William Horne

William Horne is an American organist and contemporary composer of chamber music, keyboard works, and songs. Also a respected educator, he has taught music theory and composition at Loyola University New Orleans since 1976. He was born in 1952 in Milledgeville, Georgia, and he began his musical studies at Florida State University, Tallahassee, where he focused on composition and piano. After his graduation in 1974, he continued his education at Yale University, where his professors included Krzysztof Penderecki and Yehudi Wyner. He joined the faculty at Loyola University in 1976, and in 1983 he completed his DMA in composition at the University of North Texas. He composed the Sonata for viola and piano in 1986, and his research paper "Brahms's Duesseldorf Suite Study and his Intermezzo, Op. 116, No. 2" was published in The Musical Quarterly in 1989. Several other of his writings on the life and music of Brahms and Beethoven have also been published in scholarly journals such as The Journal of Musicology, NOTES, and Nineteenth-Century Music Review. Horne took a ten-year-long break from composing beginning around 1996 to allow more time for parenting and teaching. When he returned in 2006 with the Flute Sonata, his style had become more melodic and tonal than it had been previously. Other works from this period include Bagatelles for cello and piano, the Seascape cycle, and the Six Songs for Philip Frohmayer. The first volume of his music was released in 2015 on the Blue Griffin label, Chamber Music of Willliam Horne, Vol. 11. With the support of Loyola University’s Francisco M. Gonzalez M.D. Endowed Professorship, Horne released Songs by William Horne in 2018. These were followed by Chamber Music of William Horne, Vol. II in 2021, and Chamber Music of William Horne, Vol. III in 2024. Based in Covington, Louisiana, Horne remains active as a composer and in his roles with Loyola University.
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