Robert Erickson

Robert Erickson (March 7, 1917 in Marquette, Michigan – April 24, 1997 in San Diego, California) was an American composer.

He studied with Ernst Krenek from 1936-1947: "I had already studied—and abandoned—the twelve tone system before most other Americans had taken it up." He influenced notable students Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, and Paul Dresher. He is also the author of The Structure of Music: A Listener's Guide, which he claimed helped him overcome a "contrapuntal obsession", and Sound Structures in Music (1975).

He taught at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota, San Francisco State College, the University of California, Berkeley, and the San Francisco Conservatory. With composer Wilbur Ogdon, he founded the music department at the University of California, San Diego in 1967: "We decided we wanted a department where composers could feel at home, the way scholars feel at home in other schools." While there he met faculty performers such as bassist Bertram Turetzky, trumpeter Edwin Harkins, flutist Bernhard Batschelet, and singer Carol Plantamura: "I could go to Bert, or Ed, with something I'd written down and ask 'Hey, can you do this?' And I'd get an immediate answer. It was a fabulous time for cross-feeding." He also helped start the San Francisco Tape Music Center. Pauline Oliveros, among others, praises his teaching:

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