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Arthur Levering

American composer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ4799507 ↗
Source-derived summary

Arthur Levering (born March 6, 1953) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Levering has received commissions from the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston Musica Viva, the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, the New Juilliard Ensemble, the Rascher Saxophone Quartet, and Sequitur, among others.

Early life

Levering was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He holds a B.A. from Colby College (1976); an M.M. in performance from Yale University (1979), having studied classical guitar with Eliot Fisk; and an M.M. in composition from Boston University (1988), having studied primarily with Bernard Rands.

Awards

2010 Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard commission

2002 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship

1997 Rome Prize in music composition (FAAR)

1997 Heckscher Foundation Composition Prize

1996 Barlow Endowment commission

1994 National Endowment for the Arts commission

1992 Lee Ettelson Composer's Award (Composers Inc.)

1990 Composer's Guild prize

MacDowell Colony fellow (six times)

Yaddo residency

Major Compositions, selected performances

His virtuosic 3 movement piano work, School of Velocity, was commissioned and performed by Donald Berman on a League of Composers/ISCM concert at Merkin Hall, New York on March 23, 1999. Echoi (violin and piano) was premiered by Nicholas Kitchen and Donald Berman in Boston on Oct. 20, 2003. Clarion/Shadowing (clarinet, violin, piano) was performed by the 21st Century Consort at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC on March 13, 2004. Twenty Ways Upon the Bells (7 players) was premiered by Dinosaur Annex in Boston on Oct. 30, 1994.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Arthur Levering” as american composer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Arthur, Levering and American.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1953, 1976, 1979, 1988—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1953-03-06. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Arthur, Levering and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Arthur Levering”, the useful work is to connect “american composer” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4799507. VIAF identifies the subject as 46639233. The Library of Congress control number is nr93044748. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 1976, 1979 and 1988.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Arthur Levering”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Arthur Levering primary sources, Arthur Levering archive and Arthur research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Arthur Levering” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.