Composer David Del Tredici has Died, Aged 86

The American composer was best known for his 1975 work "Final Alice"

The American composer David Del Tredici, an exponent of the New Romantic movement who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work, has passed away at the age of 86.

Born in Cloverdale, California in 1937, Del Tredici began his musical life as a pianist and studied the instrument at the University of California, Berkeley. He then returned to the same institution to study composition, after a formative compliment on one of his early works from the composer Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Festival.

Del Tredici also studied at Princeton University with Roger Sessions, Earl Kim, and Seymour Shifrin — and while he was initially drawn to serialist techniques during this period, he later chose to reject them in favor of a more tonal idiom.

One of his most-loved pieces is the 1975 concert-opera work Final Alice, for soprano and large orchestra. Based on the final two chapters of Lewis Carroll's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the work is partially sung and partially spoken, with a hugely difficult role for the soprano.

Another "Alice" work, In Memory of a Summer Day, won Del Tredici a Pulitzer Prize in 1980. However, soon after that, he began to veer away from the intense Romanticism of his "Alice" works, incorporating a more dissonant language.

He frequently drew on literary sources for inspiration, particularly the writing of James Joyce — whose source material yielded the works Six Songs on Texts of James Joyce, I Hear an Army, Night Conjure-Verse, and Syzygy.

In the latter part of his life, Del Tredici's works focused on expressing his queer sexuality and on gay life in modern America. He frequently set texts by gay authors and poets, such as Ginsberg, Monette, and Gunn.

Del Tredici spent a period as Composer-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic and taught at Harvard University, Yale University, Boston University, The Juilliard School, the University of Buffalo, and the City College of New York. He held a Guggenheim Fellowship and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

"Del Tredici is that rare find among composers — a creator with a truly original gift," Aaron Copland once said. "I venture to say that his music is certain to make a lasting impression on the American musical scene. I know of no other composer of his generation who composes music of greater freshness and daring, or with more personality."

You can hear an excerpt from Final Alice, sung by Barbara Hendricks with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Georg Solti, below.