He was a great man, gentle and sweet natured.  Our kids knew each other,
played together, and we liked him very much.

   Date: Sun, 30 May 1999 18:13:46 +0100
   From: Mark DeVoto <[log in to unmask]>
   Subject: Donald Sur (1935-1999)

          Saturday evening

   A memorial was held today for Donald Sur (born Honolulu, 1 February
   1935; died Boston, 24 May 1999) at Marsh Chapel at Boston University.
   David Hoose conducted the Cantata Singers in Donald's a cappella
   setting of Shakespeare's Sonnet 97 ("How like a winter hath my absence
   been"), which they had given in premiere on May 7.  We heard tapes
   of Donald's _Catena III_ from the Collage New Music performance at
   Tanglewood twenty years ago, and of the extensive choral-orchestral
   section "God made one man, and one woman, Adam and Eve" from Donald's
   _Slavery Documents_, from the first performance of Part I, by the
   Cantata Singers in 1990.  Finally, Collage New Music performed _Satori
   on Park Avenue_ for five instruments.  In between these richly
   inventive, eclectic, and very different pieces, we heard some fine
   personal recollections of Donald -- David Hoose about their numerous
   collaborative performances, John Harbison about his friendship with
   Donald dating back to 1961 at Princeton, Donald's niece Michele about
   Donald's last days in the hospital, when he was constantly hearing
   and analyzing new sounds and unexpected words, which may have been
   hallucination or simply the forehearing of strange and fascinating
   music that he would have surely incorporated into the next work.
   Donald brought a stack of score paper into the hospital with him; he
   worked on Part II of _Slavery Documents_ right up to the end, and
   the preliminary assessment is that he did complete a substantial and
   usable fragment.  At a reception following the observance, two tables
   exhibited scores, sketches, photographs (all the way back to Donald's
   childhood), concert programs and posters.

   Richard Dyer noted with some shock, in a tribute in the Boston
   _Globe_, that none of Donald's works is published in score or available
   on CD; but this situation may be expected to change.  Donald was a
   beloved figure for decades among all the composers in the Boston area
   and well known to a significant minority elsewhere, including especially
   Korea, where he spent several years studying his musical ancestry as
   well as recapturing his family roots.  He researched and taught Asian
   music from time to time at Harvard, MIT, and Tufts, squeezed out an
   occasional living from commissions and grants, and a more frugal but
   sociable one printing blackline ozalids for his fellow composers in
   his ammonia-saturated third-floor apartment.  In all those years,
   Donald Sur was ever a good friend, a wise, witty, endlessly inquiring,
   endlessly surprising personality, and truly a composer's composer.

   Mark DeVoto / Music Department, Tufts University / 20 Professors Row /
   Medford, Massachusetts 02155 / [log in to unmask]
   http://www.tufts.edu/~mdevoto

Mimi Ezust