Joseph Castaldo, 72; Composer And Leader

Joseph Castaldo, 72, the charismatic composer and longtime president of the former Philadelphia Musical Academy (later the Philadelphia Academy of the Performing Arts), died Thursday at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

Mr. Castaldo's works were performed by pianists Andre Watts and Susan Starr, the Philadelphia Orchestra and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and several esteemed string quartets.

He had cancer for many years, and the onset of the illness had a dramatic affect on his music.

"He had two distinct styles," said Starr, the pianist for whom Mr. Castaldo wrote his Metaphors for Solo Piano. "He had what he called "before cancer" and "after cancer." The first period he wrote in a very American style, this sort of acerbic and dry, rhythmic, very 1960s style. In the '90s, he went back to writing dark and tonal and lyrical music, almost spiritual."

The composer himself characterized the change this way: "I notice that my music is becoming somehow kinder," he said in 1993. "Sweet and tuneful" is how one critic described it.

"A lot of his pieces were based on posing a musical question and finding a solution," said Robert Capanna, executive director of the Settlement Music School and a onetime student of Mr. Castaldo's. "In Askesis, he was trying to imagine what it was to invent music. It starts with these claps and the sound of stone and stick, and then he asked, how does rhythm evolve from that, how does pitch evolve from that, how does texture evolve from that?"

The dark and handsome Mr. Castaldo, who had a thick, white pompadour for much of his life, also made a mark on the city as a promoter of music, organizing concerts and laser shows around the time of the Bicentennial.

Born on New York's Lower East Side, Mr. Castaldo was the son of a milkman-evangelist. The young musician built a recorder and learned to play it, and he performed clarinet with jazz groups while still a teenager. He served in Italy during World War II in the U.S. Army Band, and while in Rome enrolled at the Academy of Santa Cecilia. Returning to the States, he continued work in composition at New York University, the New School and the Manhattan School of Music.

As a resident of Greenwich Village, he became the basis for the character of a composer in William Gaddis' cult classic The Recognitions.