Norman Della Joio RIP

[randyhersom]

Haven't heard any of his work, any comments and/or confirmation?

[7/4]

July 27, 2008

Norman Dello Joio, Prolific and Popular Composer, Is Dead at 95

By DANIEL J. WAKIN, NYT

Norman Dello Joio, a composer who achieved wide popularity in the mid-20th century with a proliferation of essentially tonal, lyrical works, died on Thursday at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 95.

His death was announced by Carl Fischer Music, one of his publishers.

Mr. Dello Joio wrote dozens of pieces each for chorus, orchestra, solo voice, chamber groups and piano, as well as scores for television and three operas. Church music, the popular tunes of the jazz age and 19th-century Italian opera were all influences on his style, which could be both austere and colorful.

In defining his musical approach, Mr. Dello Joio cited the advice of a teacher, the composer Paul Hindemith, that he should never forget that his music was “lyrical by nature.”

That meant, “Don’t sacrifice necessarily to a system,” Mr. Dello Joio said on his Web site. “If it’s valid, and it’s good, put it down in your mind. Don’t say, ‘I have to do this because the system tells me to.’ No, that’s a mistake.” He said he took the advice to heart, and jokingly called himself an “arch-conservative.”

A strong spiritual bent emerged in his composing, and the story of Joan of Arc became a major theme. He wrote an opera called “The Triumph of Joan,” which he withdrew after a student performance in 1950 at Sarah Lawrence College, saying he was dissatisfied with the work.

In its wake came “The Trial at Rouen,” a new St. Joan opera written for television. He revised it for the New York City Opera, under the title “The Triumph of St. Joan,” and later derived a symphonic piece from the first version.

Mr. Dello Joio said he was first drawn to the subject by a children’s book on the lives of the saints, which he found in an organ loft at age 12.

“The timelessness and universality of Joan as a symbol lay in the eternal problem of the individual’s struggle to reconcile his personal beliefs with what he is expected to believe,” Mr. Dello Joio wrote in a 1956 article in The New York Times. “Daily, for ages, she has challenged men to have her courage.”

Mr. Dello Joio won awards throughout his career, gathering a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for his piece “Meditations on Ecclesiastes” for string orchestra and an Emmy in 1965 for a TV series, “The Louvre,” on NBC.

He also wrote works for ballet; Martha Graham choreographed a number of them. The jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw commissioned a concerto from him.

Mr. Dello Joio taught variously at Sarah Lawrence, the Mannes College of Music and Boston University, where he was a dean of the School of Fine and Applied Arts. He also helped to establish a program at the Ford Foundation that placed young composers in residence in high schools.

Mr. Dello Joio was born on Jan. 24, 1913, and reared in New York City. His father was a vocal coach, a church organist and his first keyboard teacher. (He recalled that he used to see Metropolitan Opera stars arrive in Rolls-Royces at his house for coaching.)

At 12, he was substituting for his father at the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Manhattan. By 14, he was organist and choir director at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church on City Island. He also studied organ with his godfather, Pietro Yon, who was the organist at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

He studied composition at the Juilliard School and with Hindemith at Yale and the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood.

Mr. Dello Joio’s first marriage, to Grayce Baumgold, ended in divorce. In 1974 he married Barbara Bolton, who survives him, along with his sons, Justin Dello Joio, a composer, and Norman Dello Joio, a champion equestrian jumper; his daughter, Victoria Dello Joio, a martial arts master teacher; two stepchildren, Ned Costello and Kathleen Bar-Tur; and three grandchildren.