Performing Arts: Music

David Diamond's Music for Romeo and Juliet

A modern musical adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was composed by David Diamond. Born in Rochester, New York, in 1915, Diamond studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Eastman School of Music and received lessons from respected musicians Roger Sessions and Nadia Boulanger.

His musical style has changed over the years, experimenting with neoclassical and romantic works before settling with the twelve-tone, chromatic style in the late 1950's. His works include several chamber and vocal pieces, nine symphonies, the opera the Noblest Game, and music for Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, and Timon of Athens.

His 1944 composition, Rounds, is probably his most widely known work, but the moving melodic affect of his Romeo and Juliet, a series of scenes for small orchestra, has been gaining popularity across the nation.

In the mid-1960's Diamond was a professor at the Manhattan School of Music, and in 1973, he began teaching at The Juilliard School. By the 1980s, interest in Diamond's works increased, and he received the 1986 William Schuman Lifetime Achievement Award, the 1991 Gold Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letter, the Edward MacDowell Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement, and a National Medal of Arts. And when the New York Philharmonic celebrated its 150th anniversary, Diamond's Symphony No. 11 (1989-91) was one of the main works commissioned for the celebration.