Hearing The Pulitzers

Episode 15 - 1957: Norman Dello Joio, Meditations on Ecclesiastes

Norman Dello Joio is one of those composers you might know depending on your background. Sing choral music? You might know him from A Jubilant Song. Play in band? You might have performed his Fantasies on a Theme by Haydn. He was accomplished and prolific composer, but we did not know his Pulitzer winning Meditations on Ecclesiastes before this episode. Join Dave and Andrew as they explore if it fits into the list of winners in the 1950s or is an outlier.

If you want to know more about Dello Joio, we recommend:

1. Dello Joio's website (which was last updated in 2009, but still has useful documentation on his life and career)
2. Edward Downes's article "The Music of Norman Dello Joio" in
   The Musical Quarterly Vol. 48, No. 2 (April, 1962): 149-172.
3. Ann Meyer's interview with Norman Dello Joio published in Music Educators Journal Vol 74, Issue 2 (1987): 53-56.

Episode 14 - 1956: Ernst Toch, Symphony No. 3

Like Gian Carlo Menotti before him, Ernst Toch was a European composer who won an American prize. Unlike Menotti, Toch did not have the same success in the United States that he had in Europe and never fully identified as an "American" composer. Join us as we find out how his third symphony, inspired by his experience as a Jew fleeing the Nazis in the 1930s, might tell us something about Toch's place in American musical history.

 

If you'd like to learn more about Ernst Toch, we recommend:

1. This fascinating article about Toch's experience fleeing the Nazis written by his grandson.
2. Toch's Geographical Fugue, one of the first examples of "Gesprochene Musik."
3. Paul A. Pisk and Manton Monroe Marble's 1938 survey of Toch's music written for The Musical Quarterly.