Harris, Roy (EN)

Harris Roy, *12 February 1898 Lincoln County (Oklahoma), †1 October 1979 Santa Monica (California), American composer. In 1919–21, he studied philosophy and economics at the University of California at Berkeley. At the age of 24, he began private music studies with A.G. Farwell, who enthusiastically assessed the student’s compositional abilities. Harris’s teachers also included M. Altschuler, A. Bliss, Ch. Demarest, F.Ch. Dillon. One of Harris’ first pieces, Andante for orchestra (performed in 1926 under H. Hanson in Rochester, then in New York), gained recognition in the American music community. He received a Guggenheim Foundation scholarship, which enabled him to study in Paris, where in 1926–28, he studied with Nadia Boulanger, but he basically conducted independent studies, analysing the scores of old masters (Bach, Palestrina, French harpsichordists). His works, including the Concerto for piano, clarinet and string quartet, were performed in Paris. After returning to the United States, he was awarded a composition scholarship from the Pasadena Music and Art Association in 1930–32. He soon gained fame mainly for his symphonic and chamber works. His Symphony No. 1, commissioned by S. Koussevitzky, enjoyed great success, and especially his Symphony No. 3, considered by contemporary critics to be the best American symphonic work. Harris was active as a teacher at various universities: from 1932 to 1940, he was a lecturer at the Juilliard Graduate School; from 1934 to 1938 at the Westminster Choir School in Princeton, New Jersey; from 1940 to 1942 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; from 1942 to 1948 at Colorado College; from 1948 to 1949 at State College, Logan, Utah; from 1949 to 1951 at George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee; from 1951 to 1956 at Pennsylvania College for Women in Pittsburgh; from 1956 to 1957 at Southern Illinois University; from 1957 to 1960 at Indiana University; from 1960 to 1961 director of the International Institute of Music at the Inter-American University in San Germán, Puerto Rico; and from 1961 until his retirement, he was a professor at the University of California. Harris often conducted his own works, he initiated the Cumberland Summer Festivals in Nashville in 1951, the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Pittsburgh in 1952, and was one of the organisers of the International String Congress held in Oklahoma and later in Los Angeles. In 1958, Harris visited the USSR, where his works were presented (including Symphony No. 5 dedicated to the “heroic war struggles of the Soviet people”). He received many honours, including from the National Association of Composers and Conductors and an honorary doctorate from Rutgers University.

In the interwar period, Harris enjoyed great popularity among the public in the United States, and music critics considered him a typically American composer, partly due to his emphasis on melodic patterns modelled on popular hymns, songs and dances of American settlers and cowboys. After World War II, changes in the technique of avant-garde composers influenced the negative reaction of American critics to Harris’s conservative work, but he was still considered an outstanding symphonist. Of his 13 symphonies written almost throughout his life, the most popular is Symphony No. 3, a single-movement one, developing in five phases of varied expression, with a fugue in the middle part. Harris wrote both single-movement symphonies (No. 3, No. 7, No. 8) and multi-movement ones (e.g. No. 4 has seven movements). In his vocal-instrumental symphonies, he used, among others, popular American songs from the collections of J. and A. Lomax, C. Sandburg (Symphony No. 4: “Folk Song Symphony”), texts by A. Lincoln and his own (Symphony No. 10); some of the symphonies – like most of Harris’s instrumental works – have programmatic titles, e.g. Symphony No. 8 “San Francisco,” Symphony No. 10 “Abraham Lincoln,” Symphony No. 12 “Pére Marquette,” Symphony No. 13 “Bicentennial Symphony,” and the subsequent movements of Symphony No. 6 “Gettysburg Address,” dedicated to Lincoln, are titled: Awaking, Conflict, Dedication, Affirmation.

Harris’s chamber music (especially the Piano Quintet, String Quartet No. 3) and choral pieces also occupy an important place in his work, in which the composer used the poetry of W. Whitman, religious texts, and arranged popular patriotic songs (e.g. When Johnny Comes…). In the 1930s, Harris came into contact with the folk singers’ group, which influenced his later work, e.g. in Folk Fantasya for Festivals, he combines traditionally notated choral parts with improvisational folk singer parts. Many of Harris’s compositions are intended for a wind ensemble (band) typical of American culture. His pieces are dominated by modal melodies, with only sporadic chromatic themes (e.g. in the Piano Quintet). Harris’s harmony is tonal, but so-called polychords, triads in the relation of seconds, fourths, parallelisms, consonances of fourths and fifths often appear. The rhythm is rich in irregular accents, often within a variable meter. The composer showed a special predilection for using contrapuntal texture, often introducing canons, passacaglias, fugues, including double and triple ones (e.g. in the first movement of Piano Quintet, there is a passacaglia, and in the third movement – ​​a fugue, in the third movement of Symphony No. 5 – also a fugue). Harris had a significant influence on the work of the next generation of American composers (W. Piston, W. Schuman, M. Gould, P. Mennin and others). He composed over 170 pieces (instrumental, vocal and vocal-instrumental), including many for amateurs; according to critics, his symphonies composed over a period of over 40 years (1933–1976) are a significant contribution to the development of American music. In 2006, Naxos Records began a project to record Harris’s 13 symphonies (as of June 2018, recordings of No. 3, No. 4, No. 5, No. 6, No. 7 and No. 9 symphonies have been released), mainly with conductor Marin Alsop.

Literature: A. Farwell Roy Harris, “The Musical Quarterly” XVIII, 1932; H. Cowell Roy Harris, in: American composers on American music: A symposium, Redwood City 1933; reprint New York 1962; N. Slonimsky From the west composer new to Bostonians, “Boston evening transcript” (24 January 1934), reprint in: Writings on music. I: Early articles for the Boston evening transcript, Abingdon 2004; W. Piston Roy Harris, “Modern Music” XI, 1934; P. Rosenfeld Current chronicle: Copland, Harris, Schuman, “The Musical Quarterly” III, 1939; A. Mendel The Quintet of Roy Harris, “Modern Music” XVI, 1939; Oscar Thompson, Roy Harris, in: Great modern composers, New York 1941; R. Evett The Harmonic Idiom of Roy Harris, “Modern Music” XXIII, 1946; N. Slonimsky Roy Harris, “The Musical Quarterly” XXXIII, 1947; N. Slonimsky Roy Harris, Boston 1947; R. Sabin Roy Harris: Still Buoyant as Composer and Teacher, “Musical America” II, 1957; P. Asley Roy Harris, “Stereo Review” XXI, 1968 (includes a list of records); L. Foreman Roy Harris. American Symphonist, “The Musical Quarterly” XCVI, 1972/73; D. Stehman, The symphonies of Roy Harris: an analytical study of the linear materials and of related works, doctoral thesis, University of Southern California, 1973; R. Strassburg Roy Harris. A Catalog of His Works, Los Angeles 1974; L.C. Gibbs, D. Stehman, The Roy Harris Revival, “American Record Guide” VII, 1979; R. Stevenson, Roy Harris at UCLA: Neglected Documentation, “Inter-American Music Review” I, 1979; W. D. Curtis, Roy Harris (1898–1979): A discography, “Association for Recorded Sound Collections: Journal” III, 1981; M. Bialosky Roy Harris: In Memoriam (But Keep Your Hats On), “College Music Symposium” II, 1982; N. Strimple An introduction to the choral music of Roy Harris, “Choral journal” IX, 1982; J. W. Clark The one-movement symphony in America, 1973-1976: with analyses of works by Roy Harris, William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, and Peter Fricker, doctoral thesis, University of California, 1982; D. Stehman Roy Harris. An American Musical Pioneer, Boston 1984; N. Slonimsky Roy Harris: The story of an Oklahoma composer who was born in a log cabin on Lincoln’s birthday, in: Richard Crawford, R. Allen Lott, Carol J. Oja red.), A celebration of American music: Words and music in honor of H. Wiley Hitchcock, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1990; D. Stehman Roy Harris: A Bio-Bibliography, New York 1991; M. J. Fennell A study of selected band music of Roy Harris, doctoral thesis, University of Northern Colorado, 1991; L. Spizizen Johana and Roy Harris: Marrying a real composer, “The Musical Quarterly’ IV, 1993; Z. Skowron Nowa muzyka amerykańska, Kraków 1995; M. D. Robertson Roy Harris’s symphonies: An introduction (Part I), “Tempo” (207) 1998; M. D. Robertson Roy Harris’s symphonies (Part II), “Tempo” (214), 2000; R. Pye ‘Asking about the inside’: Schoenberg’s ‘idea’ in the music of Roy Harris and William Schuman, “Music analysis” I, 2000; S. Watkins Satterfield Folk and popular song usage in the choral works of Roy Harris, doctoral thesis, University of Florida, 2000; B. Lerner Piano pieces by Roy Harris, Marc Blitzstein, Paul Bowles, and Irving Fine: A performing edition, doctoral thesis, City University of New York, 2001; B. E. Levy ‘The White Hope of American Music’; or, How Roy Harris Became Western, “American Music” II, 2001; S. L. Havens The life and musical style of Roy Harris with an analytical survey of the compositions for solo piano, doctoral thesis, University of Iowa, 2005; P. Isaacson Roy Harris’ sonata for violin and piano (1942): An analysis with historical and performance perspective, doctoral thesis, University of Kentucky, 2005; N. Slonimsky Roy Harris: Cimarron composer, in: Writings on music: Music of the modern era, New York – London 2005; N. E. Tawa The Great American Symphony: Music, the Depression, and War, Bloomington 2009; B. E. Levy Roy Harris and the crisis of consonance, in: Tonality (1900–1950): Concept and practice, ed. F. Wörner, U. Scheideler, Ph. Rupprecht, Stuttgart 2012; B. E. Levy Roy Harris: Provincial Cowboy, White Hope, in: Frontier Figures: American Music and the Mythology of the American West, Berkeley 2012; J. M. Kennedy The Harris Archive, “American music review” II, 2013; V. Thomson Harris and Shostakovich, in: Music chronicles (1940–1954), Washington 2014; E. A. Ansari The Disillusioned Nationalist: Roy Harris, in: The Sound of a Superpower: Musical Americanism and the Cold War, Oxford 2018; E. MacGregor, Ch. Wiley, P. Watt Roy Harris’s Symphony 1933: Biographical myth-making and liberal myth-building in the American West, “Journal of musicological research” III, 2019.