Dominick Argento was born in York, Pennsylvania on October 27, 1927. As a child, he took piano lessons and taught himself music theory from library books. After serving two years as a cryptographer in the United States Army in East Africa, he received bachelor's and master's degrees in music from Peabody Conservatory and a doctorate in composition from the Eastman School of Music.
He won acclaim for orchestra works, chamber pieces, and incidental music for plays, but he was best known for his 12 operas including The Masque of Angels, Postcard from Morocco, and The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe. He received the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1975 for his song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, written for the British mezzo-soprano Janet Baker. In 2004, he won a Grammy Award for best contemporary classical composition for Casa Guidi, recorded by the mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade and the Minnesota Orchestra. His book, Catalogue Raisonné as Memoir: A Composer's Life, was published in 2004. He taught at the University of Minnesota for 40 years. He died on February 20, 2019 at the age of 91.
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