He studied with an all-star cast of 20th-century composers' mentors, including Roger Sessions, Aaron Copland and Nadia Boulanger, and lists Sessions and Arnold Schoenberg as his primary influences. Accordingly, his music is somewhat tough in outlook, atonal and rigorously organized.The Symphony No. 1 is a late work, divided into ten parts and wearing its form on the outside with movements given titles such as "Parallel Ninths Cantus Firmus" and "Transition Leading to Coda." 'Gradus Ad Parnassum' is a work for soprano and orchestra that grapples with Nietzschean concepts of the