A concert with historical significance

From 1943-46, Wood joined the special services as a member of the U.S. Army, serving in the South Pacific during World War II. Fond of telling stories, Wood would later amuse friends with tales of his experiences in the army, especially those about the oddity of meeting many celebrities in remote and dangerous places like Okinawa and other “Pacific hotspots”. 

In 1950 Wood, under the invitation of David Robertson, joined the faculty member of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he remained a teacher of music theory and composition until his retirement in 1985. Wood, along with Richard Hoffmann and Walter Aschaffenburg, initiated the conservatory major in composition in 1956. They also established the Oberlin Contemporary Music Festival, which was held in February of each year until 1971. It brought to the campus such distinguished composers as Roger Sessions, Wallingford Riegger, Ernest Krenek, Leon Kirchner, and, in 1963, Igor Stravinsky, as well as many outstanding performers and commentators.

Wood was a guest composer at the Villa Montalvo in 1957 and was awarded a Huntington Hartford fellowship in 1960, and was a fellow eight times at the MacDowell Colony. In 1966 and 1973 he received H. H. Powers travel grants from Oberlin College. He also worked with some of the 20th century’s best-known composers and musicians, including Frederick Loewe, of Lerner and Loewe. He arranged the choral music for Brigadoon and other Loewe works.

Wood’s compositions were sought after by many musicians, and he received many commissions. He wrote numerous chamber music pieces including a piano trio in 1937 and a viola sonata in 1938. He also wrote four string quartets between 1942-1978 which have been performed by such notable ensembles as the NBC Quartet, the Gordon Quartet, the Piastro Quartet, and the New Hungarian Quartet. Other notable works include a violin sonata (1947) and a piano quintet (1956). Throughout his life he wrote a considerable number of choral pieces which are still being programmed, including a Te Deum written on the occasion of Oberlin’s sesquicentennial for the Oberlin College Choir and Robert Fountain.

His music for orchestra includes a Concerto for Chamber Orchestra, a Poem for Orchestra (1950), a Concerto for Viola and Piano with orchestra in 1970 premiered by the Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by José Serebrier, a Violin Concerto and a Divertimento for Piano and small orchestra from 1959. He also wrote three symphonies, in 1939, 1952 (for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music), and 1956. After the premiere of his third symphony in 1957, the critic of the New York Herald Tribune wrote that the work “was a thoroughly distinguished and handsome creation with such an internal and external appeal that it would be no exaggeration to place it in the very top rank of American symphonies.” The NBC Symphony Orchestra premiered his Overture to Twelfth Night on the eve of Pearl Harbor. Arguably, his most important piece was a large ballet-cantata commissioned by the Draco Foundation and written to a scenario by Evelyn Eaton entitled The Progression.

Joseph Wood died in Auburn, Alabama, on June 3, 2000 and is survived by his two daughters, Lynne and Lorna, and four grandchildren.