Alexander Lafayette Chew Wilder (February 16, 1907 – December 24, 1980)[1] was an American composer and author.
Biography
Wilder was born in Rochester, New York, United States,[1] to a prominent family; the Wilder Building downtown (at the "Four Corners") bears the family's name and his maternal grandfather, and namesake, was prominent banker Alexander Lafayette Chew. As a young boy, he traveled to New York City with his mother and stayed at the Algonquin Hotel. It would later be his home for the last 40 or so years of his life.[1] He attended several prep schools, unhappily, as a teenager. Around this time, he hired a lawyer and essentially "divorced" himself from his family, gaining for himself some portion of the family fortune.
He was largely self-taught as a composer; he studied privately with the composers Herman Inch and Edward Royce, who taught at the Eastman School of Music in the 1920s, but never registered for classes and never received his degree.[2] While there, he edited a humor magazine and scored music for short films directed by James Sibley Watson. Wilder was eventually awarded an honorary degree in 1973.
He was good friends with Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett and others who helped develop the American popular music canon. Among the popular songs he wrote or co-wrote were "I'll Be Around" (a hit for the Mills Brothers), "While We're Young" (recorded by Peggy Lee and many others), "Blackberry Winter", "Where Do You Go?" (recorded by Sinatra) and "It's So Peaceful in the Country".[1] He also wrote many songs for the cabaret artist Mabel Mercer, including one of her signature pieces, "Did You Ever Cross Over to Sneden's?".[3] Wilder occasionally wrote his own lyrics, including for his most famous song "I'll Be Around".[1] Other lyricists he worked with included Loonis McGlohon, William Engvick, Johnny Mercer and Fran Landesman.
In addition to writing popular songs, Wilder also composed classical pieces for unique combinations of orchestral instruments.[1] The Alec Wilder Octet, including Eastman classmate Mitch Miller on oboe, recorded several of his originals for Brunswick Records in 1938-40. His classical numbers, which often had off-beat, humorous titles ("The Hotel Detective Registers"), were strongly influenced by jazz. He wrote eleven operas; one of which, Miss Chicken Little (1953), was commissioned for television by CBS. Wilder also arranged a series of Christmas carols for Tubachristmas.
Wilder wrote the definitive book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950 (1972).[1] He was also featured in a radio series based on the book, broadcast in the middle to late 1970s.[4] With lyricist Loonis McGlohon (his co-host on the radio series) he composed songs for the Land of Oztheme park in Banner Elk, North Carolina.[5]
Wilder loved puzzles: he created his own cryptic crosswords, and could spend hours with a jigsaw puzzle.[6] He also loved to talk (he had an encyclopedic knowledge of the world) and most of all, laugh. Displeased with how Peggy Lee improvised the ending of "While We're Young", he wrote her a note: "The next time you come to the bridge [of the song], jump!" Pianist Marian McPartland told the story of this "alleged" comment to Tony Bennett, on her "Piano Jazz" radio show in 2004.
Wilder died in Gainesville, Florida, from lung cancer in December 1980,[1] and is buried in a Catholic cemetery in Avon, New York, outside Rochester.
Selected works
Opera
3 children's operas: The Churkendoose; Rachetty Pachetty House, Herman Ermine in Rabbit Town (1942)[7]
Open the Door and See All the People (1964), directed by Jerome Hill
Large ensemble
A Child’s Introduction to the Orchestra (1954). Text by Marshall Barer. A musical primer. Eighteen movements featuring individual instruments of the orchestra. [Ludlow]
Names from the War (1961), for narrator, chorus, brass quintet, and woodwind quintet
Children’s Plea for Peace (1968). Children's SSAA chorus, narrator and wind ensemble. Text by Wilder, adapted from writings of Avon, New York schoolchildren. Dedicated to Rev. Henry Atwell. [Margun]
Wilder, Alec, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950, ed. James T. Maher. (New York: Oxford Press, 1972; paperback ed., Oxford Press, 1975), xxxix, 536 pp.
Wilder, Alec, David Demsey editor, Letters I Never Mailed Annotated Edition (University of Rochester Press, 2006).
Stone, Desmond, Alec Wilder In Spite of Himself: A Life of the Composer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 244 pp.
Demsey, David and Ronald Prather, Alec Wilder: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood Press, 1993) Bio-Bibliographies in Music, No. 45.
Zeltsman, Nancy, ed., Alec Wilder: An Introduction to the Man and His Music (Newton, MA: Margun Music, 1991).
