Peter Lieberson
American classical composer (1946-2011)
Peter Goddard Lieberson (25 October 1946 – 23 April 2011) was an American composer of contemporary classical music. His song cycles include two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Music: Rilke Songs and Neruda Songs; the latter won the 2008 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition and both were written for his wife, the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. His three piano concertos were each premiered by the pianist Peter Serkin, with the 1st and 3rd also being Pulitzer finalists.
Early life
Peter Goddard Lieberson was born in New York City. He was the son of ballerina and choreographer Vera Zorina (née Eva Brigitta Hartwig) and Goddard Lieberson, president of Columbia Records. Lieberson studied composition with Milton Babbitt, Charles Wuorinen, Donald Martino, and Martin Boykan. After completing his musical studies at Columbia University, he left New York in 1976 for Boulder, Colorado, to continue his studies with Chögyam Trungpa, a Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist master. It was there he met and married Ellen Kearney, a fellow student of Trungpa's. At their teacher's request, the Liebersons moved from Boulder to Boston, Massachusetts, to co-direct Shambhala Training, a meditation and cultural program. Lieberson earned a Ph.D. from Brandeis University.
The public source identifies “Peter Lieberson” as american classical composer (1946-2011). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Peter, Lieberson and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q328103. VIAF identifies the subject as 56805860. The Library of Congress control number is n84220602. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 2011, 2008 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “Peter Lieberson” 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.