The music of American composer David Diamond (1915-2005) is distinct and recognizable. Built on tonal and modal harmony and wide open voicing, often it develops through fleeting motivic fragments which combine to form a landscape as expansive and majestic as the American frontier.
Although a longtime member of the faculty of the Juilliard School, Diamond was a maverick who was out of step with prevailing musical trends. In 1949, when he approached Arnold Schoenberg for lessons in serial techniques rooted in atonality, Schoenberg reportedly refused, saying, “Why do you want to do that? You’re a young Bruckner. Besides, I never meant [my method] for everybody.”
Composed in 1947, Diamond’s Music for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was never intended as incidental music for the play. In fact, the composer refused a request for use of the music for a 1951 Broadway production starring Olivia de Havilland, choosing to creating a new score. Instead, the work stands as a five-movement concert suite. Each movement forms an atmospheric vignette. Diamond said that his aim was “to convey as fully and yet as economically as possible the innate beauty and pathos of Shakespeare’s great drama without resorting to a large orchestral canvas and a definite musical form.”
As with the bittersweet drama, this lushly cinematic music inhabits a world poised between shimmering light and unrelenting darkness. It is at once innocent, naively optimistic, and tragic. The movement titles clearly reflect the dramatic situation, yet the work also can be appreciated as pure music.
The premiere on October 20, 1947, led by Thomas Scherman, marked the inaugural concert of the New York City-based Little Orchestra Society. This recording features Gerard Schwarz and the New York Chamber Symphony:
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I. Overture: Allegro maestoso:
II. Balcony Scene: Andante semplice:
III. Romeo and Friar Laurence: Andante:
IV. Juliet and her Nurse: Allegretto scherzando:
V. The Death of Romeo and Juliet: Adagio sospirando:
Recordings
- Diamond: Music for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: Gerard Schwarz, New York Chamber Symphony Amazon
Featured Image: “Romeo and Juliet” (1884), Frank Bernard Dicksee