Roy Harris is one of the key figures in the development of the American symphony. While his total output, consisting of over 200 compositions, is perhaps dominated by the significance of his 14 symphonies and his chamber music, it also contains some fine choral, vocal, and orchestral works. Harris’s music is considered quintessentially “American,” because it combines American folk material with colourful, open orchestration. He used expressive melodies with frequent metrical changes and syncopation, and harmonies built on the open sounds of major seconds, fourths, and fifths. This patriotic feeling is reinforced by the way the titles of many of his works invoke his country’s heritage, such as An American Portrait (1929), American Creed (1940), and Kentucky Spring (1949).
LeRoy Ellsworth Harris was born in Chandler, Oklahoma, in 1898. His family moved to the San Gabriel Valley in southern California when he was a young boy. In 1919, he briefly attended the University of California, Berkeley, and later the Los Angeles Normal School (what is now UCLA). While in Los Angeles, he began studying composition with Arthur Farwell. In 1926, after some encouragement from Aaron COPLAND, Harris went to Paris to study with Nadia BOULANGER. While in France, he wrote his first major chamber work, Concerto for Piano, Clarinet, and String Quartet, which was premiered with Boulanger performing at the piano.
In 1933, Copland introduced and recommended Harris to Serge KOUSSEVITZKY, the director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a champion of new music. Koussevitzky commissioned Harris, resulting in Harris’s first symphony, Symphony 1933, which was successfully premiered in Boston in 1934 and which brought Harris recognition as a serious composer of considerable musical substance.
Five years later, Harris completed his Symphony No. 3, which was again premiered by Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony. This one-movement symphony in five sections was both an artistic and public success, and has remained the most frequently performed and recorded of all of Harris’s works.
Harris’s interest in folk music increased during the 1930s as he researched folk songs, both recorded and printed. Howard Hanson, a fellow composer, commissioned a work for chorus and orchestra to be performed in 1940 by the Eastman School’s American Spring Festival. For this commission, Harris composed his Symphony No. 4 (also known as Folksong Symphony, incorporating cowboy songs and ballads, as well as other American folk tunes. Commissions continued for Harris, with Symphony No. 5 being written for Koussevitzky, and Symphony No. 6 (or Gettysburg) for the Blue Network (later ABC). Harris continued to write symphonies throughout his career, his last being the Bicentennial Symphony-1976, commissioned by California State University, Los Angeles.
Besides composing, Harris also held various teaching positions, beginning with his appointment at the Juilliard School of Music in 1932. There he met Beula Duffey, a member of the piano faculty, whom he later married. (After their marriage, she became known as Johana Harris.) During his lifetime, Harris was the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including three Guggenheim awards, two honorary doctorates (at Rutgers and Westminster Choir College), an election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge medal, and an appointment as Composer Laureate of the State of California. Roy Harris died in 1979 at the age of 81 in Santa Monica, California.
Kathleen Lamkin
SEE ALSO:
FURTHER READING
Stehman, Dan. Roy Harris: A Bio-bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra; String Quintet; Symphony No. 1; Symphony No. 3; Symphony No. 6.