I was saddened to learn this weekend of the death of the prolific, classical composer and teacher Norman Dello Joio. He holds a certain familiarity to this community since he moved to the Chestnut Hill area near the Westport/Wilton line in the 1940's.
He was born to a musical family of church organists in New York on January 24, 1913. His musical aptitudes on the organ and piano were noted and nourished by his father and godfather, the composer and organist Pietro Yon. He studied piano with Gaston Dethier at the Institute of Musical Art in the 1930's, played jazz piano with various groups and tackled composition with Bernard Wagenaar at the Juilliard Graduate School from 1939–1941. He enrolled at the Berkshire Music Center summer session at Tanglewood In 1941 under the tutelage of Paul Hindemith, and later continued his studies with him at the Yale School of Music from 1941-1943. He adhered to Hindemith's advice and shaped his music according to his early experiences and sensibilities encompassing Catholic church music, Italian opera, jazz and popular music.
His fascination with Joan of Arc eventually led to an opera The Triumph of St. Joan for the New York City Opera and eventually a symphony; the themes from the opera are quite evident in the three movement symphony appropriately called The Triumph of Joan.
He worked at the university level as a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, Mannes College and Boston University. He started the Contemporary Music Project for Creativity in Music Education where new composers worked in and wrote music specifically for public high school performing organizations. The Ford Foundation supported this endeavor, and Dello Joio continued his affiliation with it for fourteen years.
His awards included a 1937 Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Award for his Piano Trio, a 1942 Town Hall Composition Award for the orchestral work Magnificat, 1943 and 1944 Guggenheim Fellowships, a 1945 American Academy of Arts and Letters grant, two New York Music Critics’ Circle Award in 1948 and 1962, the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1957 for Meditations on Ecclesiastes for string orchestra and election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1961. In 2000, he received the Westport Arts Award for Music.
The Westport Library invites you to sample his piano and orchestral music.