Donald Martino
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Donald Martino (May 16, 1931 – December 8, 2005) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer.
Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Martino studied composition with Ernst Bacon, Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, and Luigi Dallapiccola. Most of his mature works (including pseudo-tonal works such as Paradiso Choruses and Seven Pious Pieces were composed using the twelve-tone method; the sound-world he worked to create leaned more towards the lyrical Dallapiccola than his other teachers.
The pianist Easley Blackwood commissioned Martino's sonata Pianississimo, explicitly requesting that it be one of the most difficult pieces ever written. The resulting work is indeed of epic difficulty, nevertheless it has been recorded several times. (Blackwood declined to perform it.)
Martino, who taught at Yale University, the New England Conservatory of Music, Brandeis University, and Harvard University, won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1974 for his beautiful chamber work Notturno.
Martino died in Antigua in 2005.
[edit] References
- Los Angeles Times Staff (2005). Los Angeles Times: Obituary of Donald Martino. Retrieved December 25, 2005.
[edit] Resources
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