67 Facts About Douglas Moore

Douglas Stuart Moore was an American composer, songwriter, organist, pianist, conductor, educator, actor, and author.

Douglas Moore first created music while a student at Yale University from 1911 through 1917; writing usually humorous songs in a popular style for school events in addition to creating music for school plays and musical revues.

Douglas Moore's work composing music for the Yale Dramatic Association, Elizabethan Club, and Yale Glee Club drew the attention of Yale music department chair Horatio Parker, who persuaded Moore, then a philosophy major, to pursue a second degree in music composition.

Douglas Moore began his professional life as the organist and music director for the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1921 through 1925; during which time he worked professionally as a leading actor with the Cleveland Play House.

Douglas Moore arranged the work for orchestra at the MacDowell Colony in 1923, and conducted it's world premiere with the Cleveland Orchestra that year.

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Douglas Moore was director of the Columbia University orchestra from 1926 through 1935.

Douglas Moore composed music for the theater, film, ballet and orchestra.

Douglas Moore was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for the opera Giants in the Earth in 1951.

Douglas Moore's best known work, The Ballad of Baby Doe, premiered at the Central City Opera in 1956 and received a critically lauded production at the New York City Opera in 1958.

Douglas Stuart Moore was born on August 10,1893 in Cutchogue, Long Island, New York in the farmhouse of his grandfather, Joseph Hull Moore, where both his father and brothers were born.

Douglas Moore was the youngest child of Stuart Hull Moore and Myra Drake ; both of whom descended from the first colonial English settlers to America.

Douglas Moore had two older brothers, Arthur and Eliot, and an older sister, Dorothy.

Douglas Moore's father built another nearby home for his family on the Moore family's farm, named Quawksnest, in which Moore and his family spent their summers.

Douglas Moore resided in a cottage named Salt Meadow which was originally a garage and clubhouse before being converted into a home for Moore in 1933.

At his mother's insistence, Douglas Moore began his music education at the age of seven with the conductor of the CS chorus, Emma Richardson Kuster, who began giving him piano lessons in 1900.

Douglas Moore later was a piano student of Beverly Day.

Douglas Moore's father enjoyed playing pianola rolls in the family home during his youth.

Douglas Moore attended elementary school at the Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn which was operated at that time by Charles Herbert Levermore.

Douglas Moore entered Yale University as a college freshman in the fall of 1911 alongside his Hotchkiss friend Archibald MacLeish.

Douglas Moore quickly gained a reputation at Yale for writing humorous songs; one of which, "Naomi: The Restaurant Queen", was performed by actress Ethel Green in her vaudeville act and was published by Charles F Smith in 1912.

Douglas Moore was a member of the Yale Glee Club from 1913 through 1915; succeeding Cole Porter as the ensemble's "soloist and stunt man".

Douglas Moore was a member of the banjo and mandolin club, and notably composed Concerto for Piano and mandolins which he premiered on campus as the pianist.

Douglas Moore performed in stage plays with the Yale Dramatic Association and the Elizabethan Club.

Douglas Moore developed close friendships with several fellow students in these performance groups, including Stephen Vincent Benet, Thornton Wilder, and Cole Porter.

Originally a philosophy major, Douglas Moore didn't begin formal music studies at Yale until the fall 1913 semester when he became a pupil of David Stanley Smith who was one of his principal music teachers at Yale.

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Douglas Moore's father was a millionaire, and left Moore a considerable fortune which allowed him to freely pursue his music interests and live comfortably with the services of a butler and cook for the rest of his life.

Douglas Moore further utilized his song writing skillset while serving in the United States Navy for two years during the Great War as a lieutenant from 1917 through 1919; writing songs to entertain his fellow servicemen in the Navy.

One of these songs, "Destroyer Life", appeared in the 1928 anthology Songs My Mother Never Taught Me which Douglas Moore co-authored with John Jacob Niles; bringing Douglas Moore his first recognition as a songwriter.

Douglas Moore wrote music to several poems by his friend MacLeish during this time.

Douglas Moore's songs demonstrated music influences from Tin Pan Alley, vaudeville, American folk tunes, and minstrel shows.

From D'Indy, Douglas Moore gained a compositional style similar to Cesar Franck who had been D'Indy's teacher.

From 1921 through 1925 Douglas Moore worked as the curator of music at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and concurrently served as organist at Adelbert College of Western Reserve University from 1923 through 1925.

Douglas Moore used his position at the CMA to champion American composers and their music through programming their works.

Douglas Moore's classmates included composers Theodore Chandler, Quincy Porter, Bernard Rogers, and Roger Sessions.

Douglas Moore thrived under Bloch more so than his earlier composition teachers.

Douglas Moore worked as a leading actor at the Cleveland Play House in the 1920s.

Douglas Moore's experiences performing at the CPH later informed his work creating pieces for the stage.

Reviews of his performances were highly positive, and for a time Douglas Moore considered abandoning his career in music and pursuing an acting career.

Douglas Moore made his first significant professional contribution as a composer and conductor on November 15,1923; conducting the premiere of his Four Museum Pieces with the Cleveland Orchestra.

Douglas Moore titled each movement after a work of art in the collection of the CMA.

In 1926 Douglas Moore joined the board of directors of the Edward MacDowell Association which ran the MacDowell Colony among other things.

In 1923 Douglas Moore met and befriended the poet Vachel Lindsay; a relationship which had a significant impact on the future trajectory of Douglas Moore's compositional focus.

Lindsay persuaded Douglas Moore to write music using American culture and history as its inspiration, and from this point on Douglas Moore's compositional output was mostly based on American subjects or themes for the rest of his life.

Well received at its premiere by the Cleveland Orchestra under Nikolai Sokoloff on 28 March 1926, this work was the first piece by Douglas Moore to bring the composer recognition among the broader public.

Douglas Moore composed the 104th Cavalry Regiment March in 1924 in honor of the regiment of the same name of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard; a work later arranged for band by Joseph C Painter.

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Douglas Moore continued to compose incidental music for the ALT in succeeding years for productions of Much Ado About Nothing and Robert E Sherwood's The Road to Rome in 1927.

However, Douglas Moore did gain from Boulanger a stronger grounding in counterpoint and general musicianship skills, and he met several esteemed musicians in Boulanger's circle which proved to be valuable professional contacts in his career.

Douglas Moore devoted time to some vocal works while in Paris; although it is not clear if Boulanger had any input into these works.

Douglas Moore worked on his first stage work while in Paris, the musical Oh, Oh, Tennessee, but the work has never been published or performed.

Douglas Moore was rapidly promoted from adjunct faculty member to assistant professor at the wider Columbia University and head of the music department at Barnard College specifically on July 1,1927.

From 1926 through 1935 Douglas Moore was the conductor of Columbia University's orchestra.

Under his leadership, Douglas Moore was instrumental in instituting several new policies in the music program at Columbia.

In 1940 Douglas Moore succeeded Daniel Gregory Mason as head of the music faculty at Columbia; a post he held for the next 22 years.

Douglas Moore retired from Columbia in 1962 after having taught at that institution for 36 years.

Douglas Moore was a member from 1941 of the National Institute and American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1928 Douglas Moore co-authored a collection of songs from World War I with John Jacob Niles entitled Songs My Mother Never Taught Me.

Douglas Moore contributed the children's songs "The Cupboard" and "Fingers and Toes" to the 1928 anthology New Songs for New Voices.

Douglas Moore composed music for a planned play on American outlaw Jesse James for the ALT that year, but financial issues ultimately prevented that project from making it to the stage.

Douglas Moore conducted the Manhattan Symphony Orchestra in the premiere of his Overture on an American Tune on December 11,1932.

Douglas Moore develops the melody to this tune using the techniques of augmentation, diminution, and retrograde.

In 1934 Douglas Moore was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship which enabled him to spend time in Bermuda composing his first opera, White Wings, after the 1926 Broadway play by dramatist Philip Barry.

Douglas Moore had seen the work on Broadway, and was one of several composers interested in adapting work with a music setting; among them Kurt Weil.

In 1936 ethnomusicologist and music educator Willard Rhodes, then music director for the Bronxville Union Free School District, commissioned Douglas Moore to write an operetta based on Mayne Reid's 1866 novel The Headless Horseman.

Douglas Moore was influenced by jazz and ragtime, developed by African Americans.

Douglas Moore's music has been described as having a "modesty, grace and tender lyricism", especially marking the slower passages of many works, especially his Symphony in A major and the clarinet quintet.

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Douglas Moore composed music after the 1927 English translation of this work about Scandinavian settlers on the Great Plains was adapted as an opera.

Douglas Moore won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for Music for this work.