Moran, Robert (1937– )

US composer. His music has embraced random choice techniques, minimalism, and multiple synthesizers. His Smell Piece for Mills College(1967) was intended to burn down his alma mater and was followed by the chamber opera Let's Build a Nut House (1969).

He studied in Vienna, and with Berio and Milhaud at Mills College. He has performed throughout the USA and Europe as a pianist, and has lectured widely. He directed the West Coast Music Ensemble and taught at the San Francisco Conservatory. His environment piece Hitler: Geschichten aus der Zukunft (1981) was too much for the Germans who commissioned it, and was promptly banned; the succeeding Erlöser, a music drama in two acts, depicts the rantings of a dying Wagner. A collaboration with Philip Glass on the opera The Juniper Tree (1985) prompted a conversion to synthesizer-inspired Romanticism: Desert of Roses (1992) is based on the Beauty and the Beast story, while From the Towers of the Moon (1992) is prompted by an ancient Japanese legend. The Dracula Diary(1994 )suggested a return to anarchism.