Diamond, David

Related Category: Music: History, Composers, and Performers: Biographies

1915–2005, American composer, b. Rochester, N.Y. Diamond was trained at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Eastman School; he also studied with Roger Sessions in New York and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He composed in a variety of styles, beginning with neoclassical works in the 1930s and later developed an intensely lyrical neoromanticism. Diamond wrote much chamber music, including 10 string quartets; many preludes and fugues; songs and other vocal pieces; 11 symphonies; ballets and film scores; music for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, and Timon of Athens; and Rounds (1944), for strings, his best-known work.