David Diamond

David Diamond’s “The Enormous Room”: A Fantasia Inspired by Cummings

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In the 1922 autobiographical novel, The Enormous Room, the American author E.E. Cummings detailed his temporary imprisonment in a French detention camp during the First World War. Cummings, who in 1917 had recently graduated from Harvard College, volunteered as an ambulance driver during the war under the auspices of the International Red Cross. Irreverent anti-war letters written by Cummings and his friend, the fellow American, William Slater Brown, attracted the attention of censors, …

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David Diamond’s “Rounds for String Orchestra”: Freedom and Adventure

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In 1944, the American composer David Diamond (1915-2005) received a commission from Dimitri Mitropoulos with a simple and specific instruction. “These are distressing times,” he wrote. “Most of the difficult music I play is distressing. Make me happy.” Mitropoulos, then principal conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, had become disillusioned with the stream of thorny, “distressing” twelve-tone pieces which crossed his desk. Diamond’s response was the jubilant, three-movement Rounds for String Orchestra. It remains …

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David Diamond’s Second Symphony: A Mid-Century American Masterwork

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Listeners who go in search of “the great American symphony” will be rewarded with a handful of often-neglected mid-twentieth century masterworks. They include the Third Symphonies of Aaron Copland and Roy Harris, the First Symphony of Samuel Barber, as well as music by Howard Hanson, Walter Piston, William Schuman, Peter Mennin, Lou Harrison, and others. These composers came to prominence in the 1930s and 40s, championed by conductors like Boston Symphony music director Serge Koussevitzky. Their musical …

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David Diamond’s Fourth Symphony: A Neglected Mid-Century Masterwork

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There’s a whole group of great American symphonists who came of age in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, flourished in the middle of the century, and then fell into relative neglect as atonality became the ruling doctrine of concert music. Their names include Howard Hanson, Walter Piston, William Schuman, and Roy Harris. David Diamond (1915-2005) is another significant composer from this group. Diamond’s music was programmed in the 1940s and ’50s by …

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Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet

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Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has inspired composers from Berlioz to Prokofiev to David Diamond. One of this timeless tragedy’s most popular musical depictions was composed by the 28-year-old Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). Tchaikovsky called the work an Overture-Fantasy, but it can also be considered a tone poem. Let’s listen to a live performance with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev. Consider how Tchaikovsky’s music captures the deep emotions at the heart of the …

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