John Corigliano
John Corigliano
John Coriglianois an American composer of classical music. His scores, now numbering over one hundred, have won him the Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and an Oscar. He is a distinguished professor of music at Lehman College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and on the composition faculty at the Juilliard School...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth16 February 1938
CountryUnited States of America
If you take a violin, you can make it sound 50 different ways. Not just pizzicato and played by the bow, but ponticello, and harmonics, and tremolos. If you take an oboe and play it, there's about one way you can make it sound: like an oboe.
Eighty percent of my pieces gravitate towards an A, as a tonal thing, not at the beginning, but somewhere in it.
You become a great composer when you win a Pulitzer. But I think that now it's a completely meaningless award.
I'm glad I won it because when I grew up the Pulitzer was the award that every composer wanted and I was like that too.
I always conceive a piece as a different set of challenges.