D'Angelo, Nicholas V.

Nicholas V. D'Angelo (1929-2010) was a prolific American composer, conductor, musician, and teacher. A veteran of the Korean Conflict, he was a conductor of the United States Air Force Band. Beginning in 1955 and for the next 56 years, he was a professor of music at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York.

Born in Erie, Pennsylvania December 2, 1929, the son of Polidoro and Josephine D'Angelo, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and obtained his master's degree from Syracuse University. He studied under various composition teachers including Bernard Rogers, Luigi Dallapiccola, Paul Hindemith and Earl George, and was a composer-in-residence at La Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, the University of Redlands in California, Georgia State University, the State University of New York at Oswego and Indiana State University. His many compositions garnered him numerous prizes, honors, and grants, including a 1985 nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in music, Hobart and William Smith Colleges' faculty award for distinguished research and scholarship, first prize at the New American Music Festival, the National Endowment of the Arts, the National Endowment of the Humanities, and numerous commissions, including a notable one from the Society for New Music. His music is recorded on the Roulette, KLP, Century and Spectrum labels.

He and his wife Eva had three children, Paul D'Angelo, Ronald D'Angelo and Barbara Riley. Nicholas D'Angelo died on April 19, 2010 in Penfield, New York at age 80.

(Biographical sketch adapted from obituaries in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and the Finger Lakes Times .)

From the guide to the Nicholas D'Angelo Papers, 1939-2003, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)