Dominick Argento (October 27, 1927 – February 20, 2019)
was an American composer known for his lyric
operatic and
choral music
A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which sp ...
. Among his best known pieces are the operas ''
Postcard from Morocco
''Postcard from Morocco'' is an opera in one act composed by Dominick Argento and libretto written by John Donahue that was commissioned by the Center Opera Company (now the Minnesota Opera). It is based on ''A Child's Garden of Verses'' by Robert ...
'', ''
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
Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is ca ...
,
atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a ...
and a lyrical use of
twelve-tone
The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law ...
writing. None of Argento's music approaches the experimental, stringent ''avant-garde'' fashions of the post-World War II era.
[Saya, Virginia. "Dominick Argento," ''Grove Music Online'', ed. L. Macy. (Accessed 15 December 2006).]
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.
[Waleson, Heidi. "An Introduction to Argento's Music." Boosey & Hawkes online (accessed 15 December 2006)]
Article
/ref> 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.[Argento, Dominick. '']Catalogue Raisonné
A ''catalogue raisonné'' (or critical catalogue) is a comprehensive, annotated listing of all the known artworks by an artist either in a particular medium or all media. The works are described in such a way that they may be reliably identified ...
as Memoir.'' Minneapolis: U of M Press, 2004. . 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."
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
The American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), headquartered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is a non-profit organization with the stated purpose of promoting excellence in the field of choral music. Its membership comprises approximately 22,000 c ...
from the American Choral Directors Association.[, Retrieved March 2016]
Early life and education
The son of Sicilian immigrants, Argento was born and grew up in York, Pennsylvania
York (Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Yarrick''), known as the White Rose City (after the symbol of the House of York), is the county seat of York County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located in the south-central region of the state. The populatio ...
. He found his music classes in elementary school to be "fifty-minute sessions of excruciating boredom". Upon graduating from high school, he was drafted into the Army and worked for a period as a cryptographer
Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adve ...
. Following the war and using funding from the G.I. Bill, he began studying piano performance at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...
. 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
Nicolas Nabokov (Николай Дмитриевич Набоков; – 6 April 1978) was a Russian-born composer, writer, and cultural figure. He became a U.S. citizen in 1939.
Life
Nicolas Nabokov, a first cousin of Vladimir Nabokov, and of ...
, Henry Cowell, and Hugo Weisgall
Hugo David Weisgall (October 13, 1912 – March 11, 1997) was an American composer and conductor, known chiefly for his opera and vocal music compositions. He was born in Ivančice, Moravia (then part of Austria-Hungary, later in his childhood ...
. While there, he was briefly the music director of the Hilltop Musical Company, which Weisgall founded as a sort of answer to Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
's festival at Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh ( ) is a coastal town in the county of Suffolk, England. Located to the north of the River Alde. Its estimated population was 2,276 in 2019. It was home to the composer Benjamin Britten and remains the centre of the international Al ...
—a venue for local composers (particularly Weisgall) to present new work. Argento gained broad exposure to and experience in the world of new opera. 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
The U.S.- Italy Fulbright Commission is a bi-national, non-profit organization promoting opportunities for study, research, and teaching in Italy and the United States through competitive, merit-based grants. Since 1948, the commission acts as ex ...
. He has called the experience "life-altering;" while there, he studied briefly with Luigi Dallapiccola
Luigi Dallapiccola (February 3, 1904 – February 19, 1975) was an Italian composer known for his lyrical twelve-tone compositions.
Biography
Dallapiccola was born in Pisino d'Istria (at the time part of Austria-Hungary, current Pazin, Cr ...
.
Argento continued graduate studies and received his Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Alan Hovhaness
Alan Hovhaness (; March 8, 1911 – June 21, 2000) was an American- Armenian composer. He was one of the most prolific 20th-century composers, with his official catalog comprising 67 numbered symphonies (surviving manuscripts indicate over 70) a ...
, Bernard Rogers
Bernard Rogers (4 February 1893 – 24 May 1968) was an American composer. His best known work is ''The Passion'', an oratorio written in 1942.
Life and career
Rogers was born in New York City. He studied with Arthur Farwell, Ernest Blo ...
and Howard Hanson. 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. 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.
Argento became involved in writing music for productions at the then-new Guthrie Theater
The Guthrie Theater, founded in 1963, is a center for theater performance, production, education, and professional training in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The concept of the theater was born in 1959 in a series of discussions between Sir Tyrone Gut ...
. 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 ''Postcard from Morocco
''Postcard from Morocco'' is an opera in one act composed by Dominick Argento and libretto written by John Donahue that was commissioned by the Center Opera Company (now the Minnesota Opera). It is based on ''A Child's Garden of Verses'' by Robert ...
'' opened at Center Opera, Argento's national reputation was secure, in part thanks to a glowing review by the principal music critic of '' The New York Times''. He eventually received commissions from New York City Opera
The New York City Opera (NYCO) is an American opera company located in Manhattan in New York City. The company has been active from 1943 through 2013 (when it filed for bankruptcy), and again since 2016 when it was revived.
The opera company, du ...
, the newly formed Minnesota Opera, Washington Opera
The Washington National Opera (WNO) is an American opera company in Washington, D.C. Formerly the Opera Society of Washington and the Washington Opera, the company received Congressional designation as the National Opera Company in 2000. Performa ...
, and the Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...
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
Philip Brunelle (born July 1, 1943) is an American choral scholar, conductor and organist. He is the founder of VocalEssence. In the course of an international career as a choral and opera conductor Brunelle has been awarded Commander of the Ro ...
directed. 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 Dale Warland Singers (DWS) was a 40-voice professional chorus based in St. Paul, Minnesota, founded in 1972 by Dale Warland and disbanded in 2004. They performed a wide variety of choral repertoire but specialized in 20th-century music and ...
, The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra
The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra located in Buffalo, New York led by Music Director JoAnn Faletta. Its primary performing venue is Kleinhans Music Hall, which is a National Historic Landmark. Each season it ...
and Buffalo Schola Cantorum, and the Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher l ...
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
The Cathedral Choral Society is a 200-voice symphonic, volunteer chorus based at the Washington National Cathedral. The late J. Reilly Lewis was music director from 1985-2016. He succeeded Paul Callaway, who founded the group in 1941. The ense ...
in March 2008 at Washington National Cathedral
The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington, commonly known as Washington National Cathedral, is an American cathedral of the Episcopal Church. The cathedral is located in Washington, D.C., the ca ...
. 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
Dale Warland (born April 14, 1932, Fort Dodge, Iowa) is an American conductor, composer, founder of the Grammy-nominated Dale Warland Singers, scholar, teacher, choral consultant, and renowned champion of contemporary choral composers.Nilanjana Ku ...
.
Argento died at his home in Minneapolis in 2019.
Works
Operas
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 Boosey & Hawkes
Boosey & Hawkes is a British music publisher purported to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world. Until 2003, it was also a major manufacturer of brass, string and woodwind musical instruments.
Formed in 1930 throu ...
and performed in 2017. He collaborated with John Olon-Scrymgeour on a number of works, including ''The Masque of Angels''; ''Christopher Sly
Christopher Sly is a minor character in William Shakespeare's ''The Taming of the Shrew.'' He is a drunk man who is easily dominated by women, set up as a foil to Petruchio, the central male character in the play.
Role
''The Taming of the Shrew' ...
'' (1962), based on an episode from '' The Taming of the Shrew''; and ''The Shoemaker's Holiday'', (1967) a "ballad opera The ballad opera is a genre of English stage entertainment that originated in the early 18th century, and continued to develop over the following century and later. Like the earlier '' comédie en vaudeville'' and the later ''Singspiel'', its dist ...
" based on a play by Thomas Dekker.
After the success of ''Postcard from Morocco
''Postcard from Morocco'' is an opera in one act composed by Dominick Argento and libretto written by John Donahue that was commissioned by the Center Opera Company (now the Minnesota Opera). It is based on ''A Child's Garden of Verses'' by Robert ...
'' in 1971, which had a libretto by Jon Donahue, he received much larger commissions. The University of Minnesota and Minnesota Opera together commissioned ''The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe'' in 1975-76, with a libretto by Charles Nolte
Charles Nolte (November 3, 1923 – January 14, 2010) was an American stage and film actor, director, playwright, and educator.
Career
Nolte was born in Duluth, Minnesota and moved to Wayzata, Minnesota with his family in the early 1930s. ...
. As a result of that work, which received wildly enthusiastic reviews, the New York City Opera
The New York City Opera (NYCO) is an American opera company located in Manhattan in New York City. The company has been active from 1943 through 2013 (when it filed for bankruptcy), and again since 2016 when it was revived.
The opera company, du ...
commissioned him. He composed '' Miss Havisham's Fire'' (1977), with a libretto by Scrymgeour. It was not initially well-received, and Argento revised it into a one-act monodrama
A monodrama is a theatrical or operatic piece played by a single actor or singer, usually portraying one character.
In opera
In opera, a monodrama was originally a melodrama with one role such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's '' Pygmalion'', which w ...
, ''Miss Havisham's Wedding Night'', which the Minnesota Opera premiered on May 1, 1981, at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, conducted by Philip Brunelle. He revised ''Miss Havisham's Fire'' in 1995 and it has been successfully revived and performed since.
In 1984, the Minnesota Opera commissioned ''Casanova's Homecoming
''Casanova's Homecoming'' is an opera in three acts by Dominick Argento to an English libretto by the composer, based in part on Giacomo Casanova's memoirs. It was first performed by the Minnesota Opera in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Saint Paul, Minnes ...
'', with text by the composer; it went on to a well-received run at New York City Opera. At the insistence of Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills (May 25, 1929July 2, 2007) was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s.
Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet and Verdi, she was especially renowned for ...
, then the company's musical director, the opera was the first in New York City to be performed in English with English supertitles
Surtitles, also known as supertitles, SurCaps, OpTrans, are translated or transcribed lyrics/dialogue projected above a stage or displayed on a screen, commonly used in opera, theatre or other musical performances. The word "surtitle" comes from ...
. She wanted to ensure that the audience understood all the jokes. The opera won the 1986 National Institute for Music Theatre Award.
Argento next composed '' The Aspern Papers'' (1987) as a vehicle for Frederica von Stade, with his own libretto adapted from the 1888 novella by Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
. His next opera and arguably largest work to date was ''The Dream of Valentino'', which premiered at the Kennedy Center in 1993. Critic Anne Midgette
Anne Midgette (born June 22, 1965) is an American music critic who was the first woman to write classical music criticism regularly for '' The New York Times''. She was the chief classical music critic of '' The Washington Post'' from 2008 to ...
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.[ Midgette, Anne]
"In Search of the Next Great American Opera"
'' The New York Times'', 19 March 2006. Accessed 8 April 2008.
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 "monodrama
A monodrama is a theatrical or operatic piece played by a single actor or singer, usually portraying one character.
In opera
In opera, a monodrama was originally a melodrama with one role such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's '' Pygmalion'', which w ...
s". 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 Chopin, 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
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career ...
.
Argento's other song cycles are highly varied:
*''A Water Bird Talk'' (1974–76) is a one-act monodrama adapted from Chekhov's "On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco
''On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco'' (russian: О вреде табака, translit=O vredye tabaka) is a one-act play by Anton Chekhov. It has one character, Ivan Ivanovich Nyukhin. First published in 1886, the play was revised by Chekhov and i ...
," with images and passages from John James Audubon's ''Birds of America'';
*''The Andrée Expedition'' (1980) includes journal entries made by Swedish balloonist Salomon Andrée and excerpts from a personal diary and letters of his companion Nils Strindberg
Nils Strindberg (4 September 1872 – October 1897) was a Swedish photographer and scientist.
He was one of the three members of S. A. Andrée's ill-fated Arctic balloon expedition of 1897.
Biography
Nils Strindberg was born in Stockholm, Sw ...
during their failed three-man expedition in 1897 to the North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Magn ...
by hydrogen balloon
Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, an ...
; and
*''Miss Manners on Music'' (1998) sets to music newspaper clippings by American 20th-century advice columnist Judith Martin
Judith Martin (née Perlman; born September 13, 1938), better known by the pen name Miss Manners, is an American columnist, author, and etiquette authority.
Early life and career
Martin is the daughter of Helen and Jacob Perlman. Her father w ...
(aka "Miss Manners").
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
The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament (and consequently the final book of the Christian Bible). Its title is derived from the first word of the Koine Greek text: , meaning "unveiling" or "revelation". The Book of ...
'' 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 Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...
, was commissioned by Pennsylvania State University in honor of the state's tercentenary (both Stevens and Argento are Pennsylvania natives). For the Dale Warland Singers
The Dale Warland Singers (DWS) was a 40-voice professional chorus based in St. Paul, Minnesota, founded in 1972 by Dale Warland and disbanded in 2004. They performed a wide variety of choral repertoire but specialized in 20th-century music and ...
, Argento wrote ''I Hate and I Love'' (1981), with text by Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 - 54 BCE), often referred to simply as Catullus (, ), was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His s ...
, and ''Walden Pond'' (1996), based on excerpts from Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and hi ...
.
In 1987 Argento composed a massive ''Te Deum
The "Te Deum" (, ; from its incipit, , ) is a Latin Christian hymn traditionally ascribed to AD 387 authorship, but with antecedents that place it much earlier. It is central to the Ambrosian hymnal, which spread throughout the Latin Chu ...
'' that integrates the Latin text with medieval English folk poetry. ''A Toccata of Galuppi's'' (1989), a 20-minute setting of a Robert Browning poem, is one of many works inspired by Argento's time in Florence. In 2008, the Harvard Glee Club premiered his ''Apollo in Cambridge'', a multi-movement setting of texts by Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher l ...
-affiliated writers of the 19th century.
Other choral works by Argento include:
*''A Nation of Cowslips'' (1968), seven bagatelles on nonsense text by Keats
*''Tria Carmina Pasachalia'' (1970), an Easter cantata
A cantata (; ; literally "sung", past participle feminine singular of the Italian verb ''cantare'', "to sing") is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir.
The meaning of th ...
for women's chorus
*''Jonah and the Whale'' (1973), a large-scale oratorio on medieval English texts
*''Spirituals and Swedish Chorales'' (1994)
*''Walden Pond: Nocturnes and Barcarolles'' (1997, SATB choir, 3 cellos, harp)
*''Dover Beach Revisited'' (2003), refers to the poem "Dover Beach
"Dover Beach" is a lyric poem by the English poet Matthew Arnold. It was first published in 1867 in the collection ''New Poems''; however, surviving notes indicate its composition may have begun as early as 1849. The most likely date is 1851.A ...
" written by Victorian Matthew Arnold; Argento's work was composed for the Yale Glee Club
*''Four Seascapes'' (2004); words of Herman Melville
Herman Melville ( born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are ''Moby-Dick'' (1851); ''Typee'' (1846), a r ...
, Mark Twain, Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
, and Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes — for the novel ''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' and for the plays '' Our Town'' and ''The Skin of Our Teeth'' — ...
set to music
*Numerous anthem
An anthem is a musical composition of celebration, usually used as a symbol for a distinct group, particularly the national anthems of countries. Originally, and in music theory and religious contexts, it also refers more particularly to short s ...
s for choir and organ and a cappella
''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without Musical instrument, instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differ ...
motet
In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margare ...
s
*''Evensong: Of Love and Angels'' (2008, full orchestra, SSAATTBB choir, two soprano soloists)
*''Seasons'' (2014, SATB choir a cappella
''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without Musical instrument, instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differ ...
)
Orchestral works
Argento's non-vocal output is relatively small; there are no symphonies and just one string quartet, written when he was a student. He produced numerous orchestral suites based on his operas, including ''Le tombeau d'Edgar Poe'' (1985), adapted from ''The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe'', and the popular ''Valentino Dances'' (1994), from ''The Dream of Valentino''. He wrote two ballets that were fashioned into orchestral suites, ''The Resurrection of Don Juan'' (1956) and ''Royal Invitation (Homage to the Queen of Tonga)'' (1964). His 1982 ''Fire Variations'' was nominated for the 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
* ''In Praise of Music'' (1977), with the Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Eiji Oue, Reference Recordings, 2002
* ''Casa Guidi'' (1983), with Frederica von Stade and the Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Eiji Oue, Reference Recordings, 2002
* ''Capriccio for Clarinet and Orchestra'' (1986), with Burt Hara and the Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Eiji Oue, Reference Recordings, 2002
''Dominick Argento: Three Works''
Odyssey Opera of Boston, Studio Recording, released in 2019 - The Boor, Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night, A Water Bird Talk, conducted by Gil Rose
''Walden Pond'' (1997), The Dale Warland Singers, Gothic Records, 2003
Notes
External links
A radio biography of Argento
Profile
Boosey & Hawkes
Boosey & Hawkes is a British music publisher purported to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world. Until 2003, it was also a major manufacturer of brass, string and woodwind musical instruments.
Formed in 1930 throu ...
Walden Pond by the Dale Warland Singers
Review of 2015 ''Walden Pond''
performance by the Minnesota Beethoven Festival Chorale under Dale Warland
June 6, 1986
2017 performance notes of "The Boor" with the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra
{{DEFAULTSORT:Argento, Dominick
1927 births
2019 deaths
20th-century classical composers
21st-century classical composers
American male classical composers
American classical composers
Eastman School of Music alumni
George Peabody Medal winners
Grammy Award winners
American people of Italian descent
American opera composers
Male opera composers
Musicians from York, Pennsylvania
Pulitzer Prize for Music winners
Peabody Institute alumni
University of Minnesota faculty
Pupils of Bernard Rogers
Pupils of Howard Hanson
21st-century American composers
Pupils of Luigi Dallapiccola
20th-century American composers
Classical musicians from Pennsylvania
20th-century American male musicians
21st-century American male musicians
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters