Dominick Argento

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Dominick Argento
Argento in April 2016
Born(1927-10-27)October 27, 1927
York, Pennsylvania
DiedFebruary 20, 2019(2019-02-20) (aged 91)
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Alma materEastman School of Music
Occupation(s)Composer, professor
Notable workPostcard from Morocco
Miss Havisham's Fire
The Aspern Papers
From the Diary of Virginia Woolf
AwardsPulitzer Prize for Music (1975)

Dominick Argento (October 27, 1927 – February 20, 2019)

choral music. Among his best known pieces are the operas Postcard from Morocco, Miss Havisham's Fire, The Masque of Angels, and The Aspern Papers. He also is known for the song cycles Six Elizabethan Songs and From the Diary of Virginia Woolf; the latter earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1975. In a predominantly tonal context, his music freely combines tonality, atonality and a lyrical use of twelve-tone writing. None of Argento's music approaches the experimental, stringent avant-garde fashions of the post-World War II era.[2]

As a student in the 1950s, Argento divided his time between the United States and Italy, and his music is greatly influenced by both his instructors in the United States and his personal affection for Italy, particularly the city of Florence. Many of Argento's works were written in Florence, where he spent a portion of every year.[3] He was a professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He frequently remarked that he found residents of that city to be tremendously supportive of his work and thought his musical development would have been impeded had he stayed in the high-pressure world of East Coast music.[3][4] He was one of the founders of the Center Opera Company (now the Minnesota Opera). Newsweek magazine once referred to the Twin Cities as "Argento's town."[4]

Argento wrote fourteen operas, in addition to major song cycles, orchestral works, and many choral pieces for small and large forces. Many of these were commissioned for and premiered by Minnesota-based artists. He referred to his wife, the soprano Carolyn Bailey, as his

muse
, and she frequently performed his works. Bailey died on February 2, 2006.

In 2009, Argento was awarded the

Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association.[5]

Early life and education

The son of

Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.[2]
He quickly decided to switch to composition.

He earned bachelor's (1951) and master's (1953) degrees from Peabody, where his teachers included Nicolas Nabokov, Henry Cowell, and Hugo Weisgall. While there, he was briefly the music director of the Hilltop Musical Company, which Weisgall founded as a sort of answer to Benjamin Britten's festival at Aldeburgh—a venue for local composers (particularly Weisgall) to present new work. Argento gained broad exposure to and experience in the world of new opera.[2] Hilltop's stage director was the writer John Olon-Scrymgeour, with whom Argento later collaborated on many operas. During this period, he also spent a year in Florence on a scholarship of the U.S.-Italy Fulbright Commission. He has called the experience "life-altering;" while there, he studied briefly with Luigi Dallapiccola.

Argento continued graduate studies and received his Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Alan Hovhaness, Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson.[6] Following completion of this degree, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study/work for another year in Florence. He established a tradition of spending long periods of time in that city.

Minnesota years

Argento moved to Minneapolis in 1958 with his new wife, soprano Carolyn Bailey, to begin teaching theory and composition at the University of Minnesota. His students there included composers Philip Brunelle, Juliana Hall, Libby Larsen, Stephen Paulus, and Marjorie Rusche.[7] Within a few years, he received commissions from virtually every major performing group there. He has remarked that this constant feeling of strong community interest in his work made him feel particularly at home in Minnesota, although he had at first resisted moving there. For several years, he hoped to find a position on his native East Coast.[4]

Argento became involved in writing music for productions at the then-new Guthrie Theater. In 1963, he and Scrymgeour founded the Center Opera Company, which later became the Minnesota Opera, to be in residence at the Guthrie. Argento composed the short opera The Masque of Angels for the occasion as the first Performing Arts commission of the Walker Art Center. This work—with its complex harmonic language and an emphasis on expansive choral writing that prefigures his later role as a prominent choral composer—firmly established his local prominence, as well as providing a role for his wife.

By 1971, when his daring, surreal opera

Washington Opera, and the Baltimore and St. Louis symphonies, among others. Argento also developed close professional relationships with several prominent singers, notably Frederica von Stade, Janet Baker, and Håkan Hagegård
, tailoring some of his best-known song cycles to their talents.

Choral prominence and later life

In the mid-1970s, Argento began writing choral works for the choir of Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis, which his friend Philip Brunelle directed.[4] The partnership with Brunelle was particularly fruitful, yielding commissions and premieres at Plymouth Church and at the Minnesota Opera, where Brunelle was Music Director. In this period Argento composed Jonah and the Whale (1973), co-commissioned by Plymouth Congregational Church and the Cathedral of St. Mark-Episcopal. He began to receive larger commissions for choral works, eventually composing major pieces for the Dale Warland Singers, The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Buffalo Schola Cantorum, and the Harvard and Yale glee clubs.

The recording by Frederica von Stade and the Minnesota Orchestra of his song cycle Casa Guidi won the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Argento's book Catalogue Raisonné as Memoir, an autobiographical discussion of his works, was published in 2004.

Argento retired from teaching but retained the title of Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota until his death. He lived in Minneapolis. The world premiere of Evensong: Of Love and Angels was presented by the Cathedral Choral Society in March 2008 at Washington National Cathedral. The work was written in memory of his late wife and in honor of the centennial of the Washington National Cathedral. In July 2014, the choral cycle "Seasons," setting texts by friend Pat Solstad, was premiered by the Minnesota Beethoven Festival Chorale in Winona, Minnesota, under the direction of longtime friend Dale Warland.

Argento died at his home in Minneapolis in 2019.[1]

Works

Operas

Argento at rehearsal of his opera The Boor in 2017

Argento's operatic output is eclectic and extensive. He withdrew two early operas, written while he was a student—Sicilian Limes and Colonel Jonathan the Saint. The Boor, written in 1957 as part of his Ph.D. work, was published by

Thomas Dekker
.

After the success of

Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, conducted by Philip Brunelle.[9]
He revised Miss Havisham's Fire in 1995 and it has been successfully revived and performed since.

In 1984, the Minnesota Opera commissioned

supertitles. She wanted to ensure that the audience understood all the jokes.[4]
The opera won the 1986 National Institute for Music Theatre Award.

Argento next composed

Kennedy Center in 1993. Critic Anne Midgette of The New York Times has noted that Argento's operas tend to be very well received upon their premieres but lack an "easy popular hook" and are rarely revived.[10]

Song cycles and "monodramas"

Argento's song cycles are notable for his frequent use of dramatic, unusual text, most often prose that does not have immediately apparent musical possibilities. His works blur the distinction between straightforward groupings of songs and dramatic works, which he terms "monodramas". His best-known song cycle is From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, with a text he assembled from the book of that title. Written for Janet Baker in 1974, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music and is performed frequently.

Other prominent works in a similar vein include Letters from Composers (1968), which uses as its text letters written by

Puccini, and others; Casa Guidi (1983), which sets letters written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning; and A Few Words About Chekhov (1996), which adapts letters by Anton Chekhov
.

Argento's other song cycles are highly varied:

One of the few major song cycles Argento has written that use "traditional" verse as a text is his popular Six Elizabethan Songs. Other solo vocal works by Argento include:

  • Songs About Spring (1950–55), text by E. E. Cummings, for voice and piano
  • Ode to the West Wind (1956), text by Percy Bysshe Shelley, for soprano and orchestra
  • To Be Sung Upon the Water (1972), text by William Wordsworth, for voice, clarinet and piano
  • The Bremen Town Musicians (1998), text by the composer, a "children's entertainment" with narrator and orchestra

Major choral works

Argento's The Masque of Angels (1963) has sections, such as the "Gloria" and "Sanctus", that are frequently excerpted and performed separately. His next major choral work was The Revelation of

St. John the Divine (1968), which sets portions of the Book of Revelation
from the Bible; it is scored for male chorus, brass, and an array of percussion instruments.

Peter Quince at the Clavier (1979), a setting of the poem by

Thoreau
.

In 1987 Argento composed a massive

Harvard
-affiliated writers of the 19th century.

Other choral works by Argento include:

Orchestral works

Argento's non-vocal output is relatively small; there are no symphonies and just one

Kennedy Center's Friedheim Award
in Music.

Other orchestral works include:

  • Divertimento (1954) for piano and strings
  • Variations for Orchestra (The Mask of Night) (1965)
  • Bravo Mozart (1969), an "imaginary biography"
  • A Ring of Time (1972) for orchestra and bells
  • In Praise of Music (1977), a set of "songs" for orchestra
  • Capriccio ‘Rossini in Paris’ (1985), essentially a clarinet concerto
  • Reverie (Reflections on a Hymn Tune) (1997)
  • Other small works for chamber groups of instruments

Discography

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Paige, Tim. "Dominick Argento, composer who was a modern master of opera, dies at 91". The Washington Post. Retrieved 21 April 2019.
  2. ^ a b c Saya, Virginia. "Dominick Argento," Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy. (Accessed 15 December 2006).
  3. ^ a b Waleson, Heidi. "An Introduction to Argento's Music." Boosey & Hawkes online (accessed 15 December 2006). Article
  4. ^
    ISBN 0-8166-4505-1
    .
  5. ^ "American Choral Directors Association". Archived from the original on 2016-03-08. Retrieved 2016-03-27., Retrieved March 2016
  6. ^ "Dominick Argento: Minnesota Romantic", Minnesota Public Radio, 2002
  7. ISBN 978-0-9617485-1-7
    .
  8. ^ Schrickel, William (10 October 2018). "The Boor Program Notes". Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. MSO.
  9. ^ Miss Havisham's Wedding Night, Boosey & Hawkes
  10. ^ Midgette, Anne. "In Search of the Next Great American Opera", The New York Times, 19 March 2006. Accessed 8 April 2008.

External links

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