Gardner Read (January 2, 1913 in Evanston, Illinois – November 10, 2005 in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts) was an American composer and musical scholar.
In the late 1930s he also studied briefly with Ildebrando Pizzetti, and Aaron Copland.
30 (1937, premiered by Sir John Barbirolli) won first prize at the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Society's American Composers' Contest, while his second symphony (op.
Another first prize came in the 1986 National Association of Teachers of Singing Art Song Competition, won by his Nocturnal Visions, op.
His book Music Notation: A Manual of Modern Practice (1969/1979) attempted to catalogue the rapidly changing landscape of notation for contemporary western art music.