Stanley Hollingsworth - Life and Career

Life and Career

Hollingsworth was conversant in all the vocal and instrumental forms, examples of which are his "Five Songs" (1960) for solo voice and piano, "Death Be Not Proud" (1978) for mixed chorus and piano or orchestra, Sonata for Oboe (1949), and his Concerto for Piano (1980). A notable success was achieved with his opera "La Grande Breteche" when it was commissioned for broadcast by the NBC Opera Theatre in 1957. Hollingsworth was also honored with the Rome Prize (1958), the Guggenheim Fellowship (1958), and residencies at the Montalvo Center for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Yaddo Arts Colony, Wolf Trap, and the Ossaba Island Project. He received commissions from the Curtis Institute, Fedora Horowitz, Meadowbrook Music festival, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

He taught composition and orchestration at the Curtis Institute of Music as an assistant to Gian Carlo Menotti from 1949–1955, was a lecturer at San Jose State College (now San Jose State University) on composition, harmony, counterpoint and piano 1961–63. From 1963 to 1970 he composed and orchestrated for the Harkness Ballet, followed by acting as an operatic and stage director in Austria and Turkey from 1970–72. Hollingsworth was also composer-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome.

His teaching and composing career from 1976 to 1993 was centered at Oakland University, where he was composer-in-residence and finally retired as Professor Emeritus. He was much appreciated and loved by his students, from whom he required an appreciation and practical mastery of counterpoint and orchestration, as exemplified in the following quote: "Inspiration is fine, but when you get stuck you must have craft." Among composers who were his students from that time period may be counted Harold Boatrite, Mark Gottlieb, and Daniel Jencka. Many anecdotes and thoughts of Stanley Hollingsworth are preserved in hours of recordings created as part of Yale University's "Oral History, American Music" project. His works are housed in the Edwin Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and at Oakland University.

He was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.