Donald Martino

Donald Martino (1931-2005) was an American composer, born in Plainfield, New Jersey, who began as a clarinettist. He studied at Syracuse University, then with Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt at Princeton, and on a Fulbright grant with Luigi Dallapiccola in Italy. His music is atonal and densely worked. His chamber piece Notturno won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1974. Martino taught at Yale, at the New England Conservatory, at Brandeis and finally at Harvard, and published much of his music through his own company, Dantalian. He died in December 2005 aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean.