Wilder shunned publicity and was uncomfortable with celebrity. A deep distrust of institutions, combined with an extraordinary shyness verging on an inferiority complex, prevented him from circulating and operating in the composer’s world in the ways generally expected.

 

 

 

Alec Wilder’s music is a unique blend of American musical traditions – among them jazz and the American popular song – and basic “classical” European forms and techniques. As such, it fiercely resists all labeling. Undeterred, he wrote a great deal of music of remarkable originality in many forms: sonatas, suites, concertos, operas, ballets, art songs, woodwind quintets, brass quintets, jazz suites – and hundreds of popular songs.

 

 

 

Wilder, at his best, represents a fascinating amalgam of three quite different composer-archetypes, here all rolled into one: Gershwin, Poulenc, Villa-Lobos. In its baldest outlines, Wilder’s oeuvre is unusually diverse and characteristically American, a synthesis of the brilliant song writer (Gershwin); the not-too-intellectual, traditional and determinedly conservative composer of easily accessible American-style Gebrauchsmusik, making use of popular and jazz elements as a matter of course (Poulenc); and a sometimes uncritical, too-casual writer who writes too much too easily – like Shakespeare’s old bromide about loving too well but not wisely (Villa-Lobos).

Alongside his more complex sinuously winding melodies, Wilder could also create tunes of haunting simplicity. I’ll Be Around, his most famous popular song is surely an extraordinary example of the latter, while “The ravishing theme of Serenade from the Jazz Suite for Four Horns is a superior representative of the former, a melody worthy of an Ellington, a Gershwin or a Schubert, and arguably one of the most beautiful melodies composed in the 20th century.” (G. Schuller)

Many times, his music wasn’t jazz enough for the “jazzers,” or “highbrow,” “classical,” or “avante-garde” enough for the classical establishment. In essence, Wilder’s music was so unique in it’s originality that it didn’t fit into any of the preordained musical slots and stylistic pigeonholes. It’s non-stereotypical specialness virtually precluded any widespread acceptance.

 

 

 

In 1945, Frank Sinatra, an early fan and avid supporter of Wilder’s music, persuaded Columbia Records to record an album of Wilder solo wind works with string orchestra, Sinatra conducting. The two men became lifelong friends and Sinatra recorded many of Wilder’s popular songs. His last song, A Long Night, was written in response to Sinatra’s request for a “saloon” song.

 

 

 

If he never was one to get grants, receive commissions or win prizes, it was because he never sought them. Nonetheless, his awards eventually included an honorary doctorate from the Eastman School of Music, a Peabody Award for the National Public Radio series “American Popular Song,” cohosted by Loonis McGlohon, an Avon Foundation grant, the Deems Taylor ASCAP Award and a National Book Award nomination — all having to do with American Popular Song: “The Great Innovators, 1900-1950.” He included almost everyone who had written a song of quality, but not one word about himself or any of the hundreds — maybe thousands — of songs he wrote. The Alec Wilder Archive and Reading Room in the Sibley Music Library, Eastman School of Music, was dedicated in 1991.

 

 

No one will ever be sure just how much music Wilder wrote. Sketches of music — sometimes entire pieces — were often written on small scraps of manuscript paper while he rode a train, sat on a park bench or waited in an airport terminal. Scattered about in private collections of Wilder’s friends were many compositions that never reached performance or publication. He wrote almost entirely for friends, and most of his pieces were gifts to them or their children.

Most of Wilder’s chamber music was unpublished until the last years of his life. Now, a quarter of a century since his death, it is heartening to see new recordings released by a younger generation discovering his music for the first time.