Mark Brunswick

Who was Mark Brunswick?

Mark Brunswick was an American composer of the Twentieth Century. He had only recently completed the second act of an opera based on Ibsen's The Masterbuilder when he died suddenly in London in May, 1971, at the start of what was to have been an extended tour of Europe with his wife, Natascha Artin Brunswick. Mark had been at work on the opera for several years, and Act I had not long before received a concert performance as a work in progress at The City College of New York.

Born in New York City, Mark was the third of four children of secular Jewish parents. His father, of an Alsacian family background, was a successful manufacturer in the garment industry. His mother was an educated German-born woman, trained as an opera singer, who encouraged Mark's artistic interests and his pursuit of an education that diverged from the conventional.

He attended the Horace Mann School in New York, and later Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. Though he took some courses in the extension division of Columbia University, he never formally acquired a college degree.