Understanding the Fundamentals of Music
Part I

Professor Robert Greenberg

THE TEACHING COMPANY ®

Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
San Francisco Performances Robert Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1954 and has lived in the San Francisco Bay area since 1978. He received a B.A. in music, magna cum laude, from Princeton University in 1976, where his principal teachers were Edward Cone, Daniel Werts, and Carlton Gamer in composition; Claudio Spies and Paul Lansky in analysis; and Jerry Kuderna in piano. In 1984, he received a Ph.D. in music composition, with distinction, from the University of California, Berkeley, where his principal teachers were Andrew Imbrie and Olly Wilson in composition and Richard Felciano in analysis. He has composed more than 45 works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles. His works have been performed in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, England, Ireland, Greece, Italy, and the Netherlands, where the Amsterdam Concertgebouw performed his Child’s Play for String Quartet. His numerous honors include three Nicola de Lorenzo Composition Prizes and three Meet-the-Composer Grants. Recent commissions have come from the Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress, the Alexander String Quartet, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, San Francisco Performances, the Strata Ensemble, and the XTET ensemble. Professor Greenberg is a board member and an artistic director of COMPOSERS, INC., a composers’ collective/production organization based in San Francisco. His music is published by Fallen Leaf Press and CPP/Belwin and is recorded on the Innova label. He has performed, taught, and lectured extensively across North America and Europe. He is currently music-historian-in-residence with San Francisco Performances, where he has lectured and performed since 1994, and resident composer and music historian to National Public Radio’s “Weekend All Things Considered.” He has served on the faculties of the