"Doc" Simon, the more reserved of the two in Hollister's recollection, went on to become one of Broadway's greatest names. His first name was Neil.

After five summers of mountain musical revues, Hollister took a break. In 1957, he traveled to Europe, Russia and China, then came back to New York and turned to classical music, composing orchestral and chamber works.

Hollister says he turned his back on the Broadway beat, thinking it too trivial for his talents. He wanted to fulfill what he called "higher ambitions": becoming a "serious" composer.

"I was living a bachelor life," he says. "I was freelancing in everything--freelancing in music, freelancing in romance."

When he married his wife, Barbara Witriol, in 1965, he says he settled down. Fifteen years after graduating from the College, he returned to higher education. The couple moved to Iowa City, where Hollister pursued advanced study in classical music. He has since taught at schools in Louisiana and New York, and is currently at Long Island University.

The years in Iowa City produced a doctorate in music for Hollister--as well as his wife's favorite piece of his music. She says Corronach, a work for string symphony prompted by Hollister's reading about the Holocaust, is unique for Hollister because of its "dark, gestural" character.

"I've always liked Mahler and expressive music," she says. "David's work [on Corronach] is very personal and has a kind of deep lyricism."

Corronach was Hollister's second-year composition, required for his fine arts master's degree. The pressure was on academically, he says, and so the piece was written "in a state of heightened intensity psychologically."

Hollister calls it his most ambitious work, a demanding piece to play. And he complains that the only public performance of the piece--by the New Orleans Symphony--was "ragged" and not "terribly well rehearsed."

Someday Hollister says he hopes to hear the piece played by a top-drawer orchestra, but he characterizes the one rendition the work did receive as "intense" and "overwhelming."

More recently, another of Hollister's works has received public hearing. Contraries, a piece that sets poems of William Blake to music, has just been played for a second time.

According to Hollister, finding orchestras willing to play pieces of modern music that they didn't commission is unusual. He encounters similar problems in getting publishing firms to print sheet music for new compositions.

None of Hollister's music has been published, and he singles this out as "one thing I haven't done" which he still hopes to accomplish in his musical career.

At his home in New York, he keeps filing cabinets and shelves full of scores. He hopes to donate a large amount of material to Harvard's libraries, if they want it.

As for recordings, his two string quartets were put out on vinyl by a label called Opus One. But Opus One hasn't made the switch to compact discs.