In Memoriam of Richard Wernick, Penn Music Professor Emeritus

​Richard Wernick, Penn Music Professor Emeritus, died on April 25, 2025, at the age of 91. Serving on the Penn faculty from 1968 to 1996, Wernick was a central figure in the university’s composition program, mentoring generations of young composers. We celebrate Richard Wernick’s life and legacy with gratitude.

OBITUARY

Richard Wernick, a renowned American composer who taught at the University of Pennsylvania from 1968 until 1996, died on April 25. He was ninety-one years old. To anyone who knew him well, those years seem to reflect an insatiable need to expand his horizons that took the form of voracious reading, an unbounded Wanderlust, and an ever-expanding coterie of treasured friends, with whom the sharing of laughter was ubiquitous.

Wernick was born in Boston on January 16, 1934. He attended Brandeis University, where he studied composition principally with Irving Fine, but also with Harold Shapiro and Arthur Berger. He went on to study composition with Leon Kirchner at Mills College. He was also an accomplished conductor, numbering Leonard Bernstein among his teachers. Before joining the faculty at Penn, he taught at SUNY Buffalo and the University of Chicago. At Penn, he chaired the Department of Music for four years, working indefatigably to enhance both the programs in musical composition and musical scholarship.

Wernick's music was extensively recorded and widely acclaimed, earning him awards and commissions from the Ford, Guggenheim, and Naumburg Foundations, among many others. In 1977, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Visions of Terror and Wonder, a powerful work for Mezzo-Soprano and orchestra set to texts from the Old and New Testaments and the Quran, all of which contain appeals for peace. His works invariably reflect masterful craftsmanship. In the words of one of his former students, "there is a reason for every note." Never joining any of the schools of composition in fashion over the course of his career, Wernick developed an eclectic style that emphasizes formal and harmonic complexity, while offering, at the same time, an extraordinary measure of accessibility.   

Graduate students in musical composition encountered in Richard Wernick a teacher who feigned austerity and severity in his demeanor. A quotation from Dante—"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here"—appeared over the door to his teaching studio. In truth, he adored his students, sparing no effort at sharing with them his abiding commitment to the craft of composition. It never mattered to him that a student might aspire to writing in a style that he personally reviled; mastery of the craft—learning how "to push notes around," as he characterized it—was his central objective. A measure of his success in achieving this aim may be seen in the roster of his students who went on to win wide acclaim for their music. The list of their international awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, is a long one.

Wernick conducted extensively. He served as music director of the Winnipeg Ballet and as conductor of a new-music ensemble at SUNY Buffalo. In 1979, he led the Philadelphia Orchestra in George Crumb's massive orchestral work, Star Child. During Riccardo Muti's tenure as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, beginning in 1983, Wernick served as his advisor on the selection of new works to be performed by the orchestra. At Penn, he led the Penn Contemporary Players for many years, affording the community a rich and ongoing survey of the best in new music.

Wernick is survived by his wife of sixty-eight years, Bea, a professional bassoonist, and his two sons, Lewis and Adam. He was predeceased by his youngest son, Peter. His life as a composer is documented in the autographs, scores, recordings, letters, and photographs that comprise the Wernick Papers in the Kislak Center for Special Collections at Penn.