Breaking: An American composer is found dead

Michael S. Horwood says:

Arnold was an amazing man, composer and teacher. He and I were students at the State University of NY at Buffalo in the late 1960’s, early ’70’s. He consistently maintained that the whole avant-garde, 12-tone and aleatoric modes of composing were dead ends and musically worthless. I must say he quite possibly was correct on that. He vastly preferred his personal idols: Palestrina, Hovhaness and Vaughan Williams to name but a few. He was the first person to receive a PhD in music composition from that university. His knowledge of music was encyclopedic and particularly enjoyed challenging anyone to a game of “Opus Quiz” (e.g. Prokofiev, Op. 100 = ??? ). He was always entertaining and a great conversationalist. He had his own unique vocabulary of terms and phrases that he coined referring mostly to music, but also life in general. For example, theory students shuddered, albeit whimsically, when Arnie would spot “double dumpties’ in their assignments. Those were the dreaded parallel fifths. I think of him often and regret that I did not meet up with him after those years.