Douglas Stuart Moore
Encyclopedia
Douglas Stuart Moore was an American
composer
, educator, and author. He wrote music for the theater, film, ballet and orchestra, but his greatest fame was for his opera
s The Devil and Daniel Webster
(1938) and The Ballad of Baby Doe
(1956).
, Long Island
, New York
, and his ancestors can be traced back to the first settlers arriving to Long Island. He was an alumnus of the Hotchkiss School
and Yale University
. Moore earned two degrees from Yale University, a B.A. in 1915, then a B.Mus in 1917.
Moore served in the Navy as a lieutenant, after which he studied music with Nadia Boulanger
, Vincent d'Indy
and Ernest Bloch
in Paris
.
Moore served as president of the National Institute and American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1953 - 1956. He had been a member since 1941.
In 1921, Moore went to Cleveland as Director of Music at the Cleveland Museum of Art
, during which he studied with Ernest Bloch
at the Cleveland Institute of Music
, and performed in plays at the Cleveland Playhouse. He made his debut as a composer and conductor in 1923 conducting his Four Museum Pieces with the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1926, Moore joined the music faculty at Columbia University
, where he remained until his retirement in 1962. He was an effective and appreciated teacher whose genial manner made him popular amongst students.
His teaching often included studies of contemporary music and at one point invited Béla Bartók
for a small seminar in one of his classes. In 1954 he was a co-founder, with Otto Luening
and Oliver Daniel
, of the CRI
(Composers Recordings, Inc.) record label.
Apart from classical compositions, Moore also composed several popular songs whilst at Yale together with poet and Hotchkiss School mate Archibald MacLeish
and later in collaboration with John Jacob Niles
. These songs were later published in 1921 under the collective title "Songs my Mother never taught Me".
He wrote two books on music, Listening to Music (1932) and From Madrigal to modern Music (1942).
Moore lived his entire life in the family home Salt Meadow in Cutchogue, where his studio faced a tidal inlet.
Douglas Moore died in the Eastern Long Island Hospital in the neighboring village of Greenport
, Long Island in 1969.
Influence during his musical education came especially from his teacher d'Indy (he didn't get on too well with Boulanger), at the Schola Cantorum de Paris, whose harmonic treatment had quite a large influence on Moore. Even his late compositions carry a certain whiff of d'Indy's techniques.
Moore is sometimes viewed as a conservative mainly because he tended to resist influence of the various musical vogues that arose, and ultimately fell, during his life. His chosen style was what some regard as "typically American" i.e. based on American folk music, though Moore never actually used any authentic folk tunes but rather created his own (much like Gustav Holst
or Falla
). The creation of this style was greatly bolstered by Vachel Lindsay
in the twenties, though Moore also allowed other styles influence him, such as jazz
and ragtime
. This is most readily apparent in his operas. The Ballad of Baby Doe
has several rag elements (a honky-tonk piano is used extensively in the first scene) and in his 1958 "soap opera" Gallantry, the commercials for Lochinvar soap and Billy Boy wax are sung in a blueslike fashion. Furthermore, the allegretto from his second symphony
has an almost neoclassical
clarity to it.
He is sometimes compared to Virgil Thomson
and Aaron Copland
.
One distinguishing characteristic of Douglas Moore's music is the modesty, grace and tender lyricism that mark the slower passages of his many works, especially his Symphony in A major and the clarinet quintet. The faster movements of the aforementioned compositions have a robust, jovial and a somewhat terpsichorean quality. Admittedly though, Moore was slower in development when it came to purely orchestral works and most of his energy was directed towards opera,. He wrote eight operas, mostly on American subjects, though one notable exception is Giants in the Earth which concerns Norwegian immigrants.
The Grove Dictionary of Music evaluates Moore by saying "Time has not been kind to Moore's work." It is likely that despite all the other music he wrote, he will only be remembered for The Ballad of Baby Doe.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, educator, and author. He wrote music for the theater, film, ballet and orchestra, but his greatest fame was for his opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s The Devil and Daniel Webster
The Devil and Daniel Webster
"The Devil and Daniel Webster" is a short story by Stephen Vincent Benét. This retelling of the classic German Faust tale is based on the short story "The Devil and Tom Walker", written by Washington Irving...
(1938) and The Ballad of Baby Doe
The Ballad of Baby Doe
The Ballad of Baby Doe is an opera by the American composer Douglas Moore that uses an English-language libretto by John Latouche. It is Moore's most famous opera and one of the few American operas to be in the standard repertory...
(1956).
Biography
Moore was born in CutchogueCutchogue, New York
Cutchogue is a census-designated place in Suffolk County, New York . The population was 2,849 at the 2000 census.Cutchogue CDP roughly represents the area of Cutchogue hamlet in the town of Southold.-Geography:...
, Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and his ancestors can be traced back to the first settlers arriving to Long Island. He was an alumnus of the Hotchkiss School
Hotchkiss School
The Hotchkiss School is an independent, coeducational American college preparatory boarding school located in Lakeville, Connecticut. Founded in 1891, the school enrolls students in grades 9 through 12 and a small number of postgraduates...
and Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. Moore earned two degrees from Yale University, a B.A. in 1915, then a B.Mus in 1917.
Moore served in the Navy as a lieutenant, after which he studied music with Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
, Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy was a French composer and teacher.-Life:Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed him on to Antoine François Marmontel and...
and Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.-Life:Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
Moore served as president of the National Institute and American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1953 - 1956. He had been a member since 1941.
In 1921, Moore went to Cleveland as Director of Music at the Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art is an art museum situated in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on Cleveland's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian art, the museum houses a diverse permanent collection of more than 43,000...
, during which he studied with Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.-Life:Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe...
at the Cleveland Institute of Music
Cleveland Institute of Music
The Cleveland Institute of Music is an independent music conservatory located in the University Circle district of Cleveland, Ohio, United States and is overseen by president Joel Smirnoff and Adrian Daly, dean....
, and performed in plays at the Cleveland Playhouse. He made his debut as a composer and conductor in 1923 conducting his Four Museum Pieces with the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1926, Moore joined the music faculty at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, where he remained until his retirement in 1962. He was an effective and appreciated teacher whose genial manner made him popular amongst students.
His teaching often included studies of contemporary music and at one point invited Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
for a small seminar in one of his classes. In 1954 he was a co-founder, with Otto Luening
Otto Luening
Otto Clarence Luening was a German-American composer and conductor, and an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music....
and Oliver Daniel
Oliver Daniel
Oliver Daniel was an American arts administrator, musicologist, and composer.He worked as a music executive for CBS, then took a job at BMI, creating that organization's Concert Music Department in 1954. Also in 1954 he helped found the CRI record label, along with composers Otto Luening and...
, of the CRI
Composers Recordings, Inc.
Composers Recordings, Inc. was an American record label dedicated to the recording of contemporary classical music by American composers. It was founded in 1954 by Otto Luening, Douglas Moore, and Oliver Daniel, and based in New York City....
(Composers Recordings, Inc.) record label.
Apart from classical compositions, Moore also composed several popular songs whilst at Yale together with poet and Hotchkiss School mate Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.-Early years:...
and later in collaboration with John Jacob Niles
John Jacob Niles
John Jacob Niles was an American composer, singer, and collector of traditional ballads. Called the "Dean of American Balladeers", Niles was an important influence on the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, with Joan Baez, Burl Ives, and Peter, Paul and Mary, among others,...
. These songs were later published in 1921 under the collective title "Songs my Mother never taught Me".
He wrote two books on music, Listening to Music (1932) and From Madrigal to modern Music (1942).
Moore lived his entire life in the family home Salt Meadow in Cutchogue, where his studio faced a tidal inlet.
Douglas Moore died in the Eastern Long Island Hospital in the neighboring village of Greenport
Greenport
Greenport may refer any of the following places in the United States** Greenport, Columbia County, New York** Greenport, Suffolk County, New York** Greenport West, New York...
, Long Island in 1969.
Music
Moore's music is somewhat difficult to pigeonhole. Under the course of his artistic career he developed a highly personal musical language, basically romantic and richly tonal but with strong links to American folk music.Influence during his musical education came especially from his teacher d'Indy (he didn't get on too well with Boulanger), at the Schola Cantorum de Paris, whose harmonic treatment had quite a large influence on Moore. Even his late compositions carry a certain whiff of d'Indy's techniques.
Moore is sometimes viewed as a conservative mainly because he tended to resist influence of the various musical vogues that arose, and ultimately fell, during his life. His chosen style was what some regard as "typically American" i.e. based on American folk music, though Moore never actually used any authentic folk tunes but rather created his own (much like Gustav Holst
Gustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....
or Falla
Falla
Falla is a locality situated in Finspång Municipality, Östergötland County, Sweden with 463 inhabitants in 2005....
). The creation of this style was greatly bolstered by Vachel Lindsay
Vachel Lindsay
Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was an American poet. He is considered the father of modern singing poetry, as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted...
in the twenties, though Moore also allowed other styles influence him, such as jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and ragtime
Ragtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...
. This is most readily apparent in his operas. The Ballad of Baby Doe
The Ballad of Baby Doe
The Ballad of Baby Doe is an opera by the American composer Douglas Moore that uses an English-language libretto by John Latouche. It is Moore's most famous opera and one of the few American operas to be in the standard repertory...
has several rag elements (a honky-tonk piano is used extensively in the first scene) and in his 1958 "soap opera" Gallantry, the commercials for Lochinvar soap and Billy Boy wax are sung in a blueslike fashion. Furthermore, the allegretto from his second symphony
Symphony No. 2 (Moore)
Symphony No. 2 in A major is a classical composition by American composer Douglas Moore. It was composed in 1945 and received its premiere in Paris on May 5, 1946 directed by Robert Lawrence...
has an almost neoclassical
Neoclassicism (music)
Neoclassicism in music was a twentieth-century trend, particularly current in the period between the two World Wars, in which composers sought to return to aesthetic precepts associated with the broadly defined concept of "classicism", namely order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint...
clarity to it.
He is sometimes compared to Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...
and Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
.
One distinguishing characteristic of Douglas Moore's music is the modesty, grace and tender lyricism that mark the slower passages of his many works, especially his Symphony in A major and the clarinet quintet. The faster movements of the aforementioned compositions have a robust, jovial and a somewhat terpsichorean quality. Admittedly though, Moore was slower in development when it came to purely orchestral works and most of his energy was directed towards opera,. He wrote eight operas, mostly on American subjects, though one notable exception is Giants in the Earth which concerns Norwegian immigrants.
The Grove Dictionary of Music evaluates Moore by saying "Time has not been kind to Moore's work." It is likely that despite all the other music he wrote, he will only be remembered for The Ballad of Baby Doe.
Stage works
- Twelfth Night, incidental music (1927)
- Greek Games, ballet (1930)
- White Wings, chamber opera (1935)
- The Headless Horseman, operetta (1936)
- The Devil and Daniel WebsterThe Devil and Daniel Webster"The Devil and Daniel Webster" is a short story by Stephen Vincent Benét. This retelling of the classic German Faust tale is based on the short story "The Devil and Tom Walker", written by Washington Irving...
, folk opera (1939) - Giants in the EarthGiants in the Earth (opera)Giants in the Earth is a Pullitzer Prize winning opera by composer Douglas Moore. The work uses an English libretto by Arnold Sundgaard after Ole Edvart Rølvaag's novel of the same name. The work premiered on March 28, 1951 at Columbia University's Brander Matthews Theatre...
, opera (1949–50, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1951) - The Ballad of Baby DoeThe Ballad of Baby DoeThe Ballad of Baby Doe is an opera by the American composer Douglas Moore that uses an English-language libretto by John Latouche. It is Moore's most famous opera and one of the few American operas to be in the standard repertory...
, opera (1956) - GallantryGallantry (opera)Gallantry is a one act opera by composer Douglas Moore. The work is a parody of soap opera, complete with sung commercial interruptions. The work uses an English language libretto by Arnold Sundgaard...
, a soap opera (1958) - The Wings of the Dove, opera (1961)
- Carry NationCarry Nation (opera)Carry Nation is an opera in a prologue and 2 acts by composer Douglas Moore which is based on the life of temperance activist Carrie Nation. The work uses an English-language libretto by W. N. Jayme. The opera was commissioned by the University of Kansas in commemoration of the school's 100th...
, opera (1966)
Orchestral works
- Four Museum Pieces (1923)
- The Pageant of P.T. Barnum, suite (1924)
- Moby Dick, symphonic poem (1928)
- A Symphony of Autumn (1928–30)
- Overture on an American Tune (1932)
- Village Music, suite (1941)
- In memoriamIn memoriam (Moore)In memoriam is a symphonic poem by the American composer Douglas Moore.Moore wrote In memoriam in 1943 in memory of the young soldiers who died in World War II. It is Moore's darkest work and contrasts strongly with the ebullient Symphony in A major, which was written two years later. Most of the...
(1943) - Down East suite, also arranged for violin and piano (1944)
- Symphony No. 2 in A majorSymphony No. 2 (Moore)Symphony No. 2 in A major is a classical composition by American composer Douglas Moore. It was composed in 1945 and received its premiere in Paris on May 5, 1946 directed by Robert Lawrence...
(1945) - Farm JournalFarm JournalFarm Journal is a classical composition by the American composer Douglas Moore. The work was the result of a commission Moore received from the Little Orchestra Society in 1947 and which gave the work's premiere in the following year, conducted by Thomas Scherman. The music derives from Moore's...
, suite (1947) - Cotillion Suite (1952)
Chamber works
- Violin sonata (1929)
- String quartet (1933)
- Quintet for woodwinds and horn (1942)
- Quintet for clarinet and stringsQuintet for clarinet and strings (Moore)Quintet for clarinet and strings is a piece of chamber music by the American composer Douglas Moore.In 1946, the Juilliard School of Music requested from Moore a chamber piece to be performed at a school concert the following year. He worked at and finished the piece during the summer of 1946 at...
(1946) - Piano trio (1953)
Film music
- Power in the Land (1940, material later used for Farm Journal in 1947)
- Youth Gets a Break (1940)
- Bip Goes to Town (1941)
- Power for the Parkinsons (2009)