Christian Wolff (composer)

After relocating to the U.S. in 1941, they helped to found Pantheon Books with other European intellectuals who had fled Europe during the rise of fascism.

When he was sixteen (in 1950) his piano teacher Grete Sultan sent him for lessons in composition to the new music composer John Cage.

Wolff soon became a close associate of Cage and his artistic circle which was part of the New York School and included the fellow composers Earle Brown and Morton Feldman, the pianist David Tudor, and the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham.

[3] Wolff's early compositional work included a lot of silence and was based initially on complicated rhythmic schema, and later on a system of aural cues.

He innovated unique notational methods in his early scores and found creative ways of dealing with improvisation in his music.