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Norman Dello Joio Pulitzer and Emmy Award-Winning Composer

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Norman Dello Joio, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer with a lyrical style who wrote works for orchestra and chorus as well as several operas and an Emmy Award-winning television score,

He died July 24 at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. of natural causes, according to his son Justin Dello Joio, who also is a composer. He was 95.

Much of Norman Dello Joio's repertoire was inspired by sacred scripture, religious poetry and the lives of Christian saints. He sometimes worked medieval chant into his melodies.

He wrote some of his best-known works in the 1940s and '50s, including “Variations, Chaconne and Finale," which was first performed by the New York Philharmonic in 1947.

His opera “The Triumph of Saint Joan" premiered in 1950 at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., where he taught musical composition for five years. He later revised the work and it was performed by the New York City Opera in 1960.

Theme and melodies in the opera were inspired by the life of Joan of Arc, the 15th century French warrior saint. Dello Joio returned to the subject for a number of compositions, including an orchestral version of “The Triumph of Saint Joan" in 1951.

Another of his operas, “Blood Moon," was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera and premiered there in 1961. Dello Joio wrote several pieces for ballet. Two of them, “Diversion of Angels" in 1947 and “Seraphic Dialogues" in 1951, were commissioned by Martha Graham for her modern dance company.

His “Meditations on Ecclesiastes" for strings and orchestra won a Pulitzer Prize in 1957. The title of the work refers to the scriptural text that begins, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven."

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