Peter Graffam Davis

Background

Peter Graffam Davis was born on May 3, 1936 in Concord, Massachusetts, United States.

Education

Davis graduated from Harvard College in 1958 with Bachelor of Arts majoring in music. He then studied composition at the Stuttgart Hochschule für Musik (State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart). After he did post-graduate work at Columbia University, studying under Jack Beeson and Otto Luening. He received his Master of Arts degree in composition in 1962.

Career

Davis began his career in 1967 as a music editor of High Fidelity and Musical America. In 1969 he took a position of a staff writer in New York Times. In 1981 he moved to New York (magazine) as music critic. He held the position till 2007.

Davis’s special interest is in opera and singing, and he discusses the history of American opera in his book, The American Opera Singer: The Lives and Adventures of America’s Great Singers in Opera and Concert, from 1825 to the Present (1997). The book presents short biographies of hundreds of famous and lesser-known performers.

Achievements

• Davis is a leading American opera authority particularly known as the author of the book, The American Opera Singer. He has established a reputation for expressing strong opinions during his years on the staff of the New York Times and, later, at New York magazine.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The American Opera Singer: The Lives and Adventures of America's Great Singers in Opera and In Concert From 1825 to the Present

    (In America today, opera has never been more popular, and ...)

    1997

Views

Davis’s strong views are evident in The American Opera Singer. Terry Teachout, writing in the New York Times Book Review, noted that Davis does not hesitate to convey “his very low opinion of many famous American singers”—in particular, Beverly Sills—and is even critical of those singers he purports to like.

Quotations: “Although my book is necessarily bio-graphically detailed, I hope that readers will view it as more than a collection of portraits. I’ve attempted to trace the development of singing in America—classically trained voices, that is—from an often rough- and-ready adventure as it transformed itself into a profession. That inevitably led to a loss of creative fantasy in the work of today’s very successful American singers, although I have singled out several who attempt to be original in their choices and how they conduct their careers. Throughout the one hundred seventy-five years covered in my book, there have been exciting and influential artists, and it was my intention to pay tribute to them all.”

References

• The Orchestra: A Very Short Introduction by Holoman D. Kern
  2012
• The New Grove Dictionary of American Music The New Grove Dictionary of American Music is the most comprehensive and enlightening history of America's musical heritage ever published. American Grove is focused solely on the unique styles and traditions of American music.
  2002