{"id":239,"date":"2020-04-13T19:51:35","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T19:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/?p=239"},"modified":"2020-04-13T20:03:45","modified_gmt":"2020-04-13T20:03:45","slug":"the-story-behind-one-of-our-most-popular-artifacts-john-duffys-emmy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/2020\/04\/13\/the-story-behind-one-of-our-most-popular-artifacts-john-duffys-emmy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story Behind One of Our Most Popular Artifacts: John Duffy’s Emmy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Maddie Dietrich, Music Special Collections & Research Specialist<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\"ODU_Emmy_Award\"<\/a>\n<\/div>
One of two Emmy’s awarded to composer John Duffy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the more widely-seen items in our holdings is an Emmy\naward belonging to the late composer John Duffy (June 23, 1926, New York\nCity\u2014December 22, 2015, Norfolk, Virginia). Oftentimes when a class visits\nSpecial Collections the Emmy is brought out along with a dozen or so other objects,\noddities and memorabilia intended to demonstrate to students that Special\nCollections isn\u2019t just about old papers and manuscripts but in fact consists of\nall kinds of artifacts, including old papers and manuscripts, which tell the\nstories firsthand of the persons to whom they once belonged. These introductory\nclass sessions are intended to teach students how to use the collections and\ninclude brief hands-on exercises on how to examine items\u2014papers, photographs,\nmaps, calendars, and so on\u2014and offers suggestions on the kinds of information a\nperson might glean from viewing these items firsthand, free from the editorial\nframework imposed by some intermediary scholar for their own agenda. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what about this Emmy award? What makes it so popular, so impressive? Well, it\u2019s big and heavy, and it\u2019s shiny and gold. And it\u2019s easily recognized though relatively few people have ever seen one in person. And of course it represents a pinnacle of human achievement in television broadcasting–somebody, somewhere, sometime, did something so outstanding in their field that their peers deemed the accomplishment worthy of their highest award, to be remembered for all time. To see this Emmy, then, is to experience a brush with greatness. And so who was John Duffy and what did he do to win an Emmy, and how did it end up in Special Collections? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\"MonaEmmy\"<\/a>\n<\/div>
Retired Reading Room Supervisor Mona Farrow with the Duffy Emmy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Born and raised in the Bronx, John Duffy was a veteran of U.S.\nNavy and fought in the Battle of Okinawa during WWII. After the war he studied\ncomposition with such musical giants as Henry Cowell and Aaron Copland and went\non to become music director at the Guthrie Theater and the American Shakespeare\nFestival. He wrote scores for the Broadway productions of J. P. Donleavy\u2019s The\nGinger Man<\/em> and Barbara Garson\u2019s MacBird!<\/em> In 1974 he founded the\norganization Meet The Composer in association with the New York State Council\non the Arts and the American Music Center. He was in fact a two-time Emmy\nwinner, receiving his first for writing the score of the NBC documentary A\nTalent for Life: Jews of the Italian Renaissance<\/em> (1979) and his second for\nthe score of the PBS production Heritage: Civilization and the Jews (1984).<\/em>\nIn 2005 he worked with the Virginia Arts Festival to found The John Duffy\nComposers Institute, a workshop for young composers which for ten years was\nheld in the Diehn Composers Room on the campus of Old Dominion University (the\nworkshop later became the John Duffy Institute for New Opera). In 2011 Duffy\ndonated his collection of scores, manuscripts and memorabilia to ODU Libraries\nSpecial Collections and University Archives (The John\nDuffy Papers, 1944-2012<\/a>). Though he composed more than 300 works for\nsymphony orchestra, theater, television and film, Duffy felt strongly that\n\u201cclassical\u201d music was no more worthy an art form than any other type of music,\npopular or otherwise, and fought to expose the ingrained privilege and\nprejudice that often hides behind such hierarchies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s who John Duffy was, and that\u2019s why we have his Emmy.\nWhen the pandemic is over, make a plan to visit our collections and ask to see\nit!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Maddie Dietrich, Music Special Collections & Research Specialist One of the more widely-seen items in our holdings is an Emmy award belonging to the late composer John Duffy (June 23, 1926, New York City\u2014December 22, 2015, Norfolk, Virginia). Oftentimes … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3954,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[24,41,33,32],"tags":[39,35,37,40,34,38],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3954"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}