David Del Tredici is an Americancomposer. He has won a Pulitzer Prize in Music and is a former Guggenheim and Woodrow Wilson fellow. Del Tredici is considered a pioneer of the Neo-Romantic movement. He has also been described by the Los Angeles Times as "one of our most flamboyant outsider composers".
Early life and education
Del Tredici started his musical life as an aspiring pianist at the age of twelve, and has said that if he hadn't been a pianist, he would have become a florist. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied piano and played primarily Romantic works. At Berkeley, he attended the Aspen Music Festival and School. The pianist he was going to study with was "mean" to him, however, so Del Tredici tried his hand at composing music instead. He composed Opus 1, his first composition, and was invited to perform it for Darius Milhaud. After Milhaud complimented him on the piece, Del Tredici went back to Berkeley to concentrate on composition rather than performance. During his early development as a composer, he found influence in his piano teachers Bernhard Abramovitch and Robert Helps, whom he found more creative and supportive of trusting "your instincts" than were his composition professors. After studying at the University of California, Berkeley, he attended Princeton University. There he studied composition with Roger Sessions, Earl Kim, and Seymour Shifrin. At Princeton he was initially influenced by serialism, but abandoned that school of composition within a year of starting it. He left Princeton to live in New York City for two years before returning to the university.
Career
In 1964, Del Tredici met Aaron Copland at Tanglewood; they would be friends for the remainder of Copland's life, and his musical style remains an influence on Del Tredici. Del Tredici taught at Harvard University, where he worked alongside Leon Kirchner, and was a part of the modernism movement. He has stated that "anything bad appeals to any young composer", including himself. Much of Del Tredici's work has been inspired by literature, including author and poet James Joyce. As a fellow lapsed Catholic, Del Tredici was attracted to Joyce's struggles with his own Catholic past and "tortured life", which found voice in Del Tredici's "dissonant and nearly atonal" style. He also found inspiration in Martin Gardner's The Annotated Alice and its commentary on the works of Lewis Carroll. During this period, he found himself moving back towards tonality, which he felt was more appropriate for works such as his Final Alice and Adventures Underground. Del Tredici was Composer-In-Residence at the New York Philharmonic from 1988 until 1990. In 1999 and 2000 he taught at Yale University. He also has taught at Boston University, Juilliard School, and the University of Buffalo., he was a faculty member of the City College of New York. Today, Del Tredici continues to draw on literature for his song cycles. His work has continued to draw on Lewis Carroll, but he has also been inspired by contemporary American poets. He has also created works celebrating "gayness", acknowledging that many great composers were gay and that "it's something to be celebrated". A reviewer has noted that themes in his work examine "tormented relationships, personal transformations, and the joys and sorrows of gay life". He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has held additional residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the MacDowell Colony.
