Pulitzer Prize for Music

"[1] Because of the requirement that the composition have its world premiere during the year of its award, the winning work had rarely been recorded and sometimes had received only one performance.

In 2004, the terms were modified to read: "For a distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year.

"[4] The phrase "music in its larger forms" proved difficult to interpret for the advisory board and the prize's juries, resulting in controversies over the years.

Instead, it recommended a special citation be given to Duke Ellington in recognition of his body of work, but the Pulitzer Board refused and therefore no award was given that year.

In an attempt to bypass that requirement, Marsalis's management had submitted a "revised version" of Blood on the Fields that had seven minor changes and a "premiere" at Yale University.

In 1992 the music jury, which that year consisted of George Perle, Roger Reynolds, and Harvey Sollberger, chose Ralph Shapey's Concerto Fantastique for the award.

The Pulitzer Board rejected that decision and gave the prize to the jury's second choice, Wayne Peterson's The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark.

Board member Jay T. Harris said, "The prize should not be reserved essentially for music that comes out of the European classical tradition.

In the late 1990s, the Board took tacit note of the criticism leveled at its predecessors for failure to cite two of the country's foremost jazz composers.

"[9] Composer and music critic Kyle Gann complained in his essay "The Uptown Prejudice Against Downtown Music" that the judges for the Pulitzer and other top awards for composition often included "the same seven names over and over as judges": Gunther Schuller, Joseph Schwantner, Jacob Druckman, George Perle, John Harbison, Mario Davidovsky, and Bernard Rands.

Gann argued that "Downtown" composers like himself did not win awards because the composer-judges were all "white men, all of them coming pretty much from the same narrow Eurocentric aesthetic....

Harbison called it "a horrible development", adding, "If you were to impose a comparable standard on fiction you would be soliciting entries from the authors of airport novels.

To dilute this objective by inviting the likes of musicals and movie scores, no matter how excellent, is to undermine the distinctiveness and capability for artistic advancement.