John Corigliano
Teaching the World to Listen
by Jessica Levine-Pizano '98

John Corigliano (left) with students (left to right) Ayse Onder, Desh Hindle, and Sophia Zimmerman Czapp '01, who is singing an aria from the composer's The Ghost of Versailles.

Three days after winning the Pulitzer Prize for his Second Symphony, composer John Corigliano was on campus as a guest of the President's College, in collaboration with The Hartt School. In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize, Corigliano had previously won an Academy Award in 1999 for Best Original Film Score for The Red Violin. He is the first composer since Aaron Copland to win both awards.

During his visit to the University on April 19, Corigliano led a master class for students from Hartt's composition department. Unlike a traditional master class in which the composer critiques the work, Corigliano engaged his students by calling them the "innocents" and asking them to listen to the pieces and describe what they heard.

"Saying that you liked or didn't like the piece is not useful for the composer," said Corigliano. "Tell the composer what you heard and what the piece communicated to you the first time you heard it. That the composer can use."

During the master class, Corigliano listened to Oscuridades for flute, clarinet, bassoon, and guitar by doctoral candidate Dan Román; The Kiss for piano and two violins by doctoral candidate Min Jung Kim; and Fusion for orchestra by master's candidate Desh Hindle. After hearing all three pieces, Corigliano praised Hartt's composition department. "The fact that each of the three pieces was unique and sounded very different [from one another] shows that this is a healthy composition department. So often when I visit a school, the composers' pieces sound the same. That shows that the composers are not being encouraged to write in their own voices."

Robert Carl, chair of the composition department, interviewed Corigliano that evening as part of the President's College lecture series. Corigliano received congratulations from the crowd and told of the afternoon when he learned he had received the Pulitzer Prize.

"I always dread Pulitzer day," he said. "Unlike the Grammys and Oscars, they never really announce in advance who won, and there are a lot more nominees for each of the awards. I had been nominated quite a few times but had never won.

"The Pulitzers are not announced until 3 p.m., and then they just release the list online, so I settled down at my computer for the afternoon to try to get some work done. That never happened. Around 3 p.m. I got a call from a friend congratulating me on my Pulitzer. Of course, I though he was kidding around with me."

What followed the announcement was a media blitz. Because the Pulitzer is a journalism-based award, a wave of media attention consumes its winners. Corigliano had a 5:30 p.m. class to teach on that day, so in the short time that he was at home, he answered call after call from the media while photographers took pictures.

Corigliano also discussed growing up with his father, John Corigliano, Sr., who was a violinist and the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. "It's funny," said Corigliano, "you might think it would be an easy transition, but you have to stop being the eight-year-old carrying the violin and become a musician in your own right."

Corigliano's parents actually discouraged him from becoming a composer. "It was during the 1950s, when composers had a bad name from the serial music they were writing," said Corigliano. "I wrote a concerto for my father, and he just tucked it in the back of his closet. He wasn't being intentionally mean. He just didn't want me to lead the hard life of a composer. I suppose that's what I wanted, though. If they had encouraged me to become a composer, maybe I would have been the doctor they wanted."

It wasn't until Corigliano's Concerto had been played by other violinists all over the world that his father learned the piece for its New York premiere. At this point, Corigliano's father told him that he was a composer.

After graduating from Columbia University in New York, Corigliano worked at radio stations and recording studios and eventually wrote for Leonard Bernstein's "Young People's Concerts" on television. "All of this was practical learning and in many ways gave me more of what I needed than continuing my education," said Corigliano.

During the time when Corigliano was composer-in-residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, from 1987 to 1990, he was commissioned to write a symphony for the orchestra. This first symphony, Of Rage and Remembrance, was an impassioned response to the AIDS crisis and won Grammy Awards for Best New Composition and Best Orchestral Performance in 1991. Several years later he was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to write The Ghost of Versailles, which premiered in New York to sold-out performances.

Corigliano is internationally celebrated as one of the leading composers of his generation. In orchestral, chamber, opera, and film work, he has won global acclaim for his highly expressive and compelling compositions, as well as his kaleidoscopic, ever-expanding technique.