Prize Winner

Symphonic composers, like poets, seldom make a living at their profession. But sometimes their symphonies win prizes, and some of these prizes are big enough to keep them in beans for a year or two at a time. Biggest and most coveted prizes are: a Guggenheim Fellowship ($2,500), the Prix de Rome ($2,000), the Joseph H. Beams Prize (two annually: one at $1,200, one at $900), the Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship ($1,500). This year, in honor of its 60th birthday, the St. Louis Symphony added a prize of $1,000 to this list, asked U. S. composers to compete. Nearly 200 responded.

Last week the St. Louis Symphony, having announced the winner, played his prize-winning composition. He was neither an established big-name composer nor a brilliant young newcomer. Instead he was a modest, wispy little man of 60 named Antoni Van der Voort, who had spent recent years teaching and fiddling in a WPA orchestra in Santa Barbara, Calif. Nobody had ever paid much attention to his compositions.

Van der Voort's prize-winning composition was a light, nostalgic Sinfonietta, 25 minutes long. To hear its premiere, the shy, stoop-shouldered composer packed his bags and went to St. Louis. When the audience applauded his work, he stepped diffidently out on the stage, took a bow. Critics next day found his Sinfonietta craftsmanlike, charming, melodious, compared it to works by famed Italian Composer Ottorino Respighi. Said Antoni Van der Voort: "The sun is shining today for me."

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