Walter Piston (1894-1976), American composer, wrote traditionalist music of great technical skill which was neoclassic in its orientation. He was highly influential as an educator.

Walter Piston was born on Jan. 20, 1894, in Rockland, Maine. His grandparents had settled there after their arrival from Italy, and soon after dropped the final "e" from their original name of Pistone. At the age of ten young Piston moved to Boston with his family and, after graduating from high school, studied painting at the Massachusetts Normal School, where he graduated in 1916. Music was a secondary interest to Piston until World War I. During the war he served in a service band and taught himself how to play most of the wind instruments. "They were just lying around and no one minded if you picked them up and found out what they could do," he said about this time in his life.

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