Robert Cogan (February 2, 1930 – August 19, 2021) was an American music theorist, composer and teacher.
His principal teachers included Nadia Boulanger, Aaron Copland, Ross Lee Finney, Philipp Jarnach and Roger Sessions.
For more than three decades Cogan was Chair of Graduate Theoretical Studies and Professor of Composition at New England Conservatory, Boston.
As speaker and/or composer Cogan was programmed in Belgium, Brazil, Canada (Banff Festival), China, France (IRCAM), Paris; Avignon and Nice Festivals), Germany (Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music); North and West German Radios; Zinzig Festival; Bielefeld University), Great Britain (Universities of Edinburgh, London, and Southampton), Italy (Gubbio and Prix Italia festivals; Italian Society for Musical Analysis; Rockefeller Bellagio Study Center), Korea (Seoul Arts Olympics), the Netherlands (International Computer Music Association), Russia, Sweden (Swedish Institute for Electronic Music), Switzerland (Montanea Festival), and Yugoslavia (Belgrade Radio-Television).
Performers of Cogan's works include the conductors Tamara Brooks, Lorna Cooke deVaron, John Heiss, Jacques-Louis Monod, Fredrick Prausnitz, Gunther Schuller, and Leopold Stokowski; the Cleveland Orchestra, Norddeutscher Rundfunk, and RIAS Berlin orchestras; pianists Geoffrey Burleson, Marilyn Crispell, David Del Tredici, David Hagan, Robert Henry, and Ellen Polansky; instrumentalists Esther Lamneck, Alexei Ludewig, and Stephanie Key; and singers Jan DeGaetani, Elizabeth Keusch, Joan Heller, Jane Bryden, and Maria Tegzes.