Born in 1939 in Greeley, Colorado, died in 2024 in Paris. He received a religious education at a Methodist church, which influenced his work. He earned two degrees from Yale, a B.A. (1961) and the M.Mus. (1967), His theory professor was Allen Forte who introduced him to American contemporary music. He studied privately with Morton Feldman in New York City. He was also influenced by John Cage, whom he met there through Feldman. He found inspiration in the ideas of ancient and early modern mathematicians and philosophers, and cooperated with contemporary mathematicians, while incorporating theatrical and visual elements in his work. Johnson often sought to engage audiences by explaining or narrating the processes of his music in or as part of the musical experience. He relocated to Paris in 1983, where he remarried in 1986 and lived until his death.
Johnson considered himself a minimalist composer. His minimalism is of a formalist type, depending mostly on logical sequences, as in the 21 Rational Melodies (1982), where he explored procedures such as accumulation, counting, and isorhythm.
He developed more complex techniques using mathematical notions. This began with the collection of Music for 88 (1988), where he applied ideas of Eratosthenes, Euler, Mersenne, and Blaise Pascal. Later he cooperated with living mathematicians, particularly Jean-Paul Allouche, Emmanuel Amiot, Jeff Dinitz, and Franck Jedrzejewski. With them he explored the notions of self-similar melodies (Loops for orchestra, 1998), tiling patterns (Tilework, 2003), and block designs (Block Design for Piano, 2005), along with homometric pairs (Intervals, 2013).
Johnson introduced text and visual images to produce a theatrical atmosphere close to performance art. The librettos for his operas, which he almost always wrote himself, describe what takes place in the music in an objective manner, somewhat reminiscent of Pirandello. Words intervene in many of his works, sometimes by a narrator who explains how the music is made, as in Eggs and Baskets (1987) and Narayana’s Cows (1989). From 1988 to 1992, Johnson worked on the Bonhoeffer Oratorio for two choirs, soloists and orchestra, using exclusively texts of the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, sermons and texts denouncing Nazism. He commented: “I had a mission, a testimony to convey, a message, which my music doesn’t generally have.”
The association of text and music led Johnson to write numerous radio pieces, most often for René Farabet (France Culture) and for Klaus Schöning (WDR). In Galileo (1999–2005), bells swing like pendulums in tempos determined by the length of their strings, permitting the composer to make music following the laws of the pendulum, as formulated by Galileo Galilei in the seventeenth century. Johnson also ran a series of broadcasts for the British FM Resonance called Music by my Friends. He founded two publishing companies for the publication of his works: Les Éditions 75 in France and Two-Eighteen Press in the US.
After 2000, the work of Johnson was less concerned with theatricality and turned more toward musical form and mathematics. From about 2004 to 2010 he worked with what he called “rational harmonies” in pieces like 360 Chords for orchestra (2005) and Twelve (2008) for piano.
Selected works: An Hour for Piano (1971), The Four Note Opera (1972), Failing: A Very Difficult Piece for Solo String Bass (1975), Rational Melodies for any melodic instrument (1982), The Chord Catalogue for any keyboard instrument (1986), Bedtime Stories for narrator and chamber ensemble (1987), Eggs and Baskets for narrator and two instruments (1987), Networks for string quartet (1987), Riemannoper for baritone, tenor, prima donna, prima donna assoluta and piano, to texts from the Riemann Musiklexikon (1988), Music for 88 for 88 piano keys (1988), Narayana’s Cows for instrumental ensemble and narrator (1989), J’entends un chœur for a cappella choir (1993), Bonhoeffer Oratorium for two choirs, soloists and orchestra (1996), Die Melodiemaschinen, radio feature (1996), Music and Questions for narrator and chamber ensemble (1998), Loops for orchestra (1998), Organ and Silence, 28 works for organ (2000), 55 Chords for two electric keyboard instruments (2001), Kientzy Loops for saxophone (2001), Counting Duets for two performers of any instruments or voices (2002), Tilework, cycle of 14 pieces for instrument (2003), Same or Different for piano (2004), Combinations for String Quartet (2004), Galileo for five pendulums (1999–2005), Block Designs for piano (2005), 360 Chords for orchestra (2005), Symmetries, cycle of works for various chamber ensembles (2009), Kirkman’s Ladies for 15 performers (2009), Knock on Wood, sound installation using wooden blocks (with Martin Riches, 2010), Counting to Seven for seven performers counting to seven in 30 languages (2013), Intervals for any instruments (2014), Seven Septets for two flutes, oboe, clarinet, two violins and viola (2007–17).