Composer-pianist Richard Trythall was born in Knoxville, Tennessee (USA) in 1939. His early interest in composition was fostered by the composer, David Van Vactor - conductor of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and founder of the University of Tennessee's music department. Later, while attending the University of Tennessee as a composition student of Van Vactor, several of Trythall's compositions for orchestra were performed by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. (Example: Theme and Variations for Piano and Orchestra - Performance: March 3, 1960, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, David Van Vactor, conductor, Richard Trythall, piano)
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In 1961 Trythall entered the composition
program at Princeton University where he studied with Roger Sessions,
Milton Babbitt, Earl Kim and Edward Cone. (Example: Four Rilke Songs for Soprano and Piano, 1962 - Performance: Norma Dean, soprano,
Richard Trythall, piano).
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In 1963 he completed his formal music studies at the Hochschule für Musik, Berlin, Germany, where he studied with composer Boris Blacher under a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship.
In 1964 Trythall was awarded the Rome Prize in Musical Composition by the American Academy in Rome. During the three years at the Academy, he completed a number of orchestral and chamber works.(Examples: Penelope's Monologue for Soprano and Orchestra, 1966, Text from James Joyce's Ulysses)
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At the conclusion of his Fellowship, Trythall remained in Italy dividing his time between composing and performing as a pianist. In 1969 he won First Prize in the "Kranichsteiner Competition for the Performance of Contemporary Piano Music" held in Darmstadt, Germany. In the same year he also completed his Coincidences for piano solo. (Excerpt: Coincidences for piano, 1969)
