Richard St. Clair's maternal ancestors emigrated from Norway and Sweden to the American Upper Midwest (in particular, Minnesota) in the latter part of the 19th century along with hundreds of thousands of other Scandinavians who settled there at that time.
His paternal ancestors hailed from England and Scotland and were both riders on the Mayflower as well as military men in the American War of Independence.
The following year his family moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota, a larger city with much greater musical and cultural opportunities than those of his birthplace.
His maternal great-grandfather Ludvig Svendsen Bogen played in the Norwegian King's Band and his grandfather Sven Fredrik Bogen was a band conductor who played and taught many different instruments; his maternal grandmother was a piano teacher who was reputed for being able to transpose any song into any key.
St. Clair from a very early age fell in love with the music of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky, which were played in his home on fragile 78-rpm records.
By age 16 he was starting to write music, mainly for chorus and organ, inspired by Gustav Holst, Flor Peeters, Randall Thompson and Paul Hindemith.
Reviewer Ned Brown made the following prophetic observations: We admired St. Cair's expansive genius, his dynamic keyboard skill and his personal modesty.
[1] St. Clair, following in his father's footsteps, began his studies at Harvard University in Cambridge (Massachusetts) where in 1969 he earned his Bachelor of Arts (A.B.)
While an undergraduate he studied piano techniques (sight-reading and figured bass) with Luise Vosgerchian, harmony with James Haar and John MacIvor Perkins, counterpoint with James Yannatos and Alejandro Enrique Planchart, form and analysis with Luciano Berio, and composition with Billy Jim Layton and Leon Kirchner.
At Harvard he studied composition with Roger Sessions, Leon Kirchner, Earl Kim, and David Del Tredici.
1 at the Marlboro Music Festival in 1967 as an invitee of his teacher, Leon Kirchner; there he was encouraged by Director Rudolf Serkin to continue to pursue a career in composition.
Of his 1994 freely atonal cycle Moon Flowers: Album of 50 Haiku-Moments for Solo Piano on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the death of the great haiku poet, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), noted haiku poet Dee Evetts wrote Richard St. Clair performed his Moon Flowers: Album of Haiku-Moments for Solo Piano.
Since then, however, he has turned to a more approachable style following the tradition of 20th-century masters including Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Béla Bartók and Arnold Schoenberg, the latter who taught his teachers Earl Kim and Leon Kirchner.
[4] Composer David Cleary, writing of the same work in 21st Century Music said, This nearly half-hour long setting of 13th-century Buddhist poems proves fascinating from start to finish, exhibiting numerous deeply-felt variants on oriental sensitivity and exquisite melancholy.
Thus it's no surprise that his "Songs from the Chinese", a setting of ten Yuan dynasty poems scored for voice, flute, contrabass, and piano, is satisfying to hear.
Attempting to live the frugal life of a typical composer, he supported himself by taking day jobs at Harvard and MIT.