Epithalamium (1972)

James Sellars (1940–2017) — Epithalamium (1972) for organ

American composer James Edward Sellars (1940–2017) was a native of Arkansas and was educated at the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music (BM), Southern Methodist University (MM), and North Texas University (PhD). His teachers included Vittorio Giannini, Nicolas Flagello, Ludmila Ulehla, and David Diamond. Sellars was a member of the faculty of the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut from 1978 until his retirement in 2002. His opera “The World is Round,” based on a text by Gertrude Stein received several performances at the Avery Theater in the Wadsworth Atheneum in 1993. Some of his other major pieces include “Return of the Comet” (first performed by the London ensemble Spectrum), “Afterwards” (a “re-composition” of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony first performed by the New Hampshire Symphony), “For Love of the Double Bass” (first performed by Sellars and Robert Black at Real Art Ways), “Beulah in Chicago” (first performed at the Monadnock Music Festival in New Hampshire), “Chanson Dada” (first conducted by James Bolle at the Monadnock Music Festival and later by Lucas Foss at the Brooklyn Academy of Music), “August Week” (composed in 1982 but first performed at Sellars’s 75th birthday celebration in 2015 at Hartt), “Don’t Stop” (first performed by the Bang on a Can All Stars at Lincoln Center in New York City), “String Quintet” (first performed at the Monadnock Music Festival), “Six Piano Sonatas,” and “Haplomatics” (with images by the painter David Hockney).