Roberto Sierra, chair of Cornell's Department of Music, has been nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Contemporary Classical Composition for "Missa Latina Pro Pace."

"Missa Latina" is a 75-minute work for orchestra, full choir and two soloists (soprano and baritone). It was commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C., to celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2006. Last season's recording by the Milwaukee Symphony received the Grammy nomination.

It took Sierra more than a year to write "Missa Latina."

"I had to juggle teaching and writing and everything else," he said. "When I write music, I don't think of things like nominations, I just write the best I can, and it's up to others to decide about it."

Born in Puerto Rico, Sierra studied at the Puerto Rico Conservatory and Puerto Rico University before receiving his Masters in Musicology from the Royal College of London University. He did postgraduate studies at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, and studied programmatic composition with Gyorgi Ligeti in Hamburg. He was dean, then chancellor, of the Puerto Rico Conservatory, leaving to become composer-in-residence for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. In 1992, he began teaching composition at Cornell.

The 52nd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony will be held Jan. 31, 2010, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Sierra, however, may not attend. "I'll probably be traveling," he said. "I'll have to watch on TV."

Linda Glaser is a freelance writer.