Robert Kurka (12/22/1921 – 12/12/1957) was an American composer, teacher, and conductor who was born in Cicero, IL. He was mostly self-taught, but studied briefly at Columbia University, earning an M.F.A. Kurka taught at City College of New York, Queens College, and Dartmouth College and wrote two symphonies, five string quartets, six violin sonatas, and many other works for piano, voice, and chorus. He expanded his best-known work, The Good Soldier Schweik, into an opera just before he passed away from leukemia, in 1957 at his home in New York City.
Discipline:
Music Composition
Robert Kurka
Discipline:
Music Composition
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1957
Studios
Veltin
Robert Kurka worked in the Veltin studio.
Veltin Studio was donated by alumni of the Veltin School, a school for girls in New York with a highly respected visual arts department. As the plaque just outside the entrance attests, this studio was used by poet Edwin Arlington Robinson during most of the 24 summers he spent at MacDowell. Perhaps most famously, Thornton Wilder put the finishing…