[3] At Eastman, he studied with Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers, earning bachelor's (1938) and master's (1940) degrees in composition.
[2] He undertook additional studies with Quincy Porter, Roy Harris[2] and, at the first composition class at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1940, with Aaron Copland.
In the Concerto for Small Orchestra (1940), Rosenfeld discerns a "quite original opening movement, (whose) clash of melodies in contrary motion was magnificent and fierce," signaling "a new composer to be watched with happy expectation.
"[6] In Palmer's first two string quartets, Copland discerns "separate movements of true originality and depth of feeling," observing that "always his music has urgency—it seems to come from some inner need for expression.
"[7] Echoing this assessment, Robert Evett, in a review written in 1970 for the Washington Evening Star of Palmer's first Piano Quartet (1947), found it "one of the most engrossing works of a superb American composer.
"[8] Palmer's publishers include Elkan-Vogel, Peer International, C. F. Peters Corporation, G. Schirmer Inc., Valley Music Press,[2] and Alphonse Leduc-Robert King, Inc. Palmer's students include Pulitzer Prize-winning composers Steven Stucky and Christopher Rouse and composers Paul Chihara, Bernhard Heiden, Brian Israel, Ben Johnston, David Conte, John S. Hilliard, Leonard Lehrman, Daniel Dorff, Jerry Amaldev, James Marra, Harris Lindenfeld, and Jack Gallagher.
Austin holds that "Palmer sings with a kind of devout serenity" of the "grim, divided, disappointed world of the 1940s and '50s, doggedly refusing to despair, no matter how often its hopes for liberty, equality and fraternity must be deferred.
It is both a significant contribution to the repertory of contemporary American chamber music and a work that reveals new developments in the composer's style.
Cohn notes that "in Palmer's hands repetition is always paralleled by change" and finds "positive tonalism, broadened and colored by contemporary expansion" in the music of "this American composer of virile voice.
"[15] In a eulogy written in 2010 for the American Music Center, AMC chair of the board of directors and former Palmer student Steven Stucky noted that "Austin[10] captures the grave lyricism that makes Palmer memorable, but no less important was his lively rhythmic language, which owed a debt in equal parts to American vernacular music, jazz, and Renaissance polyphony."