Five years after his second wife died from breast cancer, acclaimed American composer Peter Lieberson has succumbed to lymphoma. The 64-year-old passed away on Saturday in an Israeli hospital.

Lieberson was diagnosed with cancer in 2006 following the death of his partner Lorraine Hunt, the late and much-lamented mezzo-soprano for whom he wrote some of his most strikingly beautiful music.

The New York-born son of Goddard Lieberson, former president of Columbia records, Peter studied with Milton Babbitt (1916 – 2011) and later at Columbia University with Charles Wuorinen. He was assistant to Leonard Bernstein in 1972 and assistant producer of the CBS Young People’s Concerts. He taught composition at Harvard University during the 1980s.

Lieberson was equally at home with Schoenberg and Stravinsky as with jazz and Broadway musicals, his works performed by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Emanuel Ax and other luminaries. His most ardent champion though, was Lorraine. She created the main role in his 1997 opera Ashoka’s Dream, and is the dedicatee of Neruda Songs, the orchestral song cycle based on the poetry of Pablo Neruda which earned Lieberson the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for composition in 2008. James Levine, who conducted the songs in his first recording as...