Paul Creston, Renowned Classical Composer, Dies

Paul Creston, who described himself as a “self-learned”--as opposed to a “self-taught”--composer and whose 100 symphonic compositions placed him at the front of the melodic, rhythmic school of musicians who dominated the American classical scene in the 1930s and 1940s, is dead.

Creston, whose five major symphonies were recorded and performed by the world’s leading orchestras, was 78 when he died in Poway on Saturday.

He had moved to the San Diego area in 1975, after seven years as resident composer and professor of music at Central Washington State College. He died at the National Health Care Home in Poway. He had surgery earlier this year for removal of a malignant tumor.

Conducted by Toscanini

Arturo Toscanini conducted many of Creston’s works and presented the premiere of his “2 Choric Dances” for woodwinds, piano, percussion and strings in 1938, commenting, “I love them without reserve.”

In 1943, his Symphony No. 1 won the New York Music Critics Circle award, and in 1981, he composed “Sadhana,” under commission from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, which performed it throughout Southern California.

Los Angeles Times music critic Albert Goldberg found that work, based on the philosophy of the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, “expertly contrived” and “conservative enough in manner to be readily accessible.”

In 1956, some of his works were chosen by the Boston Symphony to be performed in the Soviet Union, when the orchestra became the first American symphony to play there.

Creston was born Giuseppe Guttoveggio in New York City into a poor family of Italian immigrants, later adopting the name Creston from a character he had played in a high school play.

He did take piano and organ lessons, but he never formally studied composition, saying his musical education came from “learning” the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Stravinsky.

He began composing his strong melodic lines and fleshed-out harmonics in 1932 with “Five Dances for Piano,” but it was not until his much-heralded Symphony No. 1 that he moved to the front ranks of American composers.

At a time when music was turning atonal and rhythm was chancy, Creston clung to his commitment to melodic themes and regular meters.

He did explore the possibilities of many of the instruments of his day, writing for the saxophone, marimba, trombone and accordion, but his traditional posture had placed him in disfavor by the 1960s.

There was a brief resurgence in interest in his work in 1980, when an all-Creston program at Grinnell College in Iowa was taped for public television.

His volume of work ranged from piano pieces to songs and choral works, cantatas, an oratorio and 10 symphonic band works.

Creston credited some of his versatility to the various jobs he held as a youth, spending several years as a theater organist for silent pictures and later as organist at St. Malachy’s Church in New York.