Seven+een-Year-Old

Nazi Germany's record in music has been as shoofly as in the other arts: there are today more good German composers outside the Fatherland than in it. Not all the exiles are veterans. Last week a phenomenal 17-year-old popped up in Manhattan. His name : Lukas Foss. What made him pop was incidental music he had written for performances of The Tempest by children of arty, part-time King-Coit school.

Lukas Foss was born Lukas Fuchs, son of a Berlin lawyer and a painter. The Fosses, Jewish, went to Paris in 1933, where Lukas, who had begun his musical lispings at seven, studied with pedagogues of the Conservatoire. In 1937 the family reached the U. S., put Lukas in Philadelphia's Curtis Institute. Since then he has written piano pieces (published by Schirmer), a violin sonata (broadcast from Manhattan), two operas (not yet performed). Father Foss is in business. In Germany he wrote books on philosophy, but in the U. S., says Son Lukas, "the only philosophy is 'Take it easy,' and you can't write books about that."

At Curtis Institute, Student Foss met Composers Samuel Barber (Music for a Scene from Shelley) and Gian-Carlo Menotti (Amelia Goes to the Ball). Each of these grownups, asked by King-Coit to write music for The Tempest, begged off, suggested Lukas Foss. He wrote the music in a month, based much of it (by request) on Sicilian folk tunes, turned in a remarkably workmanlike score. Archaic in mood, making deft use of a small orchestra, The Tempest reminded some listeners of Austria's late Gustav Mahler.

But Lukas Foss attributed that apparent similarity to the folk tunes, declared, with an eye on Broadway and Hollywood: "I want to write in a modern idiom which appeals to the ear."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.