David Del Tredici, Music: History, Composers, And Performers, Biographies

Related Category: Music: History, Composers, And Performers, Biographies

David Del Tredici[del trudE´chE] Pronunciation Key, 1937–, American composer, b. Cloverdale, Calif. Originally a pianist, he made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony at 16. He studied composition with Darius Milhaud (1958), at the Univ. of California, Berkeley (B.A., 1959), and at Princeton (M.F.A., 1963). He taught at Harvard (1966–72) and Boston Univ. (1973–84) before joining the faculty of the City Univ. of New York in 1984. Del Tredici has composed for orchestra (sometimes including "folk" instruments), chamber groups, piano, and accompanied voice. His early works, e.g., I Hear an Army (1964) and Syzygy (1966), are in a modernist idiom and largely inspired by the verbal pyrotechnics of James Joyce. Since the late 1960s, however, Del Tredici has manifested an epic obsession with Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, composing many pieces inspired by these texts. Usually melodic and popular with audiences, these works include An Alice Symphony (1969, rev. 1976), Final Alice (1976), In Memory of a Summer Day (1980, Pulitzer Prize), and Haddock's Eyes (1986).

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