Donald Harris (composer)

Donald Harris (April 7, 1931 in St. Paul, Minnesota – March 29, 2016 in Columbus, Ohio) was an American composer who taught music at The Ohio State University for 22 years. He was Dean of the College of the Arts from 1988 to 1997.

Harris earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in Music from the University of Michigan. He completed further studies at the Tanglewood Music Center and the Centre Français d'Humanisme Musical in Aix-en-Provence. He studied with Ross Lee Finney, Max Deutsch, Nadia Boulanger, Boris Blacher, Lukas Foss, and André Jolivet. He founded the Contemporary Music Festival at Ohio State in 2000. Prior to joining the faculty at Ohio State, he served on the faculties and as an administrator of the New England Conservatory of Music  and the Hartt School of Music. From 1954 to 1968, Harris lived in Paris, where he served as music consultant to the United States Information Agency and produced the city's first postwar Festival of Contemporary American Music. A documentary about Harris entitled Sonata 1957 was produced by Daniel Beliavsky through opus1films in 2011. It explores Harris’ development in mid 20th-century Paris, when pre-war musical thought bridged with post-war experimentation.

Works

Stage Works
 The Legend Of John Henry (1954) ballet for orchestra
 The Golden Deer (1955) ballet for orchestra
 Intervals (1959) dance work for chamber ensemble

Orchestral
 Piano Sonata (1957) 
 Fantasy For Violin & Piano (1957) 
 Symphony In Two Movements (1958–1961) 
 String Quartet (1965) 
 Ludus (1966) for ten instruments 
 Ludus II (1973) for five instruments 
 On Variations (1976) for chamber orchestra 
 Charmes (1971–1980; unfinished) for soprano and orchestra; after the poems of Paul Valéry
 For The Night To Wear (1978) for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble; after the Hortense Flexner poem 
 Balladen (1979) for solo piano 
 Of Hartford In A Purple Light (1979) for soprano with piano accompaniment; after the Wallace Stevens poem 
 Prelude To A Concert In Connecticut (1981) for orchestra
 Les Mains (1983) for mezzo-soprano with piano accompaniment; after the Marguerite Yourcenar poem 
 Meditations (1984) for solo organ 
 Three Fanfares For Four Horns (1984) 
 Canzona & Carol (1986) for double brass quintet and timpani 
 Pierrot Lieder (1988) for soprano and chamber ensemble; after the Albert Giraud poem
 Mermaid Variations (1992) for chamber orchestra 
 String Quartet #2 (2002)
 A Lyric Fanfare (2003) for orchestra 
 Five Tempi (Ludus III) (2004) for chamber ensemble  
 Symphony No. 2 (2006–11) for large orchestra; co-commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and Columbus Symphony Orchestra  
 Kaleidoscope (2007) for orchestra

Awards and honors
Harris was awarded a Fulbright Award in 1956, the Prince Rainier III of Monaco Composition Award in 1962 (deuxieme mention), a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grant in Composition in 1974, the A.C. Fuller Award of the Julius Hartt Musical Foundation in 1988, and the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award in 1989 (for co-editing The Berg Schoenberg Correspondence ). He received commissions with the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation (Library of Congress), Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation (Library of Congress), St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Radio France, Cleveland Orchestra, Goethe Institute (Boston), Boston Musica Viva, Connecticut Public Radio, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Arnold Schoenberg Institute, and Festival of Contemporary American Music at Tanglewood. In 1991, he received an award in composition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which led to a retrospective recording of his work on the CRI label in 1994. In 2011, he was the featured composer of the Ohio State University Contemporary Music Festival, a festival which he founded. The King Arts Complex honored him with a Legends & Legacies award in October 2011. He received an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Ohio State in June 2012.

Further reading 
 Organization of American States, Composers of the Americas, Vol. 18, 1972
 Contemporary American Composers Based or Affiliated with Colleges and Universities, 1975
 Contemporary American Composers: A Biographical Dictionary, 1976
 Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, New York, 1978
 Introduction to Contemporary Music (Joseph Machlis), second edition, W. W. Norton, 1979
 ASCAP Biographical Dictionary, Fourth Edition, 1980
 American Music Recordings, A Dictionary of 20th Century U.S. Composers, 1982
 American Composers, A Biographical Dictionary, by David Ewen, 1982
 Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music, Harvard University Press, 1996

References

External links 
 Donald Harris's page at Theodore Presser Company
 School of Music The Ohio State University
 Donald Harris / Composer, Teacher & Musicologist musicweb-international.com
 Interview with Donald Harris, November 20, 1988

Category:20th-century American composers
Category:21st-century American composers
Category:American male composers
Category:Guggenheim Fellows
Category:Ohio State University faculty
Category:University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance alumni
Category:Pupils of Nadia Boulanger
Category:Fulbright Scholars
Category:1931 births
Category:2016 deaths
Category:20th-century American male musicians
Category:21st-century American male musicians