William Jennings Bryan "Ben" Weber (July 23, 1916 in St. Louis[1] – June 16, 1979 in New York City) was an American composer.
Weber He was "one of the first Americans to embrace the 12-tone techniques of Schoenberg, starting in 1938";[1] he was largely self-taught.
[citation needed] Weber used the twelve-tone technique but, rather than avoid tonality, he worked with it and achieved a virtuoso Romantic style: "Weber could not stifle his bent for expansive lyricism and bold gestures," wrote music critic Anthony Tommasini, adding: "One gets the sense that his adaptation of the 12-tone technique was his way of ensuring that his music would keep its cutting edge and not slip into Romanticism.
Weber also wrote an unpublished memoir, How I Took 63 Years to Commit Suicide (as told to Matthew Paris).
[3] He received a Thorne Music Award in 1965,[citation needed].