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Norman Dello Joio

Biography

(Audio Excerpt Below)

The distinguished musical career of Norman Dello Joio began for him at age fourteen when he became a church organist and choir director of the Star of the Sea Church on City Island, New York. A descendant of Italian church organists, he was born January 24, 1913 in New York. His father was an organist, pianist, singer, and vocal coach. Dello Joio recalls that his father was working with singers from the Metropolitan Opera who used to arrive in their Rolls Royce’s, and that his childhood was surrounded with musicians and music in the home. Dello Joio’s father taught him the piano at age four, and in his teens he began studying organ with his godfather, Pietro Yon, organist at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. In 1939, he was accepted as a scholarship student at the Juilliard School, and studied composition with Bernard Wagenaar.

As a graduate student at Juilliard, while he was organist at St. Anne’s Church in New York, he arrived at the conclusion that he did not want to spend his life in a church choir loft, as composition began to envelop all of his interest. In 1941, he began studies with Paul Hindemith, the man who profoundly influenced his compositional style, at Tanglewood and Yale. It was Hindemith who told Dello Joio, "Your music is lyrical by nature, don’t ever forget that." Dello Joio states that, although he did not completely understand at the time, he now knows what he meant: "Don’t sacrifice necessarily to a system, go to yourself, what you hear. 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."

In the latter part of the forties, Dello Joio was considered one of America’s leading composers, and by the fifties had gained international recognition. He received numerous awards and grants including the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Award, the Town Hall Composition Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He won the New York Music Critics’ Circle Award in 1948, and again in 1962. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for Meditations on Ecclesiastes for string orchestra, and an Emmy Award for his music in the television special Scenes from the Louvre. In 1958, CBS featured him in a one-hour television special, "Profile of a Composer."

A prolific composer, the partial list of Dello Joio’s compositions include over forty-five choral works, close to thirty works for orchestra and ten for band, approximately twenty-five pieces for solo voice, twenty chamber works, concertos for piano, flute, harp, a Concertante for Clarinet, and a Concertino for Harmonica. His stage works include three operas (one written for television and revised for the stage,) and eight ballets. Additionally, he has written nine television scores and three compositions for organ. His published solo piano works include three sonatas, two nocturnes, two preludes, two suites, two "Songs Without Words", a Capriccio, Introduction and Fantasies on a Chorale Tune, Diversions, Short Intervallic Etudes, and Concert Variants. Dello Joio has one published work for piano and orchestra, the Fantasy and Variations for Piano and Orchestra. He has also written a number of pedagogical pieces for both two and four hands. Also included are works for four hands and two pianos.

Dello Joio taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Mannes College of Music, and was Professor of Music and Dean of the Fine and Applied Arts School of Boston University. From 1959 until 1973, he directed the Ford Foundation’s Contemporary Music Project, which placed young composers in high schools who were salaried to compose music for school ensembles and programs. The project placed about ninety composers, many who successfully continued their careers. In 1999, at the age of 86, Dello Joio continues to compose with no signs of retiring. He is frequently being commissioned, as he music remains in constant demand.

Dello Joio Highlights

Studied composition as a scholarship student at Juilliard in 1937

Wins the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Award for his piano trio in 1937

Began studying composition with Paul Hindemith at Tanglewood in 1941

His Magnificat wins the Town Hall Composition Award, and was nominated for the Critics' Circle Award along with compositions by Leonard Bernstein and William Schuman in 1943

Wins the New York Music Critics' Circle Award for his Variations, Chaconne, and Finale in 1948

He is consistently listed with all of the major composers of the forties and fifties and by the beginning of the 1950s was recognized internationally as a leading composer

Beginning in 1956 he composes the music for the CBS television series Air Power, and his first opera, The Triumph of Saint Joan, was presented under the title The Trial at Rouen for an NBC television production

Wins the Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for Meditations on Ecclesiastes

CBS features him in a one hour television special Profiles of a Composer in 1958

Wins a second New York Music Circle Critics' Award in 1959 for his opera The Triumph of Saint Joan

Wins an Emmy Award for The Louvre in 1965

Is appointed Chairman for the Contemporary Music Project, funded by the Ford Foundation for MENC, from 1964 to 1972

Is appointed Dean of the School of Fine Arts at Boston University in 1972

Retires from Boston University and moves back to New York in 1978

Currently living on Long Island, New York, he continues to compose, accepting commissions from major performance groups and individuals throughout the country

Norman Dello Joio
Audio Excerpt

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A complete transcript version of this interview excerpt is available on the Family Album, Complete Works for Piano, Norman Dello Joio, Vol. 3, just released.

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