Illinois, January 21, 1961) – Composer, theorist, pianist, and conductor. Although born in Henderson, Kentucky, he moved across the border at age six to Evansville, Indiana, where he was raised. He received training at the Cincinnati Conservatory and the Wisconsin Conservatory in Milwaukee. His university teaching career was mainly spent at catholic schools in the Midwest, namely Notre Dame and the College of St. Paul, where he was the chairman of the music department. Although his early works were post-romantic in style, he embraced a highly dissonant, radical approach in the 1920s. In fact, his Symphonia Brevis (1929) appeared in Henry Cowell’s New Music, which was designed to promote recent compositions that exemplified modernism. Furthermore, Becker was known for his controversial lectures on the changing aesthetics regarding dissonance in modern music.