‘I’m just so grateful,” said Lee Hoiby, in the last days of his life. “I’m grateful to have lived the life I’ve lived, to have written the music I’ve written, to have known the people I’ve known.” He died at the end of March. I got to know him in 2004, something like that. And I thought I’d say a little about the friendship we shared. First, though, a bit of biography.
Hoiby was born in 1926, in Madison, Wis. He studied with two of the outstanding pianists and teachers of the age: Gunnar Johansen and Egon Petri. Johansen had studied with Petri, actually. And Petri had studied with Busoni (no less). Hoiby opted against becoming a pianist, but he played the piano all his life. He practiced every day, on Chopin études, specifically.
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