Charles Peter Wuorinen ( /ˈwɔːrɪnən/, Finnish: [ˈʋuorinen]; June 9, 1938 – March 11, 2020) was an American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City.

His father, John H. Wuorinen, the chair of the history department at Columbia University,[1] was a noted scholar of Scandinavian affairs, who also worked for the Office of Strategic Services, and wrote five books on his native Finland.

Many early professional performances of Wuorinen's compositions took place on the Music of Our Time series at the 92nd Street Y run by violinist Max Pollikoff.

Major Wuorinen compositions of the '60s include Orchestral and Electronic Exchanges, premiered by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Lukas Foss; the First Piano Concerto, with composer as soloist; the String Trio, written for the then newly formed new music ensemble Speculum Musicae; and Time's Encomium, Wuorinen's only purely electronic piece, composed using the RCA Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center on a commission from Nonesuch Records, for which Wuorinen was awarded the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Music at the age of 32.

Works for orchestra include Grand Bamboula for strings, A Reliquary for Igor Stravinsky, which incorporates the elder master's last sketches, the Second Piano Concerto, and the Concerto for Amplified Violin and Orchestra, which caused a scandal at its premiere at the Tanglewood Festival[4] with Paul Zukofsky and the BSO conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.

In the late 1970s Wuorinen became interested in the work of the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot and with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation he conducted sonic experiments at Bell Labs in New Jersey.

In an interview with Richard Burbank, Wuorinen is quoted as saying: What I did at Bell Labs (with Mark Liberman) was to try various experiments in which strings of pseudo-random material, usually pitches but sometimes other things, were generated and then subjected to traditional types of compositional organization, including twelve-tone procedures.

Major chamber works of the 1980s include his Third String Quartet commissioned to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College, The Blue Bamboula for pianist Ursula Oppens, the Sonata for Violin and Piano commissioned by the Library of Congress and premiered at the Library on an all-Wuorinen concert, String Sextet, New York Notes, Third Piano Sonata for Alan Feinberg, and trios for various combinations including three works for horn trio.

In the 1980s Wuorinen began an association with the New York City Ballet which resulted in a series of works designed for dance: Five (Concerto for Amplified Cello and Orchestra) for choreographer Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux and Wuorinen's longtime colleague and champion Fred Sherry, Delight of the Muses based on works of Mozart and commissioned in honor of the Mozart's bicentennial,[11] and three works inspired by scenes from Dante's La Divina Commedia for Peter Martins (The Mission of Virgil, The Great Procession and The River of Light).

[2] Wuorinen devoted increased attention to writing works for voice, including his setting of Dylan Thomas's A Winter's Tale for soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson and the Fenton Songs I & II on poems by British poet James Fenton, with whom Wuorinen was collaborating on an opera.

[1] Levine commissioned Wuorinen's Fourth Piano Concerto[14][15] for his first season at the Boston Symphony Orchestra; the tone poem Theologoumenon (a 60th birthday gift for Levine from his longtime manager Ronald Wilford), premiered by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; and the Eighth Symphony: Theologoumena, for the BSO.

[24] Other works from this decade include Cyclops 2000 for Oliver Knussen and the London Sinfonietta; Ashberyana, settings of poetry by John Ashbery; Spin5, a chamber concerto for violinist Jennifer Koh; the Fourth Piano Sonata, for Anne-Marie McDermott; Synaxis; Metagong; and It Happens Like This, a dramatic cantata on seven poems by James Tate premiered at Tanglewood with the composer conducting.

[3] He has been described as totally committed to twelve-tone composition,[29] with Schoenberg, late Stravinsky, and Babbitt as primary influences.

[2] Fractals and the mathematical theories of Benoit Mandelbrot are also important aspects of his style, as can be seen in works such as Bamboula Squared and the Natural Fantasy for organ.

Thus it is similar in intent to certain older books on the subject like Thomas Morley's A Plain and Easie Introduction to Practical Musicke (1597), for instance....

Jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas wrote, "Around 1992 I found Charles Wuorinen’s book Simple Composition in the Brooklyn Public Library.

[30][32] In 1963, he wrote in Perspectives on New Music, "I must unequivocally state that pitch serialization is no longer an issue", and that young composers should be "acting out the implications of the older generation's work".

It has been replaced or succeeded by the 12-tone systemIn a 1988 interview, Wuorinen said, "I feel what I do is right[35] [...] pluralism has gone too far",[30] and criticized views on which "the response of the untutored becomes the sole criterion for judgment".

To call me a serial composer, I think, is—first of all, the term has to be defined, and no one ever bothers to do it.In 2018, Wuorinen denounced the Pulitzer Prize jury for awarding its music award to hiphop artist Kendrick Lamar, telling the New York Times the decision constituted "the final disappearance of any societal interest in high culture.

[36] In addition to cultivating a new generation of performers, commissioning and premiering hundreds of new works, the Group has also been a model for similar organizations that have appeared in the United States since its founding.

Wuorinen resided in New York City and the Long Valley section of Washington Township, Morris County, New Jersey.

[38][39] Wuorinen died in New York on March 11, 2020, aged 81, as a result of injuries sustained in a fall the preceding September.