Norman Dello Joio
Norman Dello Joio was an American composer and teacher in the 20th century. He composed works for choir, orchestra, voice, and piano. He enjoyed composing with traditional chants and cantus firmi, and his influences included church music, 19th century Italian Opera, and Jazz. He was born to Italian Immigrants in 1913 in New York City. He is a sixth generation composer in the DeGoio family, and his music education started very young. His father worked for the Metropolitan opera and he began Dello Joio’s piano lessons at age 4. By the time he was 12, Dello Joio began occasionally playing at the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in place of his father. Not long after, as a teenager he began studying the organ with his godfather Pietro Yon. He continued working in churches for many years, until in 1939 he discovered his love for composing overshadowed his desire to play for churches.
At the age of 26, Dello Joio attended Julliard on scholarship. He studied composition with Bernard Wagenaar. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, he went on to study with Paul Hindemith at Yale alongside such notable composers as Leonard Bernstein and Lukas Foss. Hindemith’s influence stayed with Dello Joio throughout his career. It affected him as a composer as well as a teacher. American music at the time of Dello Joio’s education consisted of primarily serialists and atonalism, but despite these influences, Dello Joio composed lyrical melodies consistent with the Italian Opera he had been surrounded by in childhood. In the biography on his website, Dello Joio quotes the most influential thing Hindemith ever told him: "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." Under this tutelage, Dello Joio thrived. Many years later, in The Choral Journal, his music was described in terms of his history: “The Catholic liturgy manifests itself in Dello Joio’s use of medieval modes; the dance band can be heard in his use of kinetic rhythm; the Hindemith neoclassicism emerges in the clarity and precision of his orchestral coloring…” In April 1944, he earned a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and began his first teaching job later that year.
After his education, Dello Joio began teaching at colleges around the US. His first job was at Sarah Lawrence College, a small liberal arts college in Yonkers, New York. He taught there for 6 years. In his final year, he was commissioned by the Whitney Foundation to compose an opera. In fulfillment of this commission, Dello Joio composed The Triumph of Joan, an opera about Joan of Arc, for student performance. It ran for 6 performances in May, but Dello Joio expressed his dissatisfaction with the work, and he withdrew it for editing to be republished later. Following this performance, Dello Joio took a ten year break from teaching. Dello Joio revised his opera into a television opera under the name of The Trial at Rouen which premiered on NBC in 1956, and later he revised it for the stage again under the title The Triumph of St. Joan. He returned to the teaching profession in 1960 when he began teaching at the Mannes School of Music in New York, New York. He taught here for 12 years, until moving to Boston University’s College of Fine Arts in 1972. He served as Dean of the Fine Arts program in Boston until his retirement in 1978 upon which he moved to Long Island New York.
Aside from his personal teaching and composition, Dello Joio proposed the premise for the Ford Foundation’s Contemporary Music Project in 1959 and worked as the program’s director from 1964 until 1973. This project placed young composers in salaried residencies at high schools to compose music for the ensembles and programs. The project offered education to the composers and high school students as well as cataloging and publishing their works. The project outcome and history was detailed in a 2009 dissertation by Timothy Robblee at the University of Minnesota. Throughout the 14 year project, 90 composers were commissioned, and many were able to pursue composition as a full time career afterwards. Unfortunately, the project was not as successful as founders had hoped in promoting the music beyond first performances, and many of the surviving publications survived only as a result of outside advertising and work on the composer’s part. The Contemporary Music Project inspired many young musicians to compose, but it’s lack of organization and publishing/dissemination problems caused it to be less impacting than its originators had hoped. Despite this negative outlook, Robblee noted that the project served as a guide for future projects with similar goals. Bandquest and the American Composers Forum both built upon the ideas and failures of this project, and continue to guide young composers today.
In retirement, Dello Joio enjoyed more free time with which to compose. Throughout his years of teaching, he accomplished many things with his students and the Contemporary Music Project, but he also earned many awards such as an Emmy for his soundtrack used in the television special “The Louvre”, a Pulitzer prize for his Meditations on Ecclesiastes, and a New York Critics Circle award for Variations, Chaconne, and Finale- an orchestra transcription of his third piano sonata. This sonata is an example of his tendency to use chant as the basis for his pieces, as this theme comes from the Kyrie of the Missa de Angelis. He also received a New York Critics Circle award for his Triumph of St. Joan. In addition to these awards, Dello Joio has been the target of praise. Maurice Hinson wrote in an article: “Dello Joio is well established as one of our foremost figures in contemporary American music. He has never been afraid to write a beautiful melody or music that has great communicative power. Studying his piano music will be engrossing, stimulating, and rewarding for both the student as well as the teacher.”
In his retirement, Dello Joio worked with Debra Torok on a project that included a large portion of his works. In 1997, Dello Joio decided that he wanted to make his works more accessible to the public, so he contacted a pianist to record with him. Debra Torok worked closely with the composer on editing scores and performing interpretations. Torok got a close up look at the composition process too because Dello Joio didn’t stop composing while producing the recordings. Together, they worked to record many of his piano works, including a set for children, and Dello Joio speaking about the compositions himself. They also released an updated version of his complete piano works (edited by Torok). Together, they put out a 2 volume CD set which included the complete set of works for piano.
Dello Joio continued composing until his death in 2008. Overall, he composed 45 choral works, 40 works for large ensemble, 25 pieces for voice, 20 chamber works, and concertos for piano, flute, and harp, and concertantes for clarinet, and harmonica. According to his website his piano output spans nearly 20 pieces: “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… 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.” He was survived by his ex-wife, and his current wife, as well as his sons Justin Dello Joio- a composer- and Norman Dello Joio- a famous equestrian, and his daughter Victoria Dello Joio, a martial arts instructor.
Bibliography
"Biography." Dello Joio. Accessed May 02, 2018. http://www.dellojoio.com/biography.htm.
"The Composers Speak in Louisville." The Choral Journal 29, no. 5 (1988): 36-37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23547423.
HINSON, MAURICE. "THE SOLO PIANO MUSIC OF NORMAN DELLO JOIO." American Music Teacher 19, no. 3 (1970): 34-48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43557363.
"Notes for "Norman Dello Joio: Piano Works, Vol. 2"." DRAM. Accessed May 02, 2018. https://www.dramonline.org/albums/norman-dello-joio-piano-works-vol-2/notes.
Robblee, Timothy John. "Examination of the Impact of the Contemporary Music Project on Wind Band Repertoire and Performance in Oregon." PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2009. October 2019. Accessed May 2, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/11299/57306.