David Diamond

From Philosopedia

Diamond, David (9 July 1915 - 13 June 2005)

A distinguished composer and member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Diamond was born in Rochester and studied composition at The Eastman School of Music with Bernard Rogers and violin with Effie Knaus. In 1934, winning a scholarship from New Music School and Dalcroze Institute in New York City, he studied with Paul Boepple and Roger Sessions until the spring of 1936.

His work in the 1930s has been described as being neoclassical, after which he developed a romantic twelve-tone technique which he has used in a variety of styles. Composer of nine symphonies and various other works, he is best-known for “Rounds” (1944).

In 1937, at Fontainebleau, he joined the class of Nadia Boulanger, and his Psalm won that year’s Juilliard Publication Award, influencing his being given a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1938. Upon Maurice Ravel’s death in 1937, he wrote an elegy for brass, percussion, and two harps, dedicated to the composer who had been his ideal. When Germany declared war on France, he returned to the States.

Diamond has received numerous awards, including a National Academy of Arts and Letters Grant "in recognition of his outstanding gift among the youngest generation of composers, and for the high quality of his achievement as demonstrated in orchestral works, chamber music, and songs."

Works appearing during the 1940s include the Concerto for Two Solo Pianos (1942), String Quartet No. 2 (1943), Symphony No. 3 (1945), String Quartet No. 3 (1946, receiving the 1947 New York Music Critics' Circle Award), Sonata for Piano (1947) and Chaconne for Violin and Piano (1948). The String Quartet No. 4 from 1951 was nominated for a Grammy award in 1965, as recorded on Epic Records by the Beaux Arts Quartet.

In 1951 Diamond returned to Europe as Fulbright Professor. Except for brief visits to the United States, such as the occasion of his appointment as Slee Professor at the University of Buffalo in 1961 and again in 1963, he remained in Italy until 1965.

On his return to the United States, the New York Philharmonic performed two of his major orchestral works: the Symphony No. 5, with Leonard Bernstein conducting, and the Piano Concerto, conducted by Mr. Diamond himself. From 1965 to 1967 Diamond taught at the Manhattan School of Music. During those two years he was the recipient of the Rheta Sosland Chamber Music prize for his String Quartet No. 8, received the Stravinsky ASCAP award, and was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1971, Diamond was given a National Opera Institute grant to write his opera, The Noblest Game. In 1973, Diamond became professor of composition at The Juilliard School, where he taught for some twenty-five years.

The renewed interest in Diamond's music, starting in the 1980s, spurred by conductor Gerard Schwarz, coincided with his being awarded significant honors available to a composer. In 1986, Diamond received the William Schuman Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1991 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Edward MacDowell Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement.

Asked in 1992 what humanism connoted, Diamond replied to Warren Allen Smith,

• To believe in Man’s possibility of self-improvement and the elimination of all superstitious mumbo-jumbo.

In 1995, Diamond elaborated further in a letter to Smith:

• Heine and his agnosticism has been interesting me all over again. The Sammons biography was fine but Ernst Pawel’s (what a loss!) splendid Heine’s Last Paris Days deals with this wonderfully. I think Heine liked the poetic splendour of Biblical times, as Flaubert did. But Heine, being Jewish, was more attuned to the rituals and ethics. Strange what [Arthur] Miller] said to you in a letter found in Miller's entry in Philosopedia. I know what he means, but the Wonder and Cruelty of the Universe makes me turn to Jeshua ben David of Nazareth when I am fed up with Man’s viciousness and cruelty and greed. Yaweh, Jehovah, or Adonai, stopped talking directly to his human creation ever since Moses invented him, language and all. The new religious Right has me angry - it’s the same crap fifty years later, and on and on. The majority of irrational humans are dumb-dums, non-thinking simpletons. But Cummings in the Cummings entry in Philosopedia said it all much better.

Diamond expressly requested that there be no funeral, and he died of heart failure at the age of 89 in Rochester, New York. In New York City, he had lived at 88-90 Jane Street.

Correspondence

Diamond wrote Warren Allen Smith concerning E. E. Cummings and philosophy. See the correspondence.

{WAS, 16 June 1992 and 18 September 1995}