ExclusiveHoward Hanson: Champion of American Classical Music

Welcome to American Legends. My name is Tiffany Brannon. Each culture has its legends, and that could be myths or different stories, but here in America, our greatest legends are the wonderful heroes who are right from our history pages. Now, some of these heroes are very famous and some are obscure, but each person deserves to be discovered because each man or woman stands as a great example of how we can be better Americans in our daily lives. Some composers are instantly recognizable by name. Others penned works which we frequently hear on the radio. One composer really has neither legacy. Nevertheless, he was one of the most important shaping influences on the development and furthering of classical music in the United States throughout the 20th century through his personal compositions, through his teaching at one of America's foremost music institutions for 40 years, and perhaps even more importantly, through the way he championed the work of young composers. This man's name may not be instantly recognizable, but his work certainly deserves a lot of credit. His name is Howard Hansen. Born in 1896 to Swedish immigrant parents, Howard Hansen dedicated the better part of his life to the teaching of classical music at higher learning institutions. He was a musical prodigy who was instructed in music by his mother at a young age. If you just read his dates without giving them much thought, they might seem rather run-of-the-mill. He went to one college and then a better university and then... But if you look at his dates and compare them to his birth, you'll realize just how prodigious he was. He began his formal education at Luther College in his hometown of Oahu, Nebraska, where he graduated with his degree at the age of 14. After that, he went to the Institute of Musical Art in New York City, which would later become Juilliard, and there he studied composition and music theory with Percy Goetjes, who had become an important mentor in his development of composition. He was appointed head of the Department of Theory and Composition at the Pacific University in San Jose, California, before he even turned 20. In 1919, he became dean of the college's Conservatory of Fine Arts. While he was in California, Hansen began composing some of his early works that would gain him notoriety. From there, he went to Rome, where he spent a few years in study and in some competitions. As his compositions began to gain more prestige, he eventually returned to the United States in 1924 to conduct the first public performance of his own work in America. This was his first symphony, which is called the Nordic Symphony. He conducted it in Rochester, New York, with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. This performance gained the attention of George Eastman, who was an innovator of photography in the United States, founding the Eastman-Kodak Photography Company. This performance caught the attention of George Eastman, who was a photographic innovator and pioneer in the United States. He founded the Eastman-Kodak Company, of which Kodak Film is the latest version, and he was quite a brilliant man. Although he really knew nothing about music himself, he was a philanthropist who wanted to fund not only the performance of arts, but music education in particular in the United States. As a result, he started the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in the late 19-teens. By 1924, he and Rush Rhys, who was the current president of the University of Rochester, were looking for someone to head the music department, which was the Eastman School of Music. There had been one director of the Eastman School of Music so far, but they needed a new director. And they found that new director in the youthful but very talented Howard Hansen. He accepted the position of being the director of the Eastman School of Music, and he would hold that position for the next 40 years. As soon as he took on that new role, Howard Hansen had one real goal in mind, and that was to provide a platform for young composers to hear their works being performed. He later wrote on the fact that it was a singular challenge for composers to hear their own works in a practical way, something which was sort of unique to composers amongst other artists. Painters can immediately make a canvas, an individual musician can practice his own work, and by that point, some recording was possible. But a composer really has no idea how his large-scale works will sound, unless he just happens to have an orchestra at his disposal. Nowadays, there are some electronic programs that can at least somewhat synthesize it to give you an idea. But at that point, and up until just the last few years, a composer would have to use a piano, a guitar, some other instrument, and try to just use his imagination to get a sense of how it would sound. As a young composer himself, who obviously had dealt with that challenge, Hansen wanted to help other composers have an outlet not only to hear their works performed by not just any orchestra, but a serious classical professional orchestra, but for the critics to have a chance to hear their works, so that they could give them some feedback. And that would also perhaps give them some opportunities to then get other jobs and have their works performed. To achieve this goal, Hansen began trying to fundraise during his first several months. He found it to be rather a challenging initiative. Eventually, Eastman himself asked how things were going, and Hansen admitted that he was trying to raise these funds so that he could begin putting on these concerts, as he imagined. And Eastman simply said, oh, well, I'll give you the money. And he said this was a great example of what a generous and farsighted man George Eastman was, and he became a good friend and great mentor of Howard Hansen. So, with Eastman's full spiritual as well as financial support, in 1925, Hansen was able to start a series of concerts, which would continue in a few different forms, even after Hansen's retirement. The first concert took place on May 1st, 1925, and it featured the works of seven different young American composers. Now, all these young men would go on to have very serious careers in classical music, whether as composers, teachers, or music theory textbook writers. But, without a doubt, the most successful of the group was a young Aaron Copland, who at that point was virtual unknown. He was really only a couple of years younger than Howard Hansen, but he himself was just getting started. So, a few of his works were performed at this concert, including a ballet. It wasn't danced at this point, it was just the suite. These particular works are not among Copland's best known works, but this was a very valuable stepping stone in Copland's career, and it was just the beginning of providing such wonderful opportunities to other composers like Copland, who would go on to become very successful and famous in their own right. More famous, by name at least, than Howard Hansen himself. Although there was a longer, more cumbersome name for this first concert, the series would eventually become known as the American Composers Concerts, and they were accompanied by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra for the first few years. Beginning in 1939, these concerts and other similar series which Hansen started were accompanied by the Eastman Rochester Orchestra, which was composed of the first chair players of the Rochester Philharmonic, as well as many faculty members of Eastman, and even some of the best students. So it was an elite group of instrumentalists which Hansen personally put together. With this group, Hansen would make over a hundred different recordings over the years with some of the best record labels of the day, including RCA Victor, and he recorded not only his own compositions, but those of other great American composers. The American Composers Concerts eventually developed into a four-day music festival, which was called the Festival of American Music, and it featured not only orchestral works, but always some choral compositions, oftentimes a ballet, and would bring together a combination of new young composers and some slightly more established composers, bringing excellent musicians and critics from all over the country and the world to come to Rochester for those four days every spring. That began in 1931 and it continued until the 1970s. In 1935 through 1936, he instituted two additional orchestra-centered programs, the Annual Symposium of American Orchestral Music and the Symposium of Student Works for Orchestra. Between 1925 and 1971, the American Composers Concerts premiered over 2,000 works by 900 different composers. In a New York Times obituary upon Howard Hansen's death, it was asserted that every American composer after World War I owed a great debt to Howard Hansen for his promotion and sustenance of classical music through his work at Eastman and beyond with his recordings and his other performances, because he would also travel around the country and he conducted with almost all of the great symphonies and orchestras of the United States at that time. Even after he retired from Eastman, he continued conducting. Some observers of his conducting skills said that he was not the greatest conductor ever just on his technique, but that he had a way of communicating with his instrumentalists, oftentimes more through a facial expression and a look than necessarily what he was doing with his hands. His style was very clean and easy to see, but he used more of a mental power to get something out of them. And clearly, as a great teacher, he knew how to inspire and encourage musicians. Robert Sproul, who was president and CEO of the University of Rochester at the time of Howard Hansen's death, paid great tribute to the composer's impact on the school by saying, the Eastman School is his creation. Through it and its graduates, he established musical education in America at a significantly higher level and on a much larger scale than anyone else had ever dreamed. He is known throughout the world as a composer, conductor, and educator. In an autobiography he wrote, which was not published, Hansen gave some explanation of his thought process behind the American composers' concerts and other such endeavors of his, saying that he had a desire to attempt to set up at the Eastman School a laboratory for young composers whereas gifted young men might come and hear their works performed by a competent professional orchestra and under circumstances where compositions could be played without consideration of the box office. His work at Eastman wasn't just giving opportunities to young composers, though. He also elevated the curriculum and he brought in excellent teachers. He was very specific about balancing the faculty. He wanted to have a good balance between American teachers and foreign-born teachers to bring in that European influence, which he thought was important, as well as keeping a distinctly American style. For instance, he rather controversially would not hire Bella Bartok as a piano teacher because he said that would have made too many foreign-born piano teachers compared to Americans. Instead, he offered Bartok a position to teach composition, which Bartok refused because he didn't think you could teach composition. Nevertheless, it really wasn't a case of prejudice against foreigners, as some have asserted, because there were other foreign-born teachers. He just didn't want to have so many foreigners that it detracted from the American feel of the school. Hansen's promotion of American music went beyond even that of contemporary or living composers. He also promoted the history of classical music in America, most notably through a radio series which he presented with the Eastman Rochester Orchestra, in which he demonstrated and explained the history of classical music in America from as far back as the 19th century through to the present day, which was something that really hadn't been done at the time. Now, of course, Hansen left some of his greatest impact on the classical world as a teacher. He was almost first and foremost a pedagogue. Throughout his career, he received an impressive 34 honorary doctorate degrees from various different universities. However, he was also a gifted composer himself, which is really how he got started. And he did a lot of composition during his many years at Eastman and afterwards. He wrote seven symphonies, numerous band works, a lot of choral compositions, a few ballet suites, and even one opera. His two most famous symphonies are undoubtedly his second and his fourth. His second is best known because one of the themes was used during the end credits of the 1979 film Alien. You might even recognize it if you heard it, it's sometimes played on the radio. And his fourth symphony received a Pulitzer Prize. While other composers around the same time embraced a tonality or more dissonance, Howard Hansen was one of the foremost examples of American neo-romanticism. He's been called an American neo-romantic composer par excellence. And he was influenced not only by his American roots, but by his Scandinavian influence as he was Swedish. And many people have compared his compositions to those of Jean Sebelius and Edvard Grieg. Nevertheless, his style is quite unique, with sweeping but strong melodies and a lot of intensity, which resulted not from clashing chords, but from just very full orchestration, because he really knew how to use the full orchestra. His primary instrument was cello, but nevertheless he never composed a cello concerto, instead preferring to write more for the full orchestra. His sole opera was Marymount, which was debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in 1934. It was actually written on commission for the Metropolitan Opera. It received its first performance in concert in Rochester, New York in 1933, but in May of 1934 it received its performance at the Metropolitan Opera. Some have considered it the first fully American opera, because the composer was American, the librettist was American, the subject matter was American, and most of the cast were American singers. It was a long dramatic work in three acts about early Puritan settlers in Massachusetts. The libretto was inspired by various writings by Nathaniel Hawthorne, such as his Maypole of Marymount and his famous novel The Scarlet Letter. American baritone Lawrence Tibbett played the leading character, that of the rather hypocritical Puritan minister, and he received great acclaim for his performance. At its first performance, critics comment on the fact that it was a very diverse and appreciative audience, including a lot of people who probably wouldn't usually go to the opera, but who came because they liked the subject matter. The work was received with rapturous applause at the end of each act, getting more and more intense, and at the end there were 50 curtain calls, which remains a record at the Metropolitan Opera. Because it was first performed on a Saturday matinee, it was actually broadcast on the radio, which the Metropolitan Opera had just begun doing in the 1930s. There are still copies of that recording, which are available. It was first released in the 1990s. Nevertheless, after six performances during that first season, it left the repertoire and it never has been performed at the Met again, nor has it been performed very much elsewhere. There was one staging of it years ago at Eastman. It was performed at Carnegie Hall once and there are a couple of recordings, but it really didn't become part of the repertoire, which is perhaps not surprising considering how harsh critics were on it. They said that his scoring for the orchestra was too heavy and too orchestral, sometimes drowning out the singers, and that a lot of the vocal lines were written very clumsily. Most people commented that the strongest parts were the choruses. Not surprisingly, because he was an experienced choral writer, but not an experienced vocal soloist writer. Nevertheless, people seemed to love it at the time, so I think that perhaps it shouldn't have been written off so quickly, especially when you consider that many of the greatest masterpieces and operas were horrific failures on their first performances. Hansen later made a suite, which was just the highlights from that work, including a dance and some of the choruses, and that has been recorded more often. You can find many recordings of it. Throughout his long, impressive career as a teacher, a composer, and a teacher of music theory, as he wrote four textbooks, Howard Hansen showed what American music really can be. It draws from the past of the old world as well as the new, combining classical styles with modern Yankee ingenuity. He was a very intellectual man who believed in encouraging young people to do great compositions themselves, while steering them away from getting too dissonant. He experimented with some more creative styles of music himself, but ultimately he remained a very classical, harmonic, and melodic composer. If you want to find out more about Howard Hansen, you can of course read about him, but I would suggest most of all listen to some of his compositions. There are excellent recordings of all his symphonies, his suites, some of his tone poems and choral works, his band works. He was indeed an excellent composer who deserves more recognition as one of the best American composers of the 20th century. Through his own work and his inspiration of other works, he helped foster and champion great classical music in America. Thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you'll join me next time for more American Legends.