Meriwether Lewis Spratlan Jr. (September 5, 1940 – February 9, 2023) was born in Miami, Florida and died on February 9, 2023 at home in Lumberton, New Jersey. Spratlan held undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yale University, where he studied with Mel Powell and Gunther Schuller. From 1970 until his retirement in 2006 he served on the music faculty of Amherst College, and has also taught and conducted at Penn State University, Tanglewood, and the Yale Summer School of Music. He was the founding conductor of the Amherst Mount Holyoke Orchestra and acting director of the Amherst College Orchestra.

Spratlan received the Pulitzer Prize in music in 2000 for a concert version of Act Two of his opera Life Is A Dream. The full production of the opera, on a libretto by James Maraniss after Calderón's La vida es sueño, was realized at the Santa Fe Opera in 2010. His New England Concordance, for TTBB chorus and piano, received its premiere performance in Lexington, MA, on June 3, 2018, by the Boston Sängerfest Men's Chorus.