Roy Harris
Encyclopedia
Roy Ellsworth Harris was an American
composer
. He wrote much music on American subjects, becoming best known for his Symphony No. 3
.
, of mixed Scots, Irish and Welsh ancestry, in circumstances he sometimes liked to contrast with those of the more privileged East-coast composers: to poor parents, in a log cabin in Oklahoma
, on Abraham Lincoln
's birthday, one of five children (three of whom died early). His father was able to combine the proceeds of a gambling with his auction of the Oklahoma homestead to purchase some land near to Covina
in the San Gabriel Valley
of southern California, where he brought his family in 1903. The boy grew up a farmer in this rural, isolated environment. He studied piano with his mother, and later clarinet. Though he studied at the University of California, Berkeley
, he was still virtually self-taught when he began writing music of his own, but in the early 1920s he had lessons from Arthur Bliss
(then in Santa Barbara
) and the senior American composer and researcher of American Indian
(then called "Red Indian") music, Arthur Farwell
. Harris sold his farmland and supported himself as a truck-driver and delivery man for a dairy firm. Gradually he made contacts in the East with other young composers, and partly through Aaron Copland
's recommendation he was able to spend 1926-29 in Paris, as one of the many young Americans who received their final musical grooming in the masterclasses of Nadia Boulanger
. Harris had no time for Boulanger's neoclassical
, Stravinsky
-derived aesthetic, but under her tutelage he began his lifelong study of Renaissance
music, and wrote his first significant work: the concerto for piano, clarinet and string quartet.
After suffering a serious back injury, Harris was obliged to return for treatment to the United States, where he formed associations with Howard Hanson
at the Eastman School of Music
in Rochester
and, more importantly, with Serge Koussevitsky at the Boston Symphony Orchestra
. These associations secured performance outlets for the large-scale works he was writing. In 1934, a week after its first performance under Koussevitsky, his Symphony ‘1933’ became the first American symphony to be commercially recorded. It was his Symphony No. 3, however, first performed by Koussevitsky in 1939, which proved to be the composer's biggest breakthrough and made him practically a household name.
During the 1930s Harris taught at Mills College
, Westminster Choir College (1934–1938) and the Juilliard School
of Music. He spent most of the rest of his professional career restlessly moving through teaching posts and residences at American colleges and universities. His final posts were in California, first at UCLA and then at California State University, Los Angeles
. Among his pupils were William Schuman
, H. Owen Reed
, John Donald Robb
, Robert Turner
, Lorne Betts
, George Lynn
, John Verrall
, and Peter Schickele
(best known as the creator of P.D.Q. Bach). He received many of America's most prestigious cultural awards, and at the end of his life was proclaimed Honorary Composer Laureate of the State of California.
In 1936 Harris married the young pianist Johana Harris
who went on to a highly successful career, making numerous recordings and appearing as a soloist with almost every major American symphony orchestra. She also had a long career teaching on the piano faculty at the Juilliard School. Her name prior to their marriage was Beula Duffey, but Harris convinced her to change it to Johana after J.S. Bach. The Canadian Encyclopedia
states, "Johana and Roy Harris were a tour de force in American music. Their collaboration has been compared to that of Robert and Clara Schumann. The Harrises organized concerts, adjudicated at festivals, and in 1959 founded the International String Congress. They promoted American folksong by including folksongs in their concerts and broadcasts." The couple had two sons, Shaun and Dan, who performed with The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
, a Los Angeles-based psychedelic rock
band of the late 1960s.
). In 1958 the U.S. State Department sent him, along with some fellow composers including Peter Mennin
and Roger Sessions
, to the Soviet Union as a "cultural ambassador"; he was impressed by the support for composers that the Soviet state provided, not aware at the time of how carefully his visit was managed. He was a tireless organizer of conferences and contemporary music festivals and a frequent radio broadcaster. His last symphony, a commission for the American Bicentennial in 1976, was mauled by the critics at its first performance. This may have been due to its themes of slavery
and the Civil War
, which were in contrast to the celebratory mood of the country.
Although the rugged American patriotism of his works of the 1930s and 1940s is reflected in his research into and use of folk music (and to a lesser extent of jazz
rhythms), Harris was paradoxically obsessed with the great European pre-classical forms, especially the fugue
(which we hear in the Third Symphony) and passacaglia
(as featured in the Seventh). His customary mode of musical discourse, with long singing lines and resonant modal harmonies, is ultimately based on his admiration for and development of Renaissance polyphony. He also used antiphonal effects, which he exploited brilliantly with a large orchestra. Like many American composers of his time, he was deeply impressed by the symphonic achievement of Sibelius
. In Harris's best works the music grows organically from the opening bars, as if a tiny seed gives birth to an entire tree. This is certainly the case with the Third Symphony, which joined the American repertoire during the same era as works by Aaron Copland
and Virgil Thomson
. The first edition of Kent Kennan's The Technique of Orchestration (1952) quotes three passages from this symphony to illustrate good orchestral writing for cello, timpani, and vibraphone, respectively. The book quotes no other Harris symphonies. Few other American symphonies have acquired such a position in the standard performance repertory as has this one, due in large part to the championing of the piece by Leonard Bernstein
, who recorded it.
Though Harris's symphonies are his greatest contribution to American music, he composed over 170 works, including many works for amateurs. His output includes works for band, orchestra, voice, chorus and chamber ensembles.
In addition there is a missing (and perhaps not completed) Symphony for High School Orchestra (1937) and the following unfinished or fragmentary works:
Naxos Records
is in process of recording the 13 numbered symphonies with conductor Marin Alsop
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
. He wrote much music on American subjects, becoming best known for his Symphony No. 3
Symphony No. 3 (Harris)
Roy Harris's Symphony No. 3 is a work written in 1939 and premiered by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky.Harris wrote this symphony on a commission from Hans Kindler but he gave it to Serge Koussevitzky instead...
.
Life
He was born in Chandler, OklahomaChandler, Oklahoma
Chandler is a city in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 2,842 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Lincoln County and is part of the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area.Chandler is located east of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on U.S...
, of mixed Scots, Irish and Welsh ancestry, in circumstances he sometimes liked to contrast with those of the more privileged East-coast composers: to poor parents, in a log cabin in Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
, on Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
's birthday, one of five children (three of whom died early). His father was able to combine the proceeds of a gambling with his auction of the Oklahoma homestead to purchase some land near to Covina
Covina, California
Covina is a small city in Los Angeles County, California about east of downtown Los Angeles, in the San Gabriel Valley region. The population was 47,796 at the 2010 census, up from 46,837 at the 2000 census...
in the San Gabriel Valley
San Gabriel Valley
The San Gabriel Valley is one of the principal valleys of Southern California, United States. It lies to the east of Los Angeles, to the north of the Puente Hills, to the south of the San Gabriel Mountains, and west of the Inland Empire. It derives its name from the San Gabriel River that flows...
of southern California, where he brought his family in 1903. The boy grew up a farmer in this rural, isolated environment. He studied piano with his mother, and later clarinet. Though he studied at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, he was still virtually self-taught when he began writing music of his own, but in the early 1920s he had lessons from Arthur Bliss
Arthur Bliss
Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...
(then in Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...
) and the senior American composer and researcher of American Indian
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
(then called "Red Indian") music, Arthur Farwell
Arthur Farwell
Arthur Farwell was an American composer, conductor, educationalist, lithographer, esoteric savant, and music publisher.- Biography :Farwell was born in St Paul, Minnesota...
. Harris sold his farmland and supported himself as a truck-driver and delivery man for a dairy firm. Gradually he made contacts in the East with other young composers, and partly through Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
's recommendation he was able to spend 1926-29 in Paris, as one of the many young Americans who received their final musical grooming in the masterclasses of Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
. Harris had no time for Boulanger's neoclassical
Neoclassicism (music)
Neoclassicism in music was a twentieth-century trend, particularly current in the period between the two World Wars, in which composers sought to return to aesthetic precepts associated with the broadly defined concept of "classicism", namely order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint...
, Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
-derived aesthetic, but under her tutelage he began his lifelong study of Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
music, and wrote his first significant work: the concerto for piano, clarinet and string quartet.
After suffering a serious back injury, Harris was obliged to return for treatment to the United States, where he formed associations with Howard Hanson
Howard Hanson
Howard Harold Hanson was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music. As director for 40 years of the Eastman School of Music, he built a high-quality school and provided opportunities for commissioning and performing American music...
at the Eastman School of Music
Eastman School of Music
The Eastman School of Music is a music conservatory located in Rochester, New York. The Eastman School is a professional school within the University of Rochester...
in Rochester
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
and, more importantly, with Serge Koussevitsky at the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...
. These associations secured performance outlets for the large-scale works he was writing. In 1934, a week after its first performance under Koussevitsky, his Symphony ‘1933’ became the first American symphony to be commercially recorded. It was his Symphony No. 3, however, first performed by Koussevitsky in 1939, which proved to be the composer's biggest breakthrough and made him practically a household name.
During the 1930s Harris taught at Mills College
Mills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...
, Westminster Choir College (1934–1938) and the Juilliard School
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
of Music. He spent most of the rest of his professional career restlessly moving through teaching posts and residences at American colleges and universities. His final posts were in California, first at UCLA and then at California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Los Angeles is a public comprehensive university, part of the California State University system...
. Among his pupils were William Schuman
William Schuman
William Howard Schuman was an American composer and music administrator.-Life:Born in Manhattan in New York City to Samuel and Rachel Schuman, Schuman was named after the twenty-seventh U.S. president, William Howard Taft, although his family preferred to call him Bill...
, H. Owen Reed
H. Owen Reed
Herbert Owen Reed is an American composer, conductor, and author.-Education:Reed was raised in rural Odessa, Missouri, where his first exposure to music was his father's playing of the old-time fiddle...
, John Donald Robb
John Donald Robb
John Donald Robb was an American composer, ethnomusicologist, arts administrator, and attorney from New Mexico. He was a professor at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and served as Dean of the university's College of Fine Arts from 1942 to 1957...
, Robert Turner
Robert Turner (composer)
Robert Comrie Turner is a Canadian composer, radio producer, and music educator. He graduated with a bachelors degree in music from McGill University in 1943. While there he studied with Douglas Clarke and Claude Champagne. He continued his studies briefly at Colorado College in 1947, where he met...
, Lorne Betts
Lorne Betts
Lorne Matheson Betts was a Canadian composer, conductor, organist, and music critic. A member of the Canadian League of Composers and an associate of the Canadian Music Centre, many of his original scores and writings are part of the collection at the National Library of Canada...
, George Lynn
George Lynn
George Lynn was an American composer, conductor, pianist, organist, singer, and music educator. A longtime member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, his compositional output encompasses more than 200 orchestral and choral pieces; many of which have been performed by...
, John Verrall
John Verrall
John Weedon Verrall was an American composer of contemporary classical music.-Life:Prior to his University studies, Verrall studied composition with Donald Ferguson, followed by studies with R. O. Morris in London and Zoltán Kodály in Budapest. He obtained a B.M. degree from the Minneapolis School...
, and Peter Schickele
Peter Schickele
Johann Peter Schickele is an American composer, musical educator, and parodist. He is best known for his comedy music albums featuring his music that he presents as music written by the fictional composer P. D. Q...
(best known as the creator of P.D.Q. Bach). He received many of America's most prestigious cultural awards, and at the end of his life was proclaimed Honorary Composer Laureate of the State of California.
In 1936 Harris married the young pianist Johana Harris
Johana Harris
Johana Harris was a Canadian pianist, composer, and music educator. She had highly successful career as a concert pianist, making numerous recordings and appearing as a soloist with almost every major American symphony orchestra. She made over 100 solo recordings, working with such labels as...
who went on to a highly successful career, making numerous recordings and appearing as a soloist with almost every major American symphony orchestra. She also had a long career teaching on the piano faculty at the Juilliard School. Her name prior to their marriage was Beula Duffey, but Harris convinced her to change it to Johana after J.S. Bach. The Canadian Encyclopedia
The Canadian Encyclopedia
The Canadian Encyclopedia is a source of information on Canada. It is available online, at no cost. The Canadian Encyclopedia is available in both English and French and includes some 14,000 articles in each language on a wide variety of subjects including history, popular culture, events, people,...
states, "Johana and Roy Harris were a tour de force in American music. Their collaboration has been compared to that of Robert and Clara Schumann. The Harrises organized concerts, adjudicated at festivals, and in 1959 founded the International String Congress. They promoted American folksong by including folksongs in their concerts and broadcasts." The couple had two sons, Shaun and Dan, who performed with The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band was an American psychedelic rock band of the late 1960s, based in Los Angeles, California.-History:...
, a Los Angeles-based psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom...
band of the late 1960s.
Character, reputation, and style characteristics
Harris was a champion of many causes. He founded the International String Congress to combat what was perceived as a shortage of string players in the U.S., and co-founded the American Composers AllianceAmerican Composers Alliance
The American Composers Alliance is an American membership organization dedicated to the publishing and promoting of American contemporary classical music. Founded in 1937 by Aaron Copland, Milton Adolphus and others, it is the oldest national organization of its kind, and represents over 200...
). In 1958 the U.S. State Department sent him, along with some fellow composers including Peter Mennin
Peter Mennin
Peter Mennin was an American composer and teacher. He directed the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, then for many years ran the Juilliard School, succeeding William Schuman in this role...
and Roger Sessions
Roger Sessions
Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic, and teacher of music.-Life:Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendent of Samuel Huntington, a signer of...
, to the Soviet Union as a "cultural ambassador"; he was impressed by the support for composers that the Soviet state provided, not aware at the time of how carefully his visit was managed. He was a tireless organizer of conferences and contemporary music festivals and a frequent radio broadcaster. His last symphony, a commission for the American Bicentennial in 1976, was mauled by the critics at its first performance. This may have been due to its themes of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
and the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, which were in contrast to the celebratory mood of the country.
Although the rugged American patriotism of his works of the 1930s and 1940s is reflected in his research into and use of folk music (and to a lesser extent of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
rhythms), Harris was paradoxically obsessed with the great European pre-classical forms, especially the fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
(which we hear in the Third Symphony) and passacaglia
Passacaglia
The passacaglia is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used by contemporary composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre....
(as featured in the Seventh). His customary mode of musical discourse, with long singing lines and resonant modal harmonies, is ultimately based on his admiration for and development of Renaissance polyphony. He also used antiphonal effects, which he exploited brilliantly with a large orchestra. Like many American composers of his time, he was deeply impressed by the symphonic achievement of Sibelius
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
. In Harris's best works the music grows organically from the opening bars, as if a tiny seed gives birth to an entire tree. This is certainly the case with the Third Symphony, which joined the American repertoire during the same era as works by Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
and Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...
. The first edition of Kent Kennan's The Technique of Orchestration (1952) quotes three passages from this symphony to illustrate good orchestral writing for cello, timpani, and vibraphone, respectively. The book quotes no other Harris symphonies. Few other American symphonies have acquired such a position in the standard performance repertory as has this one, due in large part to the championing of the piece by Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, who recorded it.
Though Harris's symphonies are his greatest contribution to American music, he composed over 170 works, including many works for amateurs. His output includes works for band, orchestra, voice, chorus and chamber ensembles.
The Symphonies
Harris composed at least 18 symphonies, though not all of them are numbered and not all are for orchestra. A full list is as follows:- Symphony - Our Heritage (1925 rev. 1926, abandoned), sometimes referred to as Symphony No. 1 [for orchestra] - only an Andante survives
- Symphony - American Portrait (1928-1929) [for orchestra]
- Symphony 1933 (1933), sometimes referred to as Symphony No. 1 [for orchestra]
- Symphony No. 2 (1934) [for orchestra]
- Symphony for Voices (1935) after Walt Whitman [for unaccompanied SATB chorus]
- Symphony No. 3Symphony No. 3 (Harris)Roy Harris's Symphony No. 3 is a work written in 1939 and premiered by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky.Harris wrote this symphony on a commission from Hans Kindler but he gave it to Serge Koussevitzky instead...
(1937-1938, rev. 1939) [for orchestra] - Folksong Symphony (Symphony No. 4) (1939 rev. 1942) [for chorus and orchestra]
- Symphony No. 5 (1940–42 rev. 1945) [for orchestra]
- Symphony No. 6 'Gettysburg Address' after Lincoln (1943-1944) [for orchestra]
- Symphony for Band 'West Point'(1952) [for US military band]
- Symphony No. 7 (1951-1952, rev. 1955) [for orchestra]
- Symphony No. 8 'San Francisco' (1961–62) [for orchestra with concertante piano]
- Symphony No. 9 (1962) for Philadelphia [for orchestra]
- Symphony No. 10 'Abraham Lincoln' (1965) [for speaker, chorus, brass, 2 pianos and percussion]; revised version for speaker, chorus, piano and orchestra (1967; missing)
- Symphony No. 11 (1967) for New York PO 125th [for orchestra]
- Symphony No. 12 'Père Marquette' (1967-1969) [for tenor solo, speaker and orchestra]
- Bicentennial Symphony 1776 (1969-1974), numbered by Harris as Symphony No. 14 out of superstition over the number 13 but posthumously re-numbered as No. 13 by Dan Stehman with the permission of the composer's widow [for six-part chorus and orchestra with solo voices and speakers]
In addition there is a missing (and perhaps not completed) Symphony for High School Orchestra (1937) and the following unfinished or fragmentary works:
- American Symphony (1938) [for jazz band]
- Choral Symphony (1936) [for chorus and orchestra]
- Walt Whitman Symphony (1955–58) [baritone solo, chorus and orchestra]
Naxos Records
Naxos Records
Naxos Records is a record label specializing in classical music. Through a number of imprints, Naxos also releases genres including Chinese music, jazz, world music, and early rock & roll. The company was founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, a German-born resident of Hong Kong.Naxos is the largest...
is in process of recording the 13 numbered symphonies with conductor Marin Alsop
Marin Alsop
Marin Alsop is an American conductor and violinist. She is the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.In 2012, Alsop will replace Yan Pascal Tortelier as principal conductor of the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra....
.
Piano works
- Sonata Op. 1 (1928)Prelude, Andante, Scherzo, Coda
- Little Suite for Piano (1938) Bells, Sad News, Children at Play, Slumber
- Suite for Piano (1944)
- American Ballads (1946)
- Toccata (1949)
Other notable works
These include:- Andante for Orchestra (1925 rev. 1926) [only completed movement of Symphony 'Our Heritage']
- Epilogue to Profiles in Courage - JFK (1964)
- Fantasy for piano and orchestra (1954)
- Piano Sonata (1928)
- Concerto for String Quartet, Piano, and Clarinet (1926, rev. 1927-8)
- Piano Quintet (1936)
- String Quartet No.3 (Four Preludes and Fugues) (1937)
- Violin Concerto (1949)
- When Johnny Comes Marching Home - An American Overture (1934)