Information AboutRoy Harris |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT ROY HARRIS | |
| 1898 births | |
| harris, roy | |
| 1979 deaths | |
| 20th century classical composers | |
| american composers | |
| people from oklahoma | |
| scots-irish americans | |
| welsh-americans | |
| oklahoma musicians | |
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LIFE He was born 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 . Returning to the United States after suffering a back injury, Harris formed associations with Howard Hanson at the Eastman-Rochester School Of Music and, more important, with Serge Koussevitsky at the Boston Symphony Orchestra , which secured performance outlets for the large-scale works he was writing. In 1934, a week after its premiere under Koussevitsky, his ''Symphony ‘1933’'' became the first American symphony to be commercially recorded. It was Symphony No.3, however, premiered 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 - later the home of Darius Milhaud - and the Juilliard School Of Music ; he spent most of the rest of his professional career restlessly moving through teaching posts and residences at colleges and universities in various parts of the USA, ending with a long stint in California, first at UCLA and finally at California State University, Los Angeles. Among his pupils were William Schuman 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. Harris's sons Shaun and Dan performed with The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band , a Los Angeles-based Psychedelic Rock band of the late 1960s (although Roy Harris did not approve of rock music). CHARACTER, REPUTATION AND STYLE CHARACTERISTICS Harris was a champion of many causes (he founded the and the Civil War , and contradicted the required mood of national self-congratulation. In his last years Harris was increasingly depressed by the effects of the US's rampant materialism, discrimination against minorities and destruction of natural resources. Although the rugged American patriotism of his works of the Thirties and Forties 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 monolithic ones of Fugue (which we hear in the Third Symphony) and Passacaglia (as featured in the next most admired, the Seventh). His customary mode of discourse, with long singing lines and resonant modal harmonies, is ultimately based on his admiration for and development of Renaissance polyphony—and also antiphonal effects, which he exploits brilliantly with a large orchestra. Like many American composers of his time, he was deeply impressed by the symphonic achievement of Sibelius (who also drew on Renaissance polyphonic techniques). In Harris's best works the music grows organically from the opening bars, as if a tiny seed gives birth to an entire tree; and 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'' 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 firmly-entrenched position in the standard performance repertory as has this one, due much to the championship of the piece by Leonard Bernstein , as well as to his several recordings of it. His music, while often abstract, has a reputation for its optimistic, American tone. Musicologist John Canarina describes the "Harris style" as "exuberant horn passages and timpani ostinatos". In all, Harris composed over 170 works, including many works for amateurs, but the backbone of his output was his series of symphonies. Harris wrote no opera, but otherwise covered all the main genres of orchestral, vocal, choral, chamber and instrumental music as well as writing a significant number of works for band. His series of symphonies is still his most significant contribution to American music. 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:
In addition there is a missing (and perhaps not completed) Symphony for High School Orchestra (1937) and the following unfinished or fragmentary works:
OTHER NOTABLE WORKS These include:
REFERENCES
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