Diller, Angela

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Diller, Angela

Diller, Angela, American pianist and pedagogue;b. Brooklyn, Aug. 1, 1877; d. Stamford, Conn., April 30, 1968. She studied music at Columbia Univ. with MacDowell and Goetschius, and also with Johannes Schreyer in Dresden. From 1899 to 1916 she was head of the theory dept. of the Music School Settlement in N.Y. From 1916 to 1921 she was an administrator at the David Marines School in N.Y., and then director of the Diller-Quaile School of Music in N.Y. (1921–41); also was on the faculty of the Univ. of Southern Calif, in Los Angeles (1932), Mills Coll. in Oakland, Calif. (1935), and the New England Cons, of Music in Boston (1936–37). She was co-founder, with Margarethe Dessoff, of the Adesdi Chorus and A Cappella Singers of N.Y. With E. Quaile, K. Stearns Page, and Harold Bauer, she ed. many educational music works. In 1953 she received a Guggenheim fellowship. She publ. First Theory Book (1921), Keyboard Harmony Course (4 vols., 1936, 1937, 1943, 1949), and The Splendor of Music (1957).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire