A Rich Vein of Influence
The “Z” stands for “Zane.” Just in case you’re wondering.
Now that we have that out of the way we can get to the real stuff, notably the great compositional heritage embodied in the work of this very-active American composer. A look at his teachers and their teachers and their teachers shows a line going all the way back to the great French composer Gabriel Fauré, who lived from the mid-1800’s until the 1920’s and who in turn had been taught by none other than Camille Saint-Saëns. Wow. Ancestry.com should do a family tree on this.
Fauré had a long and varied career as a performer, composer, and teacher. The next step on the ladder of Stroope’s influences came from Fauré’s student Nadia Boulanger. It’s fair to say that while no one today is going to program a concert featuring her own works, she has permeated American music to a surprising degree, with pupils including Aaron Copland, Virgil Thompson, Quincy Jones and Burt Bacharach. Two pupils relevant to Stroope were Cecil Effinger and Normand Lockwood, both of whom became Stroope’s teachers and mentors.