Allen Shearer

With his first wife, pianist Barbara Shearer (1936–2005), Shearer's performances included art songs, some of which were his own.

Allen Raymond Shearer (born October 5, 1943 in Seattle, Washington) is an American composer and baritone.

Shearer’s early musical experiences were as a singer; the majority of his works are for the voice or voices, with a later emphasis on opera.

He studied at the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1972, and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria where he received diplomas in concert singing and opera.

He taught voice in Special Programs at the University of California at Berkeley.

Among his composition teachers were Fred Lerdahl, Seymour Shifrin, Andrew Imbrie and Max Deutsch, with whom he studied in Paris.

He has received awards in music, including the Rome Prize Fellowship, the Aaron Copland Award, the Sylvia Goldstein Award, a Charles Ives Scholarship, residencies at the MacDowell Colony, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Goddess (1997), opera in four acts on a libretto by the composer after the screenplay by Satyajit Ray

Forest Scene (2024) for unaccompanied violin

Nocturne (2023) for nine cellos

Wink for wind ensemble (2023)

Duo (2022) for violin and cello

Impossible Marriage (2022) for clarinet, violin and piano

Eastbound Traveler (2021) for mixed quartet

The Dawn Makers (2008), chamber opera in one act on a libretto by Claudia Stevens

When asked about his musical style in the discussion preceding the 2009 premiere of his opera The Dawn Makers, Shearer answered that it varies according to the demands of the medium.

Critics also describe it variously.

The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music observes that Shearer’s music, "though it recalls postwar serialism in its rhythms and textures, relies on traditional counterpoint and on tonal centers."

Its lyric quality is frequently cited: Jeff Rosenfeld, reviewing Shearer’s Outbound Passenger, found the music "tuneful and harmonious;" and of Shearer’s cantata King Midas, critic Robert Commanday wrote, ‘The singing lines are fluid and supple, animated, alive; the harmony and scoring for a quintet of instruments and percussion battery (two players), rich but delicately so." In the British periodical Opera, Allan Ulrich wrote that the score of Shearer’s chamber opera The Dawn Makers has "genuine personality.

The hour-long opera abounds in extended ariosos and bravura outbursts and unfurls in a conservative idiom, spiced with dissonances which neatly evade the neo-Romantic pitfalls that prevail in American opera circles." Of the same work, Thomas Busse wrote in San Francisco Classical Voice, "The music’s greatest strength was its singability, attributable to the composer’s being a vocalist himself.

I would describe Shearer’s eclectic style as more declamatory than lyrical." Of Shearer's opera Middlemarch in Spring Janos Gereben wrote in the San Francisco Examiner, "Shearer's music is pleasantly dissonant, with a sound that sticks in the ears and memory.

It's ambiguous music, seemingly wondering [sic] between keys, but landing securely each time."

The Singer Josephine (2023), opera in one act on a libretto by Claudia Stevens after Kafka

Einstein at Princeton (2022), opera in one act on a libretto by Claudia Stevens

Prospero's Island (2021), opera in two acts on a libretto by Claudia Stevens after Shakespeare's The Tempest

A Very Large Mole (2009), chamber opera in one act on a libretto after Franz Kafka by Claudia Stevens

Riddle Me (2010), chamber opera in one act on a libretto by Claudia Stevens

Roundelay (2011) for oboe, clarinet and bassoon

Footloose (2013) for flute, violin and guitar

Middlemarch in Spring (2014), chamber opera in two acts on a libretto by Claudia Stevens after the novel by George Eliot

Intermezzo (2014) for clarinet solo

Kissing Marfa (2015), comic opera in one scene on a libretto by Claudia Stevens based on a short story by Anton Chekhov

Road Piece (2015) for brass trio and percussion

Circe's Pigs (2016), chamber opera in one act on a libretto by Claudia Stevens

Sea Critter (2016) for piano solo

Howards End, America (2018), opera in three acts on a libretto by Claudia Stevens after the novel by E. M. Forster

Jackie at Vassar (2019), opera in one act on a libretto by Claudia Stevens

Early Start (2019) for flute, cello and piano

Thinking Thoughts (2019) for violin and piano

October (2020) for brass quintet