Allen married Norma Bertolami, a concert pianist and sister of the concert violinist Viviane Bertolami Kirkwood.
Career
Sapp joined the Harvard music faculty in 1948.[2][3]
After a brief appointment at
Wellesley College (1958–61),[4] he was appointed Chair of the music department at the University of Buffalo (later, State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo). While at Buffalo, Sapp presided over many significant projects promoting contemporary music and art, including the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts (with
Lukas Foss), and helped build a significant music faculty including the
Budapest String Quartet, musicologists
Jeremy Noble and
James McKinnon, and music librarians James B. Coover and
Carol June Bradley.[5]
He also served as director of major national arts initiatives, including the American Council for the Arts in Education (1972–74), and Project Arts/Worth (1971–74).[6]
Sapp served as Provost of Florida State University (1975–78), and as Dean of the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music (CCM) from 1978 to 1980.[7]
From 1980 through the mid-1990s Sapp remained on the faculty of CCM as "Professor of Music," teaching a wide range of courses from music analysis to the history of music theory, and various seminars on special topics. He also taught composition and musicianship in private sessions.
The first president of the board of directors of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, Sapp retired from his position as professor of composition at the University of Cincinnati in 1993.[8]
Death
Sapp died from heart failure at his home in Cincinnati, Ohio on Monday, January 4, 1999 at the age of 76.[9][10][11]
Bibliography
Curtin, David. The Piano Music of Allen Dwight Sapp. D.M.A. diss, Univ. of Cincinnati, 1999.
Green, Alan. Allen Sapp: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996).
Green, Alan, ed. Allen Sapp: Piano Sonatas I-IV (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2021).
Hogan, Charles. "The Piano Sonatas of Allen Sapp: A Study of Style and Language." D.M.A. diss, Univ. of Cincinnati, 2010.
Pollack, Howard. "Favored Sons: Robert Middleton and Allen Sapp." In Harvard Composers: Walter Piston and His Students from Elliott Carter to Frederic Rzewski (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1992), 208–30.
Discography
Bloom, Sara Lambert. Premiere Chamber Works (Centaur, 1995).
Lockhart, Keith (Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra). Allen Sapp (CRI, 1997).
Vassiliadis, Lambis. Allen Sapp: Piano Sonatas [nos. 2-4] (Koch Discover International, 1996).