William Schuman, 81, Composer And Founder Of Juilliard School

William Schuman, a towering figure among American symphonists and a protean force on music in America, died Saturday in New York after hip surgery. He was 81.

"Bill was a great presence on our musical scene, both as creator and as musical activist," said composer and ASCAP President Morton Gould, reached at his New York home.

"As an artist, he was one of the most significant of creators. But he was the unusual creator who really related to the society he lived in, and that made Bill special."

Indeed, Mr. Schuman led several careers at once, making history in each.

As composer, he was the first to win the Pulitzer Prize (for his 1943 composition "Free Song") and the first to take a New York Music Critics' Circle Award (for one of his most enduring works, the Third Symphony, 1941).

As an educator, he created what is now respected the world over as the Juilliard School of Music, which he established in 1945 by merging the lesser-known Institute of Musical Art with the Juilliard Graduate School. He fought hard to establish a drama division at Juilliard, then ignored the naysayers to found the Juilliard String Quartet, which was soon recognized as a superb ensemble.

As arts administrator, he helped conceive the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and as its first president in the 1960s he founded both its Chamber Music Society and its Film Society. For these and similar efforts, he won more than 25 honorary doctorates, a special Pulitzer Prize (1985), a National Medal of Arts (1987) and a Kennedy Center Honor (1989).

At the core of everything Mr. Schuman did, however, was composition, even if he came to classical music virtually by accident.

Born William Howard Schuman in New York on Aug. 4, 1910, he first was smitten by Tin Pan Alley, eventually toiling as Billy Schuman and his Alamo Society Orchestra.

Though he had never attended a classical performance before age 19, "I was finagled by my sister and mother to go to a concert by the New York Philharmonic under (Arturo) Toscanini," Mr. Schuman recalled in a 1986 Chicago Tribune interview. "I was absolutely knocked cold by this experience.

"And literally the very next day, I resigned from New York University, where I was in the School of Commerce, and began to seek help in learning about `serious' music."

Mr. Schuman is survived by his wife, Frances; two children; a grandchild; and a sister.