Domenick Argento (born October 27, 1927, York, Pennsylvania) is an American composer, best known as a leading composer of lyric opera. October 27 is the 300th day of the year (301st in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 65 days remaining. ... 1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Nickname: The White Rose City Coordinates: Country United States State Pennsylvania County York Incorporated Borough September 24, 1787 City January 11, 1887 Mayor John Brenner Area    - City 13. ... A composer is a person who writes music. ... The Teatro alla Scala in Milan. ...

Argento is the son of Italian immigrants. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the Peabody Conservatory, where his teachers included Nicholas Nabokov, Henry Cowell, and Hugo Weisgall. Argento received his Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Alan Hovhaness, Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson. He also briefly studied in Italy with Luigi Dallapiccola. Located in Baltimore, Maryland, the Peabody Conservatory of Music (or just The Peabody) is one of the most prestigious musical institutions in the world, and also the first conservatory in America. ... Henry Cowell (March 11, 1897 - December 10, 1965) was an American composer, musical theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. ... Hugo Weisgall (1912–1997) was a American composer, known chiefly for opera and vocal music. ... The Eastman School of Music is the University of Rochesters college and graduate school of music. ... Alan Hovhaness with an Indonesian rebab Alan Hovhaness (March 8, 1911 – June 21, 2000) was an American composer of Armenian and Scottish descent. ... Bernard Rogers (February 4, 1893- May 24, 1968) is an American composer. ... Howard Harold Hanson (October 28, 1896 – February 26, 1981) was a composer, conductor and educator from the United States of America. ... Luigi Dallapiccola (February 3, 1904 – February 19, 1975) was an Italian composer known for his lyrical twelve-tone compositions. ...

Argento has written fourteen operas, major song cycles, orchestral works, and many choral pieces. In a predominantly tonal context, his music freely combines tonality, atonality and a lyrical use of twelve-tone writing, though none of Argento's music approaches the experimental avant garde fashions of the post World War II era. He was a professor of music for more than 40 years at the University of Minnesota, teaching composition, history of opera and orchestration. Besides an international reputation, his music has been an especially integral part of artistic life in Minneapolis/St. Paul since the 1960s. For most of his adult life, Argento spent summers in Florence, Italy, where he composed a great deal of his music. His wife Carolyn Bailey was a soprano who performed many of his early works. Tonality is a system of writing music according to certain hierarchical pitch relationships around a key center or tonic, thus establishing tonality as relational at its core. ... Atonality describes music not conforming to the system of tonal hierarchies, which characterizes the sound of classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. ... Twelve-tone technique (also dodecaphony) is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg. ...

Argento was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for his song cycle "From the Diary of Virginia Woolf". The recording by Frederica Von Stade and the Minnesota Orchestra of his song cycle for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, "Casa Guidi", settings of letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, won the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Argento's book Catalogue Raisonne as Memoir, an autobiographical discussion of his works, was published in 2004. The gold medal awarded for Public Service in Journalism The Pulitzer Prize is an American award regarded as the highest honor in print journalism, literary achievements, and musical compositions. ...

Argento's operas, solo vocal music and choral pieces show an unusually sophisticated literate taste. He wrote his own librettos for his later operas. His compositions are always well-crafted, and his orchestrations are evidence of a fine ear for musical textures. No other American composer of opera has sustained such a high quality of output for the stage in a large body of work. Postcard from Morocco was the opera that first created his national and international reputation. Prominent productions have been Casanova's Homecoming for the opening of the Ordway Theater in St. Paul, The Aspern Papers, written for the talents of Frederica Von Stade, at Dallas Opera and broadcast on PBS, The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Casanova's Homecoming at New York City Opera, and The Dream of Valentino at Washington Opera. His one critical failure, Miss Havisham's Fire, premiered at New York City Opera in 1979, was redeemed in a highly praised revised version produced at St. Louis Opera in 2001. Argento's operas have also been produced in Europe, particularly in Germany.

Like his operas, Argento's songs are distinctive for vocal lyricism and exquisitely sensitive text settings. After the early song cyles Songs about Spring (e.e. cummings poetry, soprano and piano), and Six Elizabethan Songs (English Renaissance poetry, high voice and piano; a voice with chamber ensemble version also), his song composition innovatively turned to prose for texts: Letters from Composers (1968, tenor and guitar); To Be Sung upon the Water (1974, tenor, clarinet, piano); From the Diary of Virginia Woolf (1975), composed for mezzo-soprano Janet Baker; The Andree Expedition (1983), composed for baritone Hakan Hagegard; Casa Guidi (1983, with orchestra; voice and piano version also), composed for mezzo-soprano Frederica Von Stade; A Few Words about Chekhov (1996), composed for Frederica Von Stade and Hakan Hagegard; and Miss Manners on Music (1998, mezzo-soprano and piano).

Operas

• Sicilian Limes (1953 [withdrawn])
• The Boor (1957)
• Colonel Jonathan the Saint (composed 1958-61 [withdrawn])
• Christopher Sly (1962)
• The Masque of Angels (1963)
• The Shoemaker's Holiday (1967)
• Postcard from Morocco (1971)
• A Water Bird Talk (1974)
• The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe (1976)
• Miss Havisham's Fire (1979; revised 1995, revision produced 2001)
• Miss Havisham's Wedding Night (1981)
• Casanova's Homecoming (1986)
• The Aspern Papers (1988)
• The Dream of Valentino (1994)

External links

• A radio biography of Argento