CBA Ode to Joy

Program Notes O! to realize space and flying clouds, O! to realize space, the sun and moon, O! to be rulers of life, O! to be rulers of destiny, of life, of destiny, and of life. O! O! la la la la la... Listen, listen, O! Listen to a song, a jubilant song. Listen to our song, the joy of our spirit, the joy of our spirit it is uncaged. Listen, listen to a song. We

dance, exult, we shout and leap. O! O! O! Listen to our song. O!

Norman Dello Joio, a Pulitzer-prize winning composer of chamber, choral, and orchestral music, followed in the long-line of church organists among his Italian family, and at age 14 became organist and choir director of a church in New York City. His father also was an organist, choir director, pianist, singer, and vocal coach to singers from the Metropolitan Opera. From the age of four Dello Joio studied piano with his father and in his 20s earned a scholarship to the Juilliard Music School graduate school to study composition. In 1941 at Tanglewood and Yale, he began studies with noted German composer Paul Hindemith (1895–1963), who influenced Dello Joio’s composition style. Hindemith told Dello Joio “your music is lyrical by nature; don’t ever forget that.” Hindemith himself opposed the 12-tone school of composer Arnold Schoenberg and instead set out the principles of a harmonic system based on an expansion of traditional tonality. With Hindemith, Dello Joio worked on contrapuntal and harmonic exercises.

Dello Joio emphasized being true to himself as a composer while taking into account the people who will perform his work: “I have always felt philosophically that I’m in relationship to others,” he told an interviewer in 1985. He also acknowledged feeling very much at home with voices, as a result of his work as an organist and of spending much of his childhood in a “choir loft.” “There’s something about the human voice in communicating a specific idea that I like. I respond very much to good poetry that lends itself to setting.” Dello Joio taught at Sara Lawrence College, at the Mannes College of Music, and at Boston University where he was professor of music and dean of the Fine and Applied Arts School. By the late 40s Dello Joio was considered one of America’s leading composers and by the 50s he had gained international recognition. His compositions include more than 45 choral works, some 30 works for orchestra, and 25 pieces for solo voice, three operas, and eight ballets.

CBA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS 31