Seattle music lovers had one last memorable visit with legendary American composer David Diamond, who died yesterday afternoon just a month short of his 90th birthday.

Shrugging off an earlier bout of ill health, Mr. Diamond of Rochester, N.Y., thoroughly enjoyed himself at Seattle Symphony's "Made in America" Festival last month. Frail but lucid and beaming, he rose for several curtain calls as the Benaroya Hall audience applauded him after a performance of his Symphony No. 4.

Mr. Diamond credited Seattle Symphony Music Director Gerard Schwarz with championing his music.

"I have been very fortunate over the years to have the help of Gerard Schwarz," the composer said in a May interview. Mr. Diamond had written several works for the symphony over the past two decades in his role as honorary composer in residence. He even composed the little "Chimes" piece that calls Benaroya Hall concertgoers to their seats before performances and at intermissions.

Born in Rochester, N.Y., on July 9, 1915, David Leo Diamond showed early musical aptitude, eventually winning a scholarship to the Eastman School of Music. He soon emerged as an important voice in American music, composing in a neo-romantic compositional style. Romanticism fell out of favor in the 1950s, when such music was considered old-fashioned.

Instead, the arbiters of musical fashion at the heads of academic, media and performance institutions decreed that the future lay in a new wave of serialism (the 12-tone school of atonal composition pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg and taken up by Milton Babbitt and Pierre Boulez).

Mr. Diamond stuck to his musical guns, however, and continued writing music that made sense to him. Now, atonal music is on the wane; last month, Mr. Diamond said, "The need for beautiful music is stronger now than ever."

As a young man, Mr. Diamond moved to Paris to study with famed pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and found himself in a highly cultivated milieu. There was the famous Maurice Ravel, a natty dresser who admired Mr. Diamond's music and also his taste in purple turtlenecks; and there were Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Igor Stravinsky, among many others.

During the Paris years, Mr. Diamond's music came to the attention of Boston Symphony conductor Charles Munch, who championed his works. Mr. Diamond found himself in demand when he returned to New York, and the 1940s were exciting years for him: Friends included Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, and four important conductors, including Bernstein, premiered his first four symphonies.

Mr. Diamond also made enemies. Famously blunt and outspoken, he also was open about his homosexuality and, as a Jew, had to cope with anti-Semitism. His friendships could be tumultuous; Bernstein, initially a great supporter, grew distant.

Mr. Diamond devoted much time in his later years to his memoirs, and Bernstein is likely to figure into them. They haven't been published yet and are expected to contain sensational details.

Though physically frail in his later years, Mr. Diamond remained mentally acute, enjoying the late reflowering of his fame. In the late 1980s, he accompanied Schwarz to Moscow, where Schwarz conducted Mr. Diamond's Symphony No. 4 to rapturous acclaim.

"I get so many letters, maybe 10 to 15 a month," Mr. Diamond said in a 2001 interview, "from people I've never heard of in all parts of the world — people who buy CDs of my music and want to tell me that it moved them. It fulfills my feeling of what I was put on Earth for. I feel very content."

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com