Word: nordoff
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Music-serious music-is a profession which, to the helpless regret of music lovers as well as musicians, pays out in chicken feed. Thirty-one-year-old Paul Nordoff, angular, wirehaired, blond Philadelphian, has been better heeled than most young composers. He has won two Guggenheim fellowships worth about $4,500, took last year's $1,500 Pulitzer scholarship, is a teacher at the Philadelphia Conservatory. Composer Nordoff. who would have become a concert pianist had he not found that he was expected to study showy trash like Liszt's Mephisto Waltz, has written two piano concertos...
...Masterpiece was commissioned by Philadelphia's Academy of Vocal Arts, an up-&-coming outfit spark plugged by an energetic socialite, Mrs. Clarence A. Warden. The Academy paid Composer Nordoff all it could afford-$200-for 25 minutes of music, and he threw in a dozen extra minutes gratis. His tricky rhythms, his obstinate tunes might have stumped an even more experienced company, but the Academy singers-notably pretty Soprano Doris Blake-and a small orchestra under Conductor Vernon Hammond pulled into the final cadence without a grind or a bump. The Masterpiece (libretto by Franklin Brewer) told, with...