from Columbia University in 1932, in which year he also won a Joseph H. Bearns Prize and the Mosenthal Traveling Fellowship.
[1] He did not employ the twelve-tone technique, but his colleague Andrew Imbrie later observed that the influence of Webern could be heard in his "flexible use of motif as a unifying force, in a certain sprightliness of texture, and in a forward-pushing upbeat quality of phrase".
[5] He then taught at Cambridge Junior College and gave instruction in composition at Longy School of Music, before securing a position at the University of Oregon in 1941.
[1] In 1957 Elston's chamber opera Sweeney Agonistes was premiered at the University of California Studio Theatre in Berkeley.
[1] Elston's cantata Great Age, Behold Us, completed in 1966, is a setting of words from Saint-John Perse's Chronique.
[1] It was premiered in 1968 at Hertz Hall by the Oakland Symphony under Gerhard Samuel, alongside new works by Henri Lazarof, Richard Swift, Karl Kohn, and Douglas Allanbrook.