Obituaries : Stephen J. Albert; Composer Won Pulitzer for Symphony

Stephen J. Albert, whose compositions ranged from works for the soprano voice to music for amplified flutes and whose symphony “RiverRun” won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize, is dead.

Police in Truro, Mass., said the former composer-in-residence of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra was 51 when he was killed Sunday in a car accident.

Albert was born in New York City and raised in Great Neck, N.Y., where he played trumpet, French horn and piano in the school orchestra and then enrolled at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester.

After additional composition classes in Stockholm under Karl-Birgerf Blomdahl, he returned to the United States and the Philadelphia Musical Academy, studying with Roy Harris and Joseph Castaldo.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Albert lived for a time in Europe after winning a Guggenheim fellowship. He also lectured at Stanford University and taught at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and at the Juilliard School in New York.

After winning the Pulitzer he came to Seattle for two years, where he was commissioned to write large-scale orchestral works for subscription concerts.

While he did not completely abandon tonality, he explored modern moods and trends in such works as “Illuminations” for brass, pianos, harps and percussion, “Winter Songs” for tenor and orchestra, “Wedding Songs” for soprano and piano and “Bacchae” for narrator, chorus and orchestra.