Robert William Witt (March 4, 1930 – September 18, 1967) was an American neoclassical and experimental composer. A native of Youngstown, Ohio, he was a composer, pianist, and professor of music at Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University. Like his mentor, Vincent Persichetti, Witt was well known for exploration of new musical forms and for integrating old themes into new works.
Life
Robert Witt was born in Youngstown, Ohio, son of Alvy T. and Lillian Keffer Witt. Recognized as a prodigy at a young age, Robert began his musical career at the age of five by taking piano lessons. Formal studies in music continued throughout his youth at Ursuline School of Music and Dana School of Music. Witt continued his musical studies at the Cleveland Conservatory of Music with Ruth Edwards from 1945 to 1946, at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore from 1946–1948, where he studied with Nicolas Nabokov, Pasquale Tallarico, and Renée Longy-Miquelle, and at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music from 1949–1950.
It was at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music that he began to study with his mentor, Vincent Persichetti, who recommended him for studies at Juilliard. While at Juilliard from 1950–1953, Witt was awarded an honorary scholarship, and he continued his studies in composition with Persichetti. A teaching fellowship in literature and materials of music was bestowed on him while he was still an undergraduate, as an assistant to Bernard Wagenaar, and he received both his B.S. in Music in 1952 and M.S. in Music in 1953.
In the fall of 1951, Witt married Eva Mondrut, a coloratura soprano, and over the next ten years they produced five children – three daughters and two sons. Following graduation, Witt was Director of Music at Foxhollow School for Girls, one of the Berkshire preparatory schools in Lenox, Massachusetts. He also taught at the Emma Willard School for Girls in Troy, New York.
1955 and 1956 were pivotal years in his life. Witt had been a severe diabetic since childhood, and in 1956 he lost his eyesight to glaucoma. Within a year, he taught himself Braille and began transcribing his music into Braille. He resumed composing, performing and teaching as an Assistant Professor of Music at the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University.
As a professor at the Dana School of Music, Witt was loved and respected by students and colleagues alike. He was awarded the Danforth Foundation Fellowship in 1963, and took a leave from teaching duties (which included Composition, Theory, History and Literature of Music, and Piano) to pursue doctoral studies in Musicology at Ohio State University. In 1964, he received the Ohio Federation of Music Clubs’ Outstanding Graduate Student award.
During the summer of 1964, his wife was stricken with cancer, and the family returned to their home in Youngstown, and Witt to his teaching position at Dana. His PhD work was complete with the exception of three course hours. In 1965, Witt signed a contract with the American Choral Foundation Institute to provide music for “The American Choral Foundation Series,” a new publication project to be issued by Lawson-Gould, a subsidiary of G. Schirmer, Inc., under the direction of Margaret Hillis. Witt's Four Motets to the Blessed Virgin Mary was to have been published in this project, but personal and family health problems precluded the completion of the contract.
In March 1967, Robert Witt fell ill from the complications of his diabetes. His condition progressively deteriorated until his death on September 18, 1967; he was thirty-seven years old at the time of his death. His wife succumbed to cancer the following February.
Music
Although he made his first attempts at composition when he was six years old, Witt began serious composition while in high school, and was one of the first two male graduates of Ursuline School of Music’s music department, presenting a graduation recital of three compositions: Prelude, Lorelei-Reverie, and Syncaprice.