Joseph Raposo of TV’s ‘Sesame Street’

Joseph Raposo, co-creator of the children’s television program “Sesame Street” and a five-time Grammy award-winning composer, has died at age 51.

Raposo died Sunday from complications of lymphoma at a hospital in Bronxville, north of New York City.

His songs were recorded by Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand and Ray Charles, and included “Sing,” “You Will Be My Music,” “It’s Not Easy Being Green” and “Here’s to the Winners.”

Raposo created the award-winning “Sesame Street” with Jim Henson and Jon Stone, and was the show’s longtime musical director and composer of its theme song.

Raposo produced several gold and platinum records and received an Oscar nomination for composing the music for the 1981 film, “The Great Muppet Caper.”

He was co-author of the hit Broadway play, “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” and of another public television show, “Electric Company.”

One of his few failures came in 1986, when the play, “Raggedy Ann,” for which he wrote the music and lyrics, folded after an abbreviated run on Broadway. The play had been a success in the Soviet Union under one of the first cultural agreements of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s glasnost policy.

Raposo conducted seminars in musical composition at Harvard and Yale universities.

Born the son of a noted music teacher, Raposo graduated from Harvard in 1951 and then went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, as have many of this century’s best-known composers.

On the liner notes of a Boston Pops recording of his songs, Raposo is quoted as saying, “Ever since growing up in Massachusetts, my feet have been in the classics, my head in the theater and television, my heart with the lovers and children, and my home in Boston.”