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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2013 Patriotism, Nationalism, and Heritage in the Orchestral Music of Howard Hanson Matthew Robert Bishop
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF MUSIC
PATRIOTISM, NATIONALISM, AND HERITAGE IN THE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC OF
HOWARD HANSON
By
MATTHEW ROBERT BISHOP
A Thesis submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music
Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2013
Matthew Bishop defended this thesis on March 29, 2013. The members of the supervisory committee were:
Michael Broyles Professor Directing Thesis
Michael Buchler Committee Member
Douglass Seaton Committee Member
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university accordance.
ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply grateful to the superbly talented, knowledgeable, and supportive members of my committee. I am indebted to my thesis advisor, Dr. Michael Broyles, for his expertise in
American music and his patient guidance. I also greatly appreciate the encouragement and wisdom of Dr. Douglass Seaton and Dr. Michael Buchler. The research behind this project was made possible by a Curtis Mayes Research Fellowship through the musicology program at The
Florida State University.
I am truly honored to work and learn among such impressive colleagues, in musicology and beyond. I am continually challenged by them to meet an impossibly high standard, and I am in awe of their impressive intellect, abundant support, and unending devotion to the cause of researching, performing, teaching, and celebrating the art of music.
My work would be non-existent were it not for the constant love of my parents, Tracy and Suzanne, and the rest of my wonderful family. To my fiancée, Caitlin, words cannot express my thanks for your enduring patience as I undertake my many projects, for your honest critiques, and for the joy of your support.
Lastly, I am grateful to Howard for leaving us this great music and much to discuss.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES ...... v ABSTRACT...... vi
INTRODUCTION ...... 1
1. WAHOO AND THE UNPUBLISHED WORKS ...... 7
2. THE FIRST EUROPEAN SOJOURN ...... 25
3. AMERICANISM AND THE EASTMAN YEARS ...... 47
CONCLUSION: A COMPOSITE NATIONALISM ...... 65
BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 69
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 73
iv LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES
1.1 Swedish Fantasia, measures 12-19 ...... 16
1.2 “Scandinavian” Sonata in D minor movement 1 “Allegro Vigoroso,” measures 1-5 ...... 17
1.3 “Scandinavian” Sonata in D minor movement 1 “Allegro Vigoroso,” measures 33-36 ...... 17
1.4 “Scandinavian” Sonata in D minor movement 2 “Adagio,” measures 3-10 ...... 18
1.5 “Scandinavian” Sonata in D minor movement 2 “Adagio,” measures 50-57 ...... 18
1.6 “Scandinavian” Sonata in D minor movement 3, measures 1-10...... 19
1.7 “Scandinavian” Sonata in D minor movement 3, measures 151-58...... 19
1.8 “Scandinavian” Symphony in D minor movement 1 “Allegro molto,” measures 1-8 ...... 21
1.9 “Scandinavian” Symphony in D minor movement 1 “Allegro molto,” measures 59-72 ...... 22
1.10 “Scandinavian” Symphony in D minor movement 2 “Andante,” measures 21-28 ...... 23
2.1 Symphony No. 1 in E minor, “Nordic,” Op. 21 movement 3 “Allegro con fuoco,” measures 113-129 ...... 28
2.2 Symphony No. 1 in E minor, “Nordic,” Op. 21 movement 2 “Andante teneramente, con semplicitá,” measures 28-30 ...... 31
2.3 Symphony No. 1 in E minor, “Nordic,” Op. 21 movement 3 “Allegro con fuoco,” measures 81-88 ...... 33
2.4 Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Harp measures 35-43...... 44
2.5 Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Harp measures 211-18...... 45
3.1 Symphony No. 3 movement 4 “Largamente e pesante,” measures 50-56...... 61
v ABSTRACT
Composer Howard Hanson played a pivotal role in both the development and promotion of American concert music in the twentieth century. Born in Wahoo, Nebraska, to Swedish immigrants, Hanson grew up surrounded by people who followed Swedish customs (including folk song and dance), yet exhibited strong feelings of American patriotism. Hanson’s earliest works, left unpublished, display the influence of Swedish folk music traditions in either direct quotation or stylistic imitation.
As the winner of the first American Prix de Rome, Hanson traveled to Italy to study at the
American Academy, affording him the opportunity to travel for the first time to Sweden. While in Europe Hanson wrote some of his most important compositions, including the Scandinavian- inspired First Symphony (“Nordic”) and the symphonic poem North and West. The former pulls heavily from Swedish folk music, and the latter is autobiographical, representative of the composer’s identity struggles as he explored the role his heritage should play in what he increasingly realized was Americanist music.
After he assumed the directorship of the Eastman School of Music, a position he held for forty years, Hanson’s music lost explicit programmatic elements inspired by Scandinavia.
Hanson wrote hundreds of articles and speeches about the importance of furthering American music, became a community leader in Rochester and on a national level, and transformed
Eastman into a vital center for the promotion of American composers. His affinity for Swedish music continued to be an important factor in his compositional process, as evidenced by his
Third Symphony and the popular comparison of his music to that of Jan Sibelius. Despite this association Hanson is remembered as a transformative figure in American music.
vi INTRODUCTION
Despite recent dips in the popularity of his works in America’s concert halls, Howard
Hanson’s contributions to American music culture have proven to be substantial. A proponent of
American music’s founders, a necessary voice for new generations of artists, and a masterful composer himself, Hanson served as a prominent activist for American music on a stage dominated by the European greats. From his geographically isolated home in Rochester, New
York, Hanson sold a specific and marketable brand: a recognizably American type of concert music enough akin to the European canon to claim validity, yet bathed in the new ideas central to the American persona. Hanson was not the first composer to attempt to nail down the characteristics that would make great American music (or make American music great), and when compared to those offered by his contemporaries who sought similar ends, Hanson’s solution was but one of many. An examination of the development of his musical style, his published and unpublished thoughts on American music and patriotism, and his placement in the realm of the American concert repertory, however, reveals the role of heritage and experience in the formation of his musical voice.
References to the idea of nationalism in literature on the history of Western music tend to be applied to characteristics of European composers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries operating outside the powerful nations of Western Europe. The term is typically employed to describe music that evokes a sense of departure from the aesthetics of German,
French, and Italian Romanticism and is often applied to composers such as Modeste
Mussorgsky, Alexander Borodin, Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, Isaac Albéniz, Ralph
Vaughan Williams, and Edvard Grieg. As vague as the descriptor may in many cases be,
1 nationalist historiography examines trends in various nations in which composers, either actively or as a genuine byproduct of different regional experiences, create or contribute to an idiom that is somewhat distinctively native.
While the concept of large-scale nationalist stylistic features in the case of European classical music is often questioned, scholars of American music agree that trends of nationalism can be observed in the works of American composers in the latter half of the nineteenth century, if not before, and that these became more prominent during the first half of the twentieth century.
New England composers who came of age during the end of the nineteenth century relied heavily on European sources; examples include Amy Marcy Cheney Beach’s Gaelic Symphony and Variations on Balkan Themes and Edward MacDowell’s many compositions inspired by
Goethe, Shakespeare, and the folklore of the British Isles. European influences in American music culture should not necessarily be viewed as attempts to stymie the creation of a specifically American musical language, though; a number of scholars, including Richard
Crawford and Charles Hamm, trace the beginnings of a distinctly American nationalism in concert music to MacDowell, Beach, and their contemporaries. The actual references in these works to Americans (or Native Americans) and the American landscape, however, were not the markers that immediately took hold in American nationalist music; the European influences had perhaps a more lasting effect.
As nationalist sentiments and perceived needs to create an American musical idiom grew after World War I, many composers began to depart musically from the influence of European
Romanticism, or what H. Wiley Hitchcock refers to as the “American cultivated-tradition ideal of a music of serious import and large-scale edification,” and to establish America as a leading
2 center of musical progressivism.1 Kyle Gann, while identifying consistent banners of nationalism throughout America’s early twentieth century, argues that nationalism during the 1920s became linked increasingly to European-inspired conservatism, and some scholars, including Barbara
Tischler, emphasize that American composers of that era sought to add not only to the idiom and canon of American music, but, more importantly, to art music on an international scale.2 Gilbert
Chase observes that during this time period composers were marked as either adhering to a
Grand Tradition of Germanic-inspired classical music, or deviating from it.3 Richard Crawford’s analysis of music during this era is based on America’s emergence as a consumer-driven economy, and concert tastes reflected public desires for both new aesthetics and music rooted in the past.4 One of the leading composers and advocates for new American music during this time period was Howard Hanson, whose music reflects both a reliance on European influences and the explicit need to create, expand upon, and promote an American musical idiom.
Beginning in the early 1920s Howard Hanson (1896-1981) stood at the forefront of a generation of composers who desired to achieve a characteristic American musical idiom. At the same time, Hanson’s personal experience growing up in a Swedish immigrant community in
Wahoo, Nebraska strongly influenced many of his earlier works. Although an observable
Scandinavian influence became more difficult to detect in his music after Hanson assumed the position of Director of the Eastman School of Music, Hanson’s sense of American patriotism, founded upon his experiences surrounded by immigrants with a strong sense of pride in their
1 H. Wiley Hitchcock, Music in the United States: A Historical Introduction, 2nd ed. (Eaglewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974), 175. 2 See Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997) and Barbara L. Tischler, An American Music: The Search for an American Musical Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 3 See Gilbert Chase, America’s Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present, 3rd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992). 4 See Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).
3 new land, began to permeate his writings, speeches, and concert repertoire choices at Eastman.
Rather than masking the Scandinavian influence in his own composition, I argue that this influence provided Hanson a platform from which to explore and expound on the existing
American repertory while achieving his own creative voice as a tonal conservative at a time of new aesthetics, when more radical modernist approaches were in ascendancy.
Because Hanson did not travel to Sweden until 1922, the Swedish influence in his music is a direct result of his upbringing in Wahoo, where he was surrounded by a community of immigrants and first- or second-generation American citizens. I argue that Hanson’s earliest ideas of the makeup of the American people as a melding of traditions would inform both his later grasp of the American musical canon and his compositions. Hanson experienced a bilingual childhood; he spoke English at home and at school, but the community’s Lutheran church, which the Hanson family attended weekly, only offered services in Swedish. At the same time that
Hanson learned stories about Swedish heroes and sang Swedish folksongs, he learned about
American history and government from his proudly American parents and grandparents and at the community’s public school. While Hanson remained proud of his Swedish heritage throughout his life, he also held strongly grounded feelings of American patriotism.
Hanson’s earliest known works reflect his notions of Swedish heritage. Works such as
“Scandinavian” Mazurka (for violin and piano), “Scandinavian” Sonata (for piano), Swedish
Fantasia (for piano), “Scandinavian” Suite (for piano), and “Scandinavian” Symphony were left unpublished (except for the “Clog Dance” of the suite), and Hanson never mentioned them in his personal letters or autobiography. Nevertheless, these works, if lacking in artistic maturity, are significant in their representation of the composer’s perception of the musical traditions of his
4 ancestors and provide an early, unpolished glimpse into the idiom that, once refined, would come to dominate his works of the 1920s and 1930s.
As the first winner of the American Prix de Rome, 1921, Hanson spent the following three years in Italy studying at the American Academy. During this time he composed some of his most important works, works that feature Scandinavian influences either in concept or in direct musical quotation (such as his employment of Swedish folk dances in the First
Symphony). Hanson’s First Symphony, subtitled “Nordic,” was an immediate success, bringing several repeat performances. While traveling for the first time in Sweden during a break from the
Academy, Hanson began his next major work, a tone poem titled North and West; this work combines Hanson’s impressions and ideas of northern Europe with nostalgic feelings for his birthplace and the western portion of the United States in general (he had also spent several years teaching in California prior to his study in Rome). After performances of this work in Italy,
Hanson received the honor of having Walter Damrosch conduct the American premiere of North and West with the New York Symphony Orchestra.
After returning to the United States in 1924, Hanson entered the next phase of his career, assuming the directorship of the Eastman School of Music, a position he held for forty years.
Despite a commission to write a major work celebrating the tercentenary of the first Swedish settlers landing in America (which would result in his Third Symphony, composed in 1941),
Hanson’s compositions from this time do not bear the descriptive Scandinavian titles that marked his earlier music. During this time Hanson also penned many speeches, articles, and letters expressing his feelings for American patriotism, citizenship, and the need for a more distinctly
American musical idiom. As a frequent conductor of the Eastman orchestra, Hanson attempted to program a comprehensive variety of American orchestral works, and his own ideas about
5 American music resulted in a personal canonization of a number of pieces (including many of his own). Among the many composers whose works Hanson championed, he very frequently conducted compositions by John Alden Carpenter, William Grant Still, Roy Harris, and his students William Bergsma and Peter Mennin.
While Hanson developed strong ideas about America and American music during this time, it is clear from a number of sources that he still identified strongly with his Swedish heritage, and many articles by critics from the 1930s describe his music as a duality of American and Scandinavian styles. Even if Scandinavian-inspired subtitles and programs disappear from his later works, critics, who often referred to Hanson as the “American Sibelius,” never forgot his Scandinavian heritage. His experiences as the son of Swedish-Americans informs Hanson’s
Americanist music as a merger of his early Scandinavian style with his sense of devoted
American citizenship.
6 CHAPTER 1
WAHOO AND THE UNPUBLISHED WORKS
The extent to which Howard Hanson’s cultural ties to Swedish immigrants in the
American Midwest play a role in his early, published music is apparent, if from nothing else, from the titles and circumstances surrounding the composition of many of his major works.
Nevertheless, Hanson’s earliest pieces, those left unpublished and existing only as sketches in an archive, are little documented. An exploration of these works and Hanson’s formative years is necessary for understanding his later aesthetic and his personal thoughts on American music.
While I do not intend to evaluate Hanson’s early works in relation to other Swedish music, a comparison to the folk traditions of his ancestors is necessary to understand Hanson’s early perceptions of Swedish music and culture.
In the lengthy draft of his still unpublished autobiography (which he typed later in his life), Hanson spends relatively few pages writing about his childhood, focusing instead on his career at Eastman. In the first chapter the reader learns that as a child, his mother, Hilma Amanda
Christina Eckstrom emigrated from Skåne, Sweden with her parents, Per and Hanna, settling in
Omaha, Nebraska, and his father (Hans) at roughly the same time and from the same region of
Sweden, settled in Wahoo with his parents Hans and Hanna Hanson.5 In the second chapter he writes fondly about his mother and grandmother: “The Scandinavian countries are frequently referred to as matriarchies. In both our family and the family of my maternal grandparents the dominant force was that of the mother. My grandmother, too, was a woman of immense strength
5 Hanson, Autobiography draft, Chapter 1, first folder, 1.
7 of character.”6 Hanson’s connection to and affection for his parents, evidenced by the many boxes of letters between them in his archives and by the dedications to them of some of his most important works, continued for many years throughout Hanson’s career, offering the composer a living, physical link to his hometown and his heritage.7
Hanson always remembered his hometown fondly in his many writings and speeches; in his autobiography he writes, “With all of the disadvantages – I suppose they would be called – of small towns, I would not exchange this heritage for any other.”8 It is important to consider that
Hanson’s childhood relationships were not limited to Swedes; rather, he was exposed at a young age to a variety of cultures. Hanson writes in his autobiography,
The population of the town seemed to be divided between the Swedish Lutherans who worshiped on the hill and the Catholics, many of whom were Bohemians who worshiped “down town.” There were of course Italians and other ethnic groups of both faiths. There was, as I remember only one Jew in Wahoo. He was a very nice man who owned a furniture store. There could be no prejudice on the basis of color for there were no Negroes and no Asiatics. To this day prejudice on the basis of color remains to me un- understandable. I do recall that, at times, we were referred to as “dumb Swedes,” and I am afraid that the Bohemians were sometimes known as “Bohunks” and the Italians as “Wops,” but it all seemed to be in good fun. The little town was a real American melting-pot and the communal spirit was I believe much friendlier than I have observed it in the United States of today.9
Hanson was not necessarily isolated from experiencing different cultural and religious backgrounds, as he might have been had his grandparents remained in Sweden. His experience of a diverse culture would become crucial to his developing understanding of America and his perceptions about what constituted American music.
6 Hanson, Autobiography draft, Chapter 2, second folder, 5. 7 Hanson dedicated the second movement of his First Symphony to his mother and the third movement of the First Symphony to his father, and he wrote his Pulitzer Prize-winning Fourth Symphony as a Requiem for his father. 8 Hanson, Autobiography draft, Chapter 2, second folder, 16. 9 Ibid., 13-14.
8 In different documents Hanson elaborated on his upbringing and the role of Swedish culture in his hometown. In a 1941 radio address broadcast to the land of his parents’ birth,
Hanson establishes a connection to his audience by speaking in Swedish, which he admits by this time had “fallen into disuse since the days when I was a boy in a small Swedish community in the west.” Speaking about Wahoo, Hanson offers a rare window into the extent of the Swedish influence in the town:
This small community was in a sense a small part of Sweden for though the settlers were deeply loyal to their new home-land they retained the Swedish customs – folk-songs, folk-dances, and even to a considerable extent, especially in the church, the Swedish language. It is natural, therefore, that my feeling for Sweden is very close and very warm.10
As I will discuss, throughout his life this warm feeling for Sweden and its customs would continue to reveal itself in his music and writings. Even after all the work Hanson completed in the promotion of American music, he was known first as a proud son of Scandinavian immigrants, whose music granted him a widely publicized connection with music from the northernmost European nations.
Another important consideration in Hanson’s musical language is the influence of religion and spirituality. Although Hanson and his wife Peggy became loyal members of a
Presbyterian congregation in Rochester, Hanson spent his years prior to his Eastman position as a member of the Lutheran Church. Historically significant in Sweden, Lutheran congregations dotted the Midwest as immigrants from northern Europe began to settle it. Wahoo would have been no exception to the prevalence of Lutheran congregations. Even today, in the town with barely over 4500 residents and after a number of changes in Lutheran theology in America since the early decades of the twentieth century, there are three Lutheran churches.
10 Hanson, Radio Address to Sweden, 1938, 1. Translator unknown.
9 In his autobiography Hanson writes of his childhood experiences in his parents’ Lutheran church. Although the theology espoused in the church as Hanson describes it may not have held a lasting influence on his life, the strong, historical musical traditions of the church provided the young musician with important inspiration:
My parents were Swedish Lutherans, members of the Swedish Lutheran Evangelical Church, a member of the Augustana synod. The church in America was distinguished for its excellent music, mostly Bach chorales, and its fearsome preaching on hell and damnation. The long services with the hour-long sermon in which the pastor, from his high pulpit, thundered, “They shall be damned in eternal and everlasting damnation” – which somehow sounded even more menacing in Swedish – were often for me traumatic experiences.11
Later in the autobiography Hanson expands on the language used in the church:
I recall that in the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran church in which I grew up all of the morning services were in Swedish but, as a concession to the young folks, one evening service per month was in English. Returning to Wahoo a few years later the ratio had been reversed to one service in Swedish and all others in English. On m [sic] last visit the services in Swedish had completely vanished!12
Lutheranism, which by its very name is emblematic of the Protestant Reformation, was and is important to the identity of many Scandinavians and provides an important link and refuge for
Scandinavian immigrants in many regions. Just as the Lutheran influence in Swedish immigrant communities is an important cornerstone, so to are the tradition of hymnody and the depth of spirituality, both embedded within the practices of Lutheranism, central to the musical career and personal life of Howard Hanson.
Although his published music was widely performed even shortly after its composition,
Hanson’s early unpublished works are virtually unknown. The composer does not mention these works in his autobiography nor in any of his other known writings. While they may have received performances, or at least readings, by musicians of the orchestras at the universities he
11 Hanson, Autobiography draft, Chapter 2, second folder, 12. 12 Hanson, Autobiography draft, Chapter 11, second folder, 3.
10 attended, there exists no record of such events.13 It is conceivable that the older, established
Hanson counted these works as mere juvenilia, works by a budding and learning artist struggling to find his voice. Nonetheless, the composer’s reticence on these works should not preclude their consideration for their role in Hanson’s compositional development. It is likely that Hanson decided not to include these works because they betray a significant aspect of his early style: that
Hanson, who would rise to become one of America’s most respected composers, had yet to incorporate American elements into what appear to be the works of a native Swede.
Before an analysis of some of Hanson’s early works, it is important to consider the
Swedish music styles with which the composer may have been familiar as a boy in Wahoo.
Despite a rich tradition of classical composers in Sweden during the late nineteenth century, it is clear that Hanson would not have been acquainted with works by Swedish composers until later in his life; in fact, the dearth of Swedish music in his personal collection of scores and music anthologies suggests that Hanson was not interested in classical music in Sweden and that despite the practice of Swedish composers such as Hugo Alfvén and Kurt Atterberg incorporating Swedish folk music in symphonies, judging his music alongside that of the
Swedish symphonists would be irrelevant to this study.
While knowing for certain all of the folk songs and dances Hanson may have heard in
Wahoo is almost impossible (except for the ones he directly quotes in his music), there are sources that reveal the types of musical traditions that were brought to America by Scandinavian immigrants. According to Mark Levy,
Immigrants from Scandinavia … began arriving in the United States in the early nineteenth century. Unlike many other European immigrants, however, these Northern
13 Hanson mentions only his first composition, a Fantasia in A minor in chapter 2 of the autobiography draft, but could not remember whether he scored the work for piano solo or piano and cello.
11 Europeans tended to settle in the rural farming areas of the American Midwest, creating communities that retained, as much as possible, Old World social and religious patterns as well as traditional contexts for the performance of music.14
Swedish emigrants began leaving the country by the mid-1850s in the wake of a rise of religious fundamentalists in the state church, and many more left in the following decades due to widespread agricultural problems (this is likely the reason that Hanson’s grandparents emigrated to America). Swedish-Americans enjoyed many of the folk songs and dance traditions of the homeland. A number of Swedish folk anthologies were published in America in the Swedish language prior to 1900, and hymns by immigrants were added to the Lutheran hymn repertory.
Commenting on the sense of melancholy observable in many Swedish folk songs, Levy writes that popular themes present in many newly composed secular songs include a longing and nostalgia for the homeland, dissatisfaction with the American Midwest, the journey from Sweden to America, and the sorrow of leaving loved ones behind.15 It is reasonable to suspect that the folksongs Hanson would have known as a child would not have differed much from their homeland versions. There are observable and much-discussed features of Swedish folk music, but some scholars warn that distinctions between folk music types are not so simple to make.
John H. Yoell writes,
Free use of native songs and dance music in serious composition has been going on for well over a century in Scandinavia, obviously an important contribution to the Nordic sound. Certain precautions, however, must be taken before referring to a given piece of art music as “typically Danish” or “strongly Norwegian.” Such references may bear no relationship to specific folkloric content. Scientific evidence has accumulated to dilute the romantic era view that folk music necessarily reflects the unique “soul” of a people. Melodic lines, natural scales and metrical rhythms may show striking similarities in rural cultures hundreds of miles apart; the diversity of European folk song may be more apparent than real. Even an alert music-lover might easily confuse a piece by Grieg for
14 Mark Levy, “Scandinavian and Baltic Music,” in The United States and Canada, edited by Ellen Koskoff, volume 3 of The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music (New York: Garland, 2001), 866. 15 See Ibid., 870.
12 one by Bartók or vice versa. While Scandinavian folk music has remained “pure” in some respects, it must be seen as part of a general European cultural complex. Only gradually, over slow centuries, did more specific national traits emerge.16
While his comparison of Grieg’s music to Bartók’s is questionable, Yoell’s observations point to a trope in discussions of Swedish music that it often bears, or for better or worse has earned a reputation as bearing, certain melancholic or sad qualities. Yoell remarks on this component, “As for ‘national traits’ in Scandinavian folk songs, the listener should beware of quicksands. Yet if
Danish tunes often sound ‘sweet and innocent,’ those of Norway ‘quaint’ or ‘hearty,’ and
Swedish examples ‘melancholic,’ there are vague but valid reasons why.”17 Matts Arnberg also remarks on this quality, “Generally we daresay, perhaps, that it is the herdsman’s sounds that give the older Swedish folk music its distinctive feature – a character that foreigner [sic] often perceive as dark, melancholy, perhaps nostalgic.”18 Locating the traits of darkness and melancholy within a piece is highly subjective and culturally contingent. Håkan Norlén makes the task slightly more objective and achievable, writing of a particular Swedish melody, “But is it really so Swedish? To be sure, it is in the minor key, and, according to the 19th-century annotators: This is a characteristically Scandinavian feature. The minor character was considered to affect the melancholy in the temperament of the Nordic people.”19 While the minor mode by no means indicates that a melody is Scandinavian (obviously, most minor-mode pieces are not), it is a distinctive feature.20
16 John H. Yoell, The Nordic Sound: Explorations into the Music of Denmark, Norway, Sweden (Boston: Crescendo, 1974), 30. 17 Ibid., 32. 18 Matts Arnberg, “The Renaissance of Swedish Folk Music and Why,” in Swedish Music – Past and Present, Special Edition of Musikrevy (1967), 29. 19 Håkan Norlén, “The Swedish ‘Visa,’” in Swedish Music – Past and Present, 53. 20 It is important to reiterate that even though Hanson’s invented Scandinavian melodies and the actual Swedish melodies he quotes are all in the minor mode, not all Swedish melodies available in anthologies are. See examples in Richard Dybeck, Svenska Vallvisor och Hornlåtar: Med
13 The repertory of Swedish folk music consists primarily of songs (called visor, or in the singular, visa), ballads, herding calls, children’s songs, and dance music including a long imported tradition of dances called polskas. There is also a rich tradition of fiddle playing in
Sweden. Over the course of the history of folk traditions in Sweden, there are strong evidences of
German influence, especially in the southern region.21 Margareta Jersild and Märta Ramsten argue that because there were no sharp divisions between social classes in the agrarian country in the nineteenth century, most of the visor would have been widespread and known by most
Swedes.22 Describing the performance of visor, Jan Ling, Erik Kjellberg, and Owe Ronström observe, “Swedish folk songs are usually sung monophonically and in a fairly straightforward, unemotional manner: in a low or medium register and a slow tempo, with low volume and few ornaments; many folk songs have a solemn character, and have actually been sung as hymns.”23
Norlén observes that, in the visa repertory especially, many examples of melodic borrowing can be observed, pointing to the important transferable quality of Swedish melodies and melodic fragments. Norlén writes that
we should perhaps be a little careful in speaking of Swedish folk melodies. It is obvious that such a wandering melodic material is reformed in the environment in which it finally ends up, and becomes characterized by the function it comes to fill – herdman’s [sic] song, narrative “visa,” cradle song, etc. In addition, the “visa” is transformed during the passage of time and during the oral transfer from one bearer of tradition to another. But there is an undeniable large gap between these facts and the
Norska Artförändringar (Stockholm: J.L. Brudnis, 1846) or Märta Ramsten, Einar Övergaards folkmusiksamling (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1982). 21 This is especially true of the southern region encompassing the birthplace of Hanson’s parents, Skåne, which was under Danish rule until 1650. See Jan Ling, Erik Kjellberg, and Owe Ronström, “Sweden,” in Europe, edited by Timothy Rice, James Porter, and Chris Goertzen, volume 8 of The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music (New York: Garland, 2000), 434-35. 22 Margareta Jersild and Märta Ramsten, “Sweden: II. Traditional Music,” in Oxford Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/27199 (accessed January 1, 2013). 23 Ling, Kjellberg, and Ronström, 436.
14 romanticists theories that the “visor” have sprung, fixed and completed, from the souls of the people.24
As I will discuss below, Hanson drew from this repertory of visor for either direct quotations or as inspiration for similarly structured melodies.
Although Hanson’s early understanding of traditional Scandinavian music was limited to his experiences in Wahoo, the minor mode is a common feature in the majority of his unpublished scores. While some of these pieces are impossible to date exactly, it is most likely that he composed them while studying either at Wahoo’s Luther College or shortly after leaving
Wahoo for the first time to study with Percy Goetschius at New York City’s Institute of Musical
Art (which would become The Juilliard School).25 He graduated from high school in 1911, already taking music classes at the local Luther College. He left Wahoo to study in New York in
1913. A note at the end of a draft of the Swedish Fantasia reads “Wahoo, Nebraska,” indicating that he composed the work while studying at Luther College. The handwritten score of the
“Scandinavian” Symphony (clearly in Hanson’s hand) is dated 1913, indicating that he probably wrote the Symphony while in New York. Both the “Scandinavian” Mazurka and the
“Scandinavian” Sonata, while not dated, are in a handwriting remarkably similar to the
Symphony of 1913, and were likely composed in New York as well.
Under the title on the handwritten draft of the Swedish Fantasia, Hanson wrote in parentheses the Swedish translation of the title, “Svenska Fantasia,” indicating his pride at knowing at least some of the Swedish language. After an introduction the principal theme of the
Fantasia appears (Example 1.1).
24 Norlén, 5. 25 Luther College in Wahoo (different from the Luther College of Iowa) merged with Midland College in Fremont, Nebraska in 1962 to become Midland Lutheran College, which changed its name in 2010 to Midland University. Midland is still affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
15 Example 1.1: Swedish Fantasia, measures 12-19
According to Göran Westling’s online anthology of Swedish folk music, this melody is listed as
“Vårvindar friska” (Fresh Spring Winds).26 Westling notes that this melody comes from
Norrland, the region that encompasses the northern half of the country. This suggests that not all the Swedes in Wahoo came from Skåne, but that Hanson knew immigrants from a number of different Swedish regions, or that there were songs or song collections from other Swedish regions available in Wahoo. Hanson sets the melody in E minor, which would have perhaps been interpreted by listeners in Wahoo as melancholy. Both the phrase structure and harmonic structure are simple and easy to anticipate, like much European folk dance music. The Fantasia operates in much the same free manner as the title suggests, with frequent references to the above melody. While this is not Hanson’s earliest composition, it does show his keen perception of the traditional music of the immigrants in Wahoo and early signs of melding with European- style music of the Romantic tradition.
26 Göran Westling, “My Traditional Swedish FolkSongs,” in Umeå Akademiska Kör, Umeå University, http://www.acc.umu.se/~akadkor/theory/My_folkmusic.html (accessed January 1, 2013).
16 Hanson’s larger works of a few years later indicate a composer still searching for a creative voice while clinging to his personal perceptions of Scandinavian music and culture. The
“Scandinavian” Sonata in D Minor, written likely while Hanson was in New York, is in three movements, all in the minor mode, following the standard fast-slow-fast outline. The opening movement, “Allegro Vigoroso,” begins as a march, more tragic than nostalgic (see Example 1.2).
Example 1.2: “Scandinavian” Sonata in D minor movement 1 “Allegro Vigoroso,” measures 1-5
After the opening material is developed, the young composer introduces the movement’s other theme, a triple-time melody in A minor with a dotted pattern, similar in phrase and harmonic structure to the thematic material from the Swedish Fantasia (see Example 1.3).
Example 1.3: “Scandinavian” Sonata in D minor movement 1 “Allegro Vigoroso,” measures 33-36
Hanson alternates these two contrasting themes throughout the movement. While the first theme is in a European folk style that is difficult to pinpoint, the second theme, with its dotted rhythm
17 in triple time, is clearly imitative of Swedish polska tunes.27 The second iteration of the Sweden- inspired theme closes the first movement.
In contrast to the polska of the first movement, Hanson employs two slow melodies similar to minor-mode visor for the “Adagio” second movement (see Examples 1.4 and 1.5).
Example 1.4: “Scandinavian” Sonata in D minor movement 2 “Adagio,” measures 3-10
Example 1.5: “Scandinavian” Sonata in D minor movement 2 “Adagio,” measures 50-57
These melodies appear to be original, but they display characteristics similar to a number of
Swedish visor; additionally, the triple meter of Example 1.5 indicates that it could be imitative of
27 The majority of the many polskas collected in Märta Ramsten’s Swedish folk music anthology are in triple time with dotted rhythms. See the regional examples in Ramsten, Einar Övergaards folkmusiksamling.
18 polska style, although the slower tempo suggests otherwise. Again, Hanson’s setting of these two themes is melancholic and harmonically forward-looking.
In the only available draft of the Scandinavian Sonata, Hanson does not include a tempo marking on the third movement; the duple time signature and dotted rhythms, however, indicate a quickened tempo. Example 1.6 shows the principal theme of the movement, which is either in the style of a Swedish dance or perhaps children’s songs. Example 1.7 shows the second theme, which acts structurally as a trio; this theme in triple time and minor mode like the first, is also reminiscent of a Swedish dance style.
Example 1.6: “Scandinavian” Sonata in D minor movement 3, measures 1-10
Example 1.7: “Scandinavian” Sonata in D minor movement 3, measures 151-58
The first theme appears in Westling’s anthology under the title “Mandom mod och morske män,”
(“Manly Courage and Courageous Men”) with lyrics by Richard Dybeck, a nineteenth-century
19 collector of Swedish folk tunes. The second theme of the third movement appears to be an original imitation of triple-time polska style, but it displays the markings of a more pan-Northern
European folk style with its bass drone.28 The themes of the movements of the Sonata and the composer’s treatment of them raise important questions concerning the role of nostalgia in
Hanson’s music. Rather than receiving much development, the themes are repeated with little variation many times throughout the movement, as in Hanson’s other unpublished works.
Because he had not yet traveled to Europe, Hanson’s image of Scandinavia served as the inspiration for much of his early music, an image based almost entirely on the rich yet limited accounts of native Swedes. The above examples that do not appear to be direct quotations seem to be obviously inspired by the songs that the Swedes in Wahoo would have sung. By granting the Sonata the descriptor “Scandinavian,” Hanson indicates not only that his grasp of Swedish musical traditions represents the immigrants of the American Midwest, but that his nostalgia extends to their homeland. Hanson’s melding of the simplicity of Scandinavian folksong style with the European ideas of form and harmony he was learning at the time is an important marker of his style. Given the composer’s later interest in American music, it is tempting to compare this
Sonata with other examples by earlier American composers; but despite his later voluminous knowledge of American music, it is impossible to know what pieces Hanson would have known in his early twenties.
Hanson’s “Scandinavian” Symphony, dated 1913, only exists as a draft in two complete movements; it is not clear if Hanson intended to add movements, or if he did in fact compose movements that have been lost. Although the work appears incomplete, the thematic material is more thoroughly developed than in his previous works, and possibly for the first time Hanson
28 No source indicates that a drone is a characteristic of Swedish music.
20 demonstrates some mastery of orchestration and counterpoint. This is perhaps due in large part to his tutelage with Percy Goetschius, whose 1934 text The Structure of Music especially emphasizes the study of counterpoint and form.29 Hanson wrote little about his study with
Goetschius, but he does mention his time with the teacher in a 1932 autobiographical sketch:
“Dr. Goetschius again with his lofty conception of music and his high ideals exerted a tremendous influence over me in this formative period.”30 Hanson admitted in an interview late in his life with David Russell Williams that his studies with Goetschius primarily involved exercises; he worked very little on individual compositions with his teacher.31
Similar to the movements of the “Scandinavian” Sonata, the first and second movements of the “Scandinavian” Symphony are built from two distinct themes; also like the Sonata, the
Symphony is in the key of D minor. In the first movement, “Allegro Molto,” the dotted rhythms of the first theme again suggest a Swedish dance, possibly modeled after a polska (see Example
1.8).
Example 1.8: “Scandinavian” Symphony in D minor movement 1 “Allegro molto,” measures 1-8 (reduction)
29 See Percy Goetschius, The Structure of Music: A Series of Articles Demonstrating in an Accurate, Though Popular, Manner the Origin and Employment of the Fundamental Factors of Music Structure and Composition, for the Student and General Music Lover (Philadelphia: Theodore Presser, Co., 1934). 30 Hanson, “Autobiographical Sketch up to 1932,” 3. 31 See David Russell Williams, Conversations with Howard Hanson (Arkadelphia, Arkansas: Delta Publications, 1988), 25-26.
21 Hanson develops the dance melody during the opening section before halting the narrative and introducing a lyrical “Andante” second theme in triple time (see Example 1.9). This melody is introduced first by the cellos; the low register of the cello is compatible with Ling, Kjellberg, and
Ronström’s description of Swedish folk singing.
Example 1.9: “Scandinavian” Symphony in D minor movement 1 “Allegro molto,” measures 59-72 (reduction)
This melody appears in Westling’s anthology as “Magdalena stod i grönan lund” (Magdalena
Stood in the Green Grove), and the collector notes that it is from the ballad genre.32 The melody is simple and melancholic, although the two phrase extensions in Hanson’s version (mm. 69-72) are not present in Westling’s anthology. Hanson accompanies the melody in the strings with harmonies that could be viewed as progressive, especially in the context of Swedish folk music.
32 The text is also included, with no annotation, in Adolf Iwar Arwidsson’s Svenska Fornsånger: En Samling af Kämpavisor, Folk-Visor, Lekar och Dansar, samt Barn och Vall-Sånger (Stockholm: Norstedt & Söner, 1837).
22 This is a clear example of the young composer merging the folk style of his ancestors with a more modern, yet still tonal, idiom, a strong precursor to Hanson’s later style.
The final existing movement of the “Scandinavian” Symphony, “Andante,” primarily develops a slow dotted-rhythm melody also in the minor mode (see Example 1.10). The character of the melody and Hanson’s weaving of the theme into the narrative of the movement
(rather than a separate statement musically offset from anything that follows) creates a challenge for comparison to any specific Swedish folk music style. The first part of Hanson’s melody, however, follows the Swedish visa included in Westling’s anthology as either “Om morgonen vid dagens ljus” (In the Morning When the Light of Day) or “On dagen vid mitt arbete” (On
Days When My Work). Hanson’s inclusion of the theme in his “Scandinavian” Symphony suggests that for the composer the melody represented the soundscape of his childhood.
Figure 1.10: “Scandinavian” Symphony in D minor movement 2 “Andante,” measures 21- 28 (reduction)
23 Despite the dearth of information Hanson left about this early, unnumbered Symphony, the surviving manuscript reveals two important aspects of the composer’s budding style: first,
Hanson’s constant employment of Scandinavian elements and melodies are indicative of his feelings for his heritage, even if slightly suppressed, throughout his musical career; and second, that as Hanson matured as a composer it becomes more of a challenge to pinpoint the references he makes to particular Swedish folk songs or folk music styles.
Hanson left no written account of his compositional process prior to the pieces he wrote while teaching and subsequently serving as a dean at the College of the Pacific in California from 1916 until he left to study in Rome in 1921.33 His incorporation of the elements of Swedish folk song signify the nostalgia he must have felt for the music of the immigrants who shaped his image and ideals about America, especially after moving to New York and then to Chicago and teaching on the West Coast. While many additional influences would enter into his compositional process throughout his life, his first education in music, which came directly from immigrants, continued to pervade his music.
In Hanson’s early music, Sweden is idealized – a real place from which his parents came, but a place the details and images of which were the products of his piecing together of the many stories and descriptions he heard as a child and young adult. The idealized Sweden formed an integral backbone of Hanson’s identity, not only as a composer but also as an American. While
Hanson always placed significance on both his heritage and his American citizenship, the tension between these issues presented significant identity problems for the composer who, in his twenties, had not yet decided how to resolve them.
33 The College of the Pacific, since renamed the University of the Pacific, was located in San Jose until 1924 when it was relocated to Stockton, California.
24 CHAPTER 2
THE FIRST EUROPEAN SOJOURN
While Hanson’s pieces from his Wahoo and New York years feature Swedish folksongs and Scandinavian-inspired themes prominently, his works after 1914 begin to show additional influences.34 After studying at Northwestern and serving at the College of the Pacific first as professor and later as an administrator, the young composer won first prize in the first American
Prix de Rome competition in 1921.35 Upon winning the award, Hanson embarked for a three- year stay at the American Academy in Rome, where he studied under the guidance of Ottorino
Respighi and the American composers Leo Sowerby and Felix Lamond. During this time Hanson composed the works that essentially launched his compositional career, works that not only established Hanson as a composer but more importantly established the foundation of a compositional voice that would continually evolve over the next five decades. Winning the first
American Prix de Rome also validated Hanson’s stature as an American composer, an enormous justification for a composer whose works not even a decade before were unquestionably
Scandinavian in both name and style.
Shortly after arriving in Rome, Hanson began working on the most ambitious composition he had yet undertaken, a fully orchestrated work much larger than the early
“Scandinavian” Symphony, that would become his Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 21,
34 Ruth T. Watanabe and James Perone, Hanson’s biographers for his article in the Grove Dictionary of American Music, label his music from these intervening years “Grieg-influenced.” See Watanabe and Perone, “Hanson, Howard” in Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/12342 (accessed January 1, 2013). 35 The American Prix de Rome (now called the American Rome Prize) is an organization completely independent from the Prix de Rome, which awarded prizes in Paris from 1803 until 1968.
25 “Nordic.” It is no surprise that the young composer would choose to subtitle his first great work
“Nordic” after the region of his ancestors, or that the work would prominently quote a Swedish folksong.
The composer wrote to his parents from the academy weekly, if not more often. In one of his earliest letters after arriving in Rome, Hanson writes of the progress of his Symphony:
My Symphony is going very well and I think that there is no doubt but that it will be the best thing I have ever done. I am going slow and taking my time and if a thing doesn’t suit me I tear it out and do it over again with all the time I want to put in it. It is the opposite pole to the way I lived at the College [of the Pacific]. I go to bed about 11 and get up about 8:30, work two, three, four, five or six hours or none at all just as the spirit moves me, and that is the way with all the others here so that no one ever forces anything but only work as they can see their way ahead clearly. You can certainly produce the goods this way.36
It is clear that Hanson placed great faith in his new work, writing with excitement about the
Symphony and the relaxed compositional process he could enjoy at the academy. Just over three months later, Hanson wrote in another letter about finishing the work and securing performances:
Yesterday I finished my symphony and am already started on amking [sic] a good copy of the score. It will take about 27 minutes to play and is in three movemnt s [sic] and a Finale. I think that it is without doubt the best thing I have done yet. As soon as I finish copying the score Lamond and I will take up the matter of its performance with Molinari, the director of the Symphony here, and we will try and arrange it so that I can conduct it myself next season. I hope that by that time you will be here so that you can hear it with me. Won’t that be fine? I am also going to try and get performances in both Stockholm and London before it goes to America if I can.37
Having just completed the work, both Hanson and his teacher, Lamond (the score’s dedicatee), had big plans for the new piece.
It is important that Hanson continually updated his parents on the Symphony’s progress, that they seemed to have played a role in the work’s creation, because the composer dedicated individual movements to them – the second to his mother, the third to his father. Hanson writes
36 Hanson, Letter to Hans and Hilma Hanson, February 19, 1922, 3. 37 Hanson, Letter to Hans and Hilma Hanson, April 30, 1922, 1.
26 in his autobiography, “I called it the Nordic because of the Scandinavian background of my parents… The Symphony became a kind of tribute to my parents and the land of their birth.”38
One can clearly observe from the composer’s letters to his parents the close bond he shared with them, addressing them in each letter as “Dear Honies.” Hanson’s dedication to his parents acknowledges their role in his life as the connection to his past and to his heritage.
Only months before travelling to Sweden for the first time, Hanson included in his
Nordic Symphony a quotation of Swedish folk music. He confirms this quotation in his autobiography: “The final movement, in fact, contains both a theme which sounds like a Swedish folk-song – but isn’t – and an actual folk-song which dates back to the middle ages.”39 Example
2.1 shows Hanson’s setting of the folk song within the Nordic Symphony.
Example 2.1: Symphony No. 1 in E minor, “Nordic,” Op. 21 movement 3 “Allegro con fuoco,” measures 113-129
38 Hanson, Autobiography, Chapter 9, second folder, 8-9. 39 Ibid., 9.
27
28
29
30 Comparison with the earlier unpublished works reveals that Hanson had also used this folk melody, “Magdalena stod i grönan lund,” eight years before as the central theme of the first movement of the “Scandinavian” Symphony (see Example 1.9). Although Hanson composed the
Nordic Symphony in 1922 for a larger orchestra, the setting of the visa is quite similar harmonically and rhythmically to his previous setting, suggesting that he had kept his early works in mind. To this new setting of the visa Hanson appends a three-bar dotted-rhythm descent in the winds, adding to the melancholic mood of the folk song, that recurs throughout the movement. As a unifying element Hanson uses motifs from the previous two movements in the final movements, most notably the flute descent passage from the second movement (see
Example 2.2), which signifies, perhaps even for the composer, Hanson’s mother. The composer never commented on any extra-musical connections tied to this motif, but its ubiquity in the movement dedicated to his mother suggests an association. The motif’s frequent occurrences in the final movement suggest that there could be an underlying programmatic narrative involving both of the composer’s parents.
Example 2.2: Symphony No. 1 in E minor, “Nordic,” Op. 21 movement 2 “Andante teneramente, con semplicitá,” measures 28-30 (flutes isolated)
The centrality of the “Magdalena stod i grönan lund” melody within the Nordic Symphony’s third movement, the movement dedicated to Hanson’s father and possibly about both of his parents, indicates both the continued, cardinal role of Scandinavian influences in Hanson’s works and the connection to his Swedish heritage felt here through his relationship with his parents.
31 The other theme to which Hanson refers in his autobiography must be the third movement’s second theme, as the opening motif is chromatic, and therefore not likely in imitation of a folksong. The melody, shown in Example 2.3, is introduced by the violins and answered by piccolo and flute. The theme is in compound rhythm with a repeated motif in the minor mode, compatible with Swedish folk song style.
Example 2.3: Symphony No. 1 in E minor, “Nordic,” Op. 21 movement 3 “Allegro con fuoco,” measures 81-88
32
33
34
35 Juxtaposed with the other thematic material in the Symphony, which is at times modern and at times Romantic, this folk song provides a stark, almost haunting, contrast. Despite writing in a set of program notes for a 1935 performance that “the first movement is an attempt to picture the
North in its qualities of somberness, strength, and mysticism,” this is the only theme that the composer indicated was in imitation of Swedish folk style.40 Compared to the possible imitations in his unpublished works, this 1922 melody shows Hanson’s maturity as a composer. He interweaves the tune throughout the movement, altering a fragment of the melody to punctuate the iterations of “Magdalena stod i grönan lund” (see Example 2.1, measures 127-29, oboe and clarinet).
Hanson conducted the premiere of the Nordic Symphony with Rome’s Augusteo
Symphony Orchestra in May 1923, over a year after announcing to his parents that he had completed the work. Hanson wrote to his parents following the performance,
There is no doubt but that the concert was a tremendous success and that my conducting and my symphony were the big features of the concert. Any number of prominent people said that they had no idea that any American could do what I did with that orchestra. Lamond was tickled to death and about all you hear around the place is what a wonderful success Hanson made!41
After Hanson returned to the United States to begin his directorship at Eastman, the Symphony received a number of American performances. A meticulous self-archivist, Hanson saved newspaper clippings of most performances of his works throughout his long career, including an untitled and unattributed review on which Hanson marked in pen “1924.” The review reads,
40 Hanson, Draft of “Program Notes on ‘Nordic Symphony,’” January 24, 1930, 1. 41 Hanson, Letter to Hans and Hilma Hanson, May 27, 1923, 1. Although it is not entirely clear whether if by “what I did with that orchestra” Hanson means that the audience lauded his conducting or his composition, I interpret the passage to indicate that he is referring to both. Later at Eastman Hanson would become a prolific conductor, respected for his conducting work almost as highly as for his compositional output.
36 “Although written by an American, this ‘Nordic’ Symphony is strongly imbued with the spirit and flavor of the land of its composer’s ancestry – of Sweden and the north countries. It is singularly direct, sincere music and there is contained in its pages a somber beauty as well as the suggestion of surging and strife.”42 Referring to the composer’s heritage became a trope in newspaper reviews of Hanson’s works, even the ones that bear no obvious connection to
Scandinavia. This early connection to Swedish aesthetics suggests that Hanson’s compositional idiom was considered an important addition to the growing collection of styles in the 1920s that was American concert music.
Before leaving for an extended vacation in the fall of 1922 on a tour across Europe that was to include his first visit to Sweden, Hanson wrote a number of letters to his parents that betray his excitement about his upcoming trip from the academy. After meeting two men in
Rome whom Hanson suspected of being Swedish, the composer wrote to his parents, in the same letter in which he announced that he had completed the third movement of the Nordic
Symphony, “I have asked them up to dinner at the Academy tomorrow evening and am going to find out more about Sweden from them!!”43 In another letter a few months after, Hanson writes about his excitement at meeting another Swede:
At the hotel where the two girls are staying I met a Swedish professor from Goteborg. He heard me playing Swedish folksongs and spoke to me. He was a most distinguished appearing man and introduced me to his wife and another gentleman. He asked me to call on him in Gothborg [sic] and gave me his card. He spoke beautiful English. I foresee that I am going to like Sweden very much. He thought of course that I was a Swede.44
42 Newspaper clipping, source unknown. 43 Hanson, Letter to Hans and Hilma Hanson, April 21, 1922, 2-3. 44 Hanson, Letter to Hans and Hilma Hanson, July 9, 1922, 1.
37 This letter not only points to Hanson’s anticipation at visiting Sweden but also indicates that the composer, perhaps for leisure, often played Swedish folksongs at the piano and that these folksongs brought by immigrants to Wahoo had a continued importance in Hanson’s life.
Upon traveling to Sweden, Hanson wrote two letters to his parents, the two longest in the collection. The first handwritten letter, dated September 12, 1922, Hanson wrote from the town of Mona in central Sweden after touring much of the region of Skåne (where his parents were born) and the city of Göteborg. Hanson’s first stop in his Swedish tour was the town of Lund, where his parents had been born. He writes of visiting the town, “It seemed very strange to be in
Mother’s home town and to know that some of the people on the street might be your relatives. I wish that I had known the street where Mother was born and the part of the country where Popsie came into the world so that I could have gone there.”45 Hanson writes of his success conversing in the Swedish language, displays his knowledge of Swedish history, notes his amazement at the beautiful landmarks he visited, and about his impressions of Swedes he writes, “I think that the
Swedes are by all odds the kindest people and the politest I have met on my travels.”46 In an anecdote about playing the piano in a music store, Hanson makes an interesting suggestion about his compositional style: “In the afternoon I went into a music store, ‘borrowed’ a piano and composed! while the clerks walked around on tiptoe and whispered! I guess they thought that
Grieg was come to life again!”47 To conclude the letter, he writes, “My trip has already been a success. I wanted to ‘check up’ on the country and its spirit so that I could find out how much of my music was influenced by it – and now I believe I understand myself!”48 This important statement speaks both to Hanson’s musical style and personal identity. While the decisions to
45 Hanson, Letter to Hans and Hilma Hanson, September 12, 1922, 2. 46 Ibid., 3. 47 Ibid., 6. 48 Ibid., 10.
38 include Swedish folk melodies in many of his past works had been conscious ones, the composer is suggesting that understanding not only Swedish music but also Scandinavian culture is vital to understanding his musical voice and also understanding himself.
Hanson penned his second journal-like letter en route from Nuremburg to Rothenburg,
Germany, shortly after leaving Sweden. In this letter he writes of his visits to Uppsala and
Stockholm, describing the folk music, dances, and dress as familiar and indicating that he had begun work on a new composition, presumably North and West. Hanson concludes the letter exuberant about his time in the land that he can now call his:
My experience in Sweden was wonderful and I found out that I am a good Norsk. They are a wonderfully fine race. I don’t understand why their art isn’t better but I think it is because they are undemonstrative and more introspective – and a bit self-concious [sic]. There are just the opposite of the Italians who are absolutely free in self-expression. But I have “found myself” on this trip and I think that my next work will be pretty “big stuff.”49
It is clear that Hanson felt a strong connection to the country of his ancestors, a connection that he realized existed in his music as well, and that the inspiration he drew from his extended stay in Sweden would soon result in a big, if not important work.
Despite his later remarks to the contrary in his autobiography and in interviews that he traveled to Sweden before writing his Nordic Symphony, Hanson’s letters to his parents indicate that he had completed the Symphony before embarking on the European tour that included his first visit to his parents’ homeland. Because the composition was not premiered until March
1923, it is conceivable from his insistence in multiple sources that visiting Sweden might have led Hanson to make small revisions in his work. This is corroborated by a brief mention in his second letter about Sweden that he was “still busy … rewriting part of my symphony.”50 In his
49 Hanson, Letter to Hans and Hilma Hanson, September 25, 1922, 6. 50 Ibid., 4.
39 autobiography Hanson indicates that the trip played a larger role in the composition of the
Nordic Symphony:
After Germany I left my friends and proceeded to Sweden to visit the land of my parents and to seek inspiration for my Nordic symphony. I suppose that we all have a latent nostalgia for the land of our forefathers even though it is not our land. This feeling was very strong in me and as I walked through the fields of Skane – remarkably like my own fields of Nebraska – and along the beautiful lakes of central Sweden it seemed to me that I had indeed come back to deep roots, to sources which went back to an infinite past. After all, the Swedes of Wahoo were still very close to their former homeland.51
Hanson elaborates on this claim in his 1980 interview with David Russell Williams:
HHH: The Nordic was too early – I was too young for a first Symphony, though it holds up astonishingly well for such a young piece, but it has too many climaxes, one right after another, a real pile-up – but I was hunting for my roots. I went to Sweden to hunt around trying to find out how Scandinavian I was, whether I was American or Scandinavian. DRW: What did you decide? HHH: That I was pretty Scandinavian; both of my parents were born there, you know.52
The extent to which Hanson identified in his early years with his Swedish heritage is noteworthy.
Later in the interview, Hanson expands on the significance that the trip to Sweden had on his musical and personal identity.
DRW: You have mentioned that you went to Sweden before you wrote your first symphony and that you had done some research on your background, and I wonder to what extent you felt, when you were there, that you were identified with the culture. HHH: That’s very hard to say. I think it was an emotional and sentimental experience. I was in the little town from which my mother and father came, in the Southern part of Sweden, near Malmo. DRW: You implied the other day that if anything, this made you feel that you were an American and I wondered whether there had been any limitations on how closely you felt yourself to be Scandinavian. HHH: In my early works, I certainly felt that. I felt it in the Nordic [Symphony].53
51 Hanson, Autobiography, Chapter 11, second folder, 3. 52 Williams, 5-6. 53 Ibid., 17.
40 The notion of feeling Scandinavian for Hanson meant a close bond to the Swedish country, its history, its language, and its music traditions. Reflecting years later on the Symphony, Hanson admits certain faults, but expresses no intent to change the work:
I’ve never had any intentions of revising [the Nordic Symphony]. It has certain youthful qualities which I think are attractive and a certain youthful exuberance which is very delightful, but I’ve never had any feeling that I should rewrite it. I have just felt I should leave it as it is; it’s the expression of a certain period of my life and I think it is better to leave it stand that way than to pour new wine into old bottles.54
Although Hanson completed the bulk of the work on his Nordic Symphony before visiting the
Nordic lands, he composed the work looking forward to his visit and revised it as a result of his experience.
While the direct effect that Hanson’s Swedish vacation had on the Nordic Symphony is moderate, the trip acted as a major inspiration and impetus to begin work on another composition for large orchestra, North and West. Hanson wrote of the work in his autobiography:
After completing the Nordic I tried to give my impressions of the duality within me by writing what I called a “symbolic” poem, North and West, which attempted to portray the influence both of the country of my parents and the Nebraska plains of my birth. The score was a rather massive one calling for not only a large orchestra but a wordless chorus of men’s and women’s voices. The score was more “modern,” more experimental and less lyrical than the symphony.55
Significantly, Hanson refers to his realization of his heritage and his early pride in his American citizenship as a duality, a concept on which he reflects in his otherwise non-programmatic work.
In a letter to his parents, Hanson reflects on the notion that the work speaks to his experience: “I have done something which pleases me pretty well in “North and West” for orchestra – something which I will not be ashamed to have represent me anywhere.”56 For Hanson, North and West by virtue of its title and the composer’s description of the work as a “symbolic poem,”
54 Williams, 11. 55 Hanson, Autobiography, Chapter 11, second folder, 4. 56 Hanson, Letter to Hans and Hilma Hanson, June 3, 1923, 1.
41 was at once an autobiographical work acknowledging his roots and his upbringing and a continuation of the search that prompted his visit to Sweden to locate and understand his personal identity and how that should factor into his musical compositions. More broadly, through writing North and West, Hanson was attempting to understand how his music would fit into the context of American concert music when the genre was at or nearing its height.
Hanson wrote to his parents with excitement to tell them of the progress of his piece, writing, “Have done quite a bit of work on my new poem ‘North and West’ and am convinced that it will be a big work – much beyond anything else I have done. [Virgil] Thomson, the composer, heard some of it and said that it was so intense that it frightened him. He said that I was writing psychology!”57 With a more progressive tonal language than that of his earlier works, North and West apparently proved to be a major compositional challenge to Hanson. He began the early stages of composition in Sweden, and sources indicate that he did not finish the work until some time later in 1923. Letters from and to Hanson near the time of the work’s premiere in 1925 mention the work’s perceived size. Hanson’s mentor in Rome Leo Sowerby writes,
Dear Hanson, I waited around until 5 minutes before 8 tonight to see you to wish you “bon voyage,” and a successful performance of “North and West” in N.Y. I am sure it will make a deep impression, not everyone will like it, that is certain, but those who are looking for a really big work, and who have the good sense to perceive that they are getting one finally, can not fail to be grateful to you for having written it. I am sorry not to have seen you before leaving, but very good wishes in this matter are just as hearty, as though I had given them to you personally. Buon Natale e buon maggio. Sincerely, Leo.58
57 Hanson, Letter for Hans and Hilma Hanson, November 28, 1922, 2. Because of the modernist nature of the work, Thomson’s comment about North and West was most likely a compliment. 58 Leo Sowerby, Letter to Howard Hanson, undated.
42 Hanson wrote a letter to a friend while en route back to America to hear the premiere:
You will be surprised at this letterhead I know, but I am bound for New York for the performance of my Symphonic Poem “North and West” with the New York Symphony, on February 3rd. I don’t know whether I told you about this work or not. It followed my Symphony in order of composition and is quite an ambitious work using sixteen voices as orchestral instruments in addition to a large orchestra. It is the representation of the influence of heredity and environment upon my creative self and I think that in it I have “found myself” for the first time. I do wish that you should hear it. Damrosch may conduct but I think that he will ask me to conduct it myself.59
Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony premiered the work in January 1925, providing the young composer a major career boost, leading to the job offer to serve as director of the
Eastman School of Music. Hanson scored the work for double winds (plus piccolo and contrabassoon), full brass, timpani, celesta, two harps, strings, and chorus. The one-movement work lasts between fifteen and twenty minutes.
Despite the work’s success in New York, Hanson soon afterward revised the score, transforming it into his Concerto for Organ, Harp and Strings, Op. 22 No. 3, completed in 1926.
Hanson writes in his autobiography, “I was never completely satisfied with the working out of the material and it went through several metamorphoses before attaining its final form – as a concerto for organ, harp and strings.”60 In the interview with David Russell Williams, Hanson elaborated on the compositional history of the Organ Concerto:
I made an arrangement without very much change of the actual notes for organ and orchestra. But I wasn’t happy about the kinds of sound I was getting, because I felt that the reeds of the organ were fighting the reeds of the orchestra, so I made another score for strings, harp, and organ, which I think is quite a good piece. It’s certainly not my favorite work, because it has gone through too many cycles, but it’s the only one I’ve revised.61
59 Hanson, Letter to Fanny Brandeis, January 9, 1925, 1-2. Hanson refers in the first sentence to the official letterhead of the ship on which he was traveling. 60 Hanson, Autobiography, Chapter 11, second folder, 4. 61 Williams, 11.
43 During its short life the original version of North and West was never published, and it exists in two orchestrated scores in Hanson’s hand. A comparison of the published Organ Concerto with the original scores confirms that Hanson changed very little other than instrumentation; Hanson added a few repetitions of the themes, provided a pedal cadenza, and altered the coda.
Like many of Hanson’s earlier compositions, the work draws upon several opposing themes, representing either the “North” or the “West.” From the first section, which according to the composer symbolizes the North, the first theme appears to be in imitation of Swedish visa style (see Example 2.4).62
Example 2.4: Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Harp measures 35-43 (organ isolated)
While it is impossible in this case to separate this melody from the traditions of similar European folk cultures, Hanson remarked that the theme is “suggestive of the melancholy of the North”;63 additionally, like some other of Hanson’s invented folk melodies, the composer uses a drone
62 Musical examples extracted from score of Concerto for Organ, Harp, and Strings; these examples correspond to phrases from North and West. 63 Quoted in Program Notes for Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, November 13, 1924,
44 pitch in the organ pedals for the duration of the melody (see Example 1.7) and accompanies the tune with oscillating progressive chords (see the settings of “Magdalena stod I grönan lund,”
Examples 1.9 and 2.1). The theme representing the West (see Example 2.5) bears no resemblance to Swedish folk style.
Example 2.5: Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Harp measures 211-18 (organ isolated)
From an interpretive standpoint, Hanson alternates the two themes as if constantly in conflict between the folk-like Northern theme and the harmonically progressive Western theme. In North and West the piece ends softly after a long decrease in rhythmic activity. In the Organ Concerto
Hanson rewrote the ending with a more triumphant coda. This revision can be variously interpreted as a product of the composer’s having returned to America and lived in Rochester for over a year, or perhaps it is a remark on the differences between the nature of the symphonic poem and that of the virtuosic concerto.
45 Despite the short time between the completion of North and West and its revision into the
Organ Concerto, the latter work soon lost its association with the former piece and thereby lost its association with Scandinavia and the Western Plains. In the programs Hanson collected for his personal papers, none of the program notes on the Organ Concerto mentions that it is anything more than an entirely independent composition. Considering Hanson’s predilection for hiding early, unpublished works, it is possible that the composer felt that the original form of
North and West was not worthy of mention; like his admission that the “youthful” Nordic
Symphony spoke to his identity in the 1920s, Hanson felt the same about North and West: that his ideas about his identity changed within a decade.
Hanson’s few years in Europe offered him a new opportunity to compose while exploring not merely the region, whose traditions he had learned as a child, but, more importantly, to discover the role these traditions should play in his music. As the two themes of North and West compete for primacy, so too did Hanson struggle with his personal and musical identity: Hanson felt a strong connection to Scandinavia and Scandinavians, while at the same time he began to develop ideas about the cultivation of an American style of concert music. Through the process of refining and enriching his skills as a composer and his personal compositional style, Hanson charted a voice that would become well-known in American music over the next few decades, as he would compose his most popular works and as he assumed a powerful role as director of what would become one of the nation’s most influential music conservatories. Hanson would use this platform to promote American music of a variety of styles, always with his music at the forefront.
46 CHAPTER 3
AMERICANISM AND THE EASTMAN YEARS
Upon returning to America in 1925, Hanson quickly began what would become the next long chapter of his life and the crowning achievement of his career: Director of the Eastman
School of Music in Rochester, New York, a position he would hold for forty years.64 This offer came at a pivotal moment in the history not only of American music but of music education in
America. Although the scope of this thesis is not to examine Hanson’s educational philosophies and successes, it must be noted that his contributions to twentieth-century American music education were immeasurably important, and that he is primarily responsible for cementing
Eastman’s reputation as one of America’s leading music conservatories.65 Eastman provided
Hanson a platform with which he quickly became one of the leading advocates for the growth and promotion of American music. Hanson’s time at Eastman can perhaps be best encapsulated by an inscription he wrote, before accepting the position, in the Eastman School of Music
Guestbook, a volume housed in the school’s archives that only the most important guests of the school have been allowed to sign over the years. That Hanson was asked to sign the book speaks both to his budding popularity in America in 1925 and the degree to which George Eastman desired that his conservatory be run by this rising musical figure. Hanson’s inscription reads, “To
64 Hanson received the job offer from George Eastman in January 1925, cutting his residency at the American Academy in Rome short by several months. 65 See Vincent A. Lenti, Vincent A., Serving a Great and Noble Art: Howard Hanson and the Eastman School of Music (Rochester: Meliora Press, 2009).
47 the Eastman School of Music. May it fulfill its great mission in the development of a great
American Art.”66
Shortly after assuming his job at Eastman, Hanson embraced the potential his new position afforded him to become an active community leader on a number of levels. In Rochester
Hanson became a prominent figure in a city proud of its blossoming conservatory. He frequently spoke before the local chapter of the Rotary Club and was a member of the Fortnightly Club.
Hanson wrote regular articles for local newspapers The Rochester Times-Union and Democrat and Chronicle. After launching the series of American Composers Concerts at Eastman, Hanson often gave radio addresses and interviews about the music before it was broadcast. In the community of American music educators Hanson quickly became a well-respected composer and administrator and a highly sought-after speaker. He wrote over one hundred articles on varying topics for publications such as The Musical Times, The Musical Quarterly, Modern
Music, The Musical Courier, and Etude; he delivered speeches at conferences of such organizations as the National Association of Schools of Music, the National Association for
Music Education, and Music Teachers National Association, and served these organizations at various times in administrative positions. Hanson also presented lectures at many schools across the country. On the national level, Hanson contributed often to The New York Times, The
Saturday Review of Literature, and a number of other national newspapers. He served on the board of the Ford Foundation, was appointed by President Eisenhower to the Committee of the
Arts and Sciences, and served on the Joint Army and Navy Committee on Welfare and
Recreation, acting as a consultant to the United States Secretary of State; Hanson also presented speeches to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
66 Personal correspondence with David Peter Coppen, Special Collections Librarian, Sibley Music Library, Eastman School of Music.
48 Although only a portion of his community involvement led to results on the national (and sometimes international) scale, the scope of his activities suggests that Hanson equated his work with acts of American patriotism.
A consistent theme throughout Hanson’s many speeches and writings is praise for his country. In his prepared acceptance speech for his 1973 induction into The Hall of Fame for
Great Americans, Hanson writes of honoring the common men and women who contributed to the building of America:
For it is a great country, a very great country; and in its highest manifestation a magnificent country. Being, myself, a first generation American whose parents and grandparents settled in the Nebraska prairies to find here a freedom of opportunity not present in the land of their birth, I must confess a love-affair with America. It has been, and remains, with all its faults, the land of freedom of mind, body, and spirit. But these ideals, these goals, have not been achieved solely because of the magnificent riches with nature has provided. They have been attained because of the genius, the labors of dedicated men and women. It is important that they should be remembered. It is important that they should be honored. It is important, first, because our remembrance and homage is right and proper. It is our history. It is our heritage. It is our birthright. It constitutes our spiritual wealth and our best augury for the future.67
Speaking to a group of newly naturalized citizens in 1945, in a speech he titled “The New
Adventure,” Hanson provided a list (a typical feature in his writings) of the responsibilities that these new citizens should embrace: voting, awareness, the English language, knowledge of
American government and history, and guarding against forces of division. In the speech he succinctly defines Americanism:
Since being an American cannot then be a matter of birth, race, creed or ancestry, what then is an American? I believe that being an American is essentially a state of mind. An American is a citizen of the United States who believes in, loves and works for those things which make up the dynamic attributes of American philosophy. You may find thoughtless people who will continue to brand you as “foreigners” but you will know in your own hearts that if you believe in those things which have made America the “land of
67 Hanson, untitled speech, October 21, 1973, 1-2.
49 the free” you are indeed truly Americans. Americanism is not a matter of accent. It is a matter of the faith of the heart and soul of its people.68
Hanson’s beliefs about America pervaded his writings and informed his music and repertory selections for the duration of his tenure at Eastman and for the majority of his life.
With his Eastman platform Hanson made his goals for American music widely known in the music community and in national writings. A frequent theme in these writings and speeches is a report on what he considers the progress of American music. In a prepared speech to the
National Committee for Music Appreciation in Raleigh in 1939, Hanson wrote, “Now, however, the pendulum seems to be slowly swinging to a point where Americans are becoming interested in the music of their own composers, and the snobbishness which militated against the natural growth of our own art is very rapidly vanishing.”69 Hanson wrote in an earlier speech to the
Western Supervisors’ Committee,
We are in the midst of a great musical renaissance which gladdens the hearts of all of us who have been working and hoping for a great American musical development. I am convinced that this new era is already upon us, not only in the field of performance but in that most important field, the field of musical creation as well without which no indigenous growth is possible.70
Hanson echoes his perception of an American musical renaissance in a 1934 newspaper article:
We are as a nation hungry for beauty. We want to express ourselves, and to see and hear ourselves expressed, through the medium of the fine arts. In such a spirit as this have all the great art-periods been born. I believe that we are in this country on the eve of such a spiritual re-birth, a naissance through which we too shall contribute, under the banner of our own heritage, to the world’s priceless store of beauty.”71
In a 1932 speech titled “Practical Needs in the Development of American Composition,” Hanson spoke of the progress made since his time in Italy:
68 Hanson, “The New Adventure,” November 7, 1945, 2. 69 Hanson, “Music, A Democratic Art,” October 10, 1939, 2-3. 70 Hanson, untitled and undated speech, 1. 71 Hanson, draft for article sent to Democrat and Chronicle, June 7, 1934, 1.
50 The short period of the past ten years has shown amazing changes in the attitude toward the American composer. In this short space of time he has changed from a being who felt himself an apologetic and self-effacing guest at the banquet of his rich but distant relatives to a man respected and confident of his strength. It is no longer an unheard of thing for the work of an American to be performed by all of the orchestras of this country and even to be sought after in these mysterious climes embraced by the cabalistic word “abroad.” There have been times when foreign conductors have been more enterprising than their American brethren and have secured first performances of American works before our own conductors have had time to move in their own behalf. The reasons for this change are undoubtedly many and complex but it seems only natural to believe that one of the strongest factors has been an awakened interest on the part of American audiences and musicians in the work of their composers. Anyone who will read history with a discerning eye may observe that the composer is never a single unit. He is always the product of the civilization of which he is a part, the expression of the thoughts and feelings which surround him. There is never one composer, there are many or none! The composer is merely the musically creative impulse of the people made articulate. I should say, therefore, that the present interest in and development of American composition is an evidence of the growing creative spirit in the country itself and is fostered by an outgrowth of this spirit. I shall not even argue cause and effect providing this relationship and inter-dependence is understood and acknowledged.72
Hanson’s insightful comments about the role of composers’ surroundings in American music history (and the history of Western music in general) not only speak to his view on the course of
American music but also function as an explanation of his musical aesthetic and how his personal style fits into the broadening framework of American concert music.
For Hanson a firm grasp on American music history was as important as cultivating new traditions. Hanson wrote for a lecture he presented at Harvard in 1948,
Young men are, I believe, all too naturally inclined to forget their forbears, to take for granted all of the advantages which have come to them because men of the past have labored selflessly and valiantly for the future. We are all too apt to forget the music of MacDowell, of Parker, Converse and Loeffler and look only at the work of the latest wonder-child. This is particularly true of our own country which has not yet developed
72 Hanson, “Practical Needs in the Development of American Composition,” 1932, 1. In a number of other writings Hanson claimed that the work of individual composers is the most important factor responsible for the course of Western music history. In the first paragraph of a 1933 speech titled “Tendencies in American Music,” Hanson wrote, “The primary importance of the composer in the history of musical art is undebatable. Without the composer music as a cultivated art would be non-existent.”
51 that sense of historicity which binds us with ties of respect and affection to the past and sets our foot-steps firmly upon secure and certain paths to the future.73
In the many concerts Hanson programmed featuring American music he typically included performances of works from the older generations of American composers juxtaposed with newer compositions. About the role of new American music Hanson wrote for a 1955 speech at
Michigan State University, “Should we support the competent artist even though we personally dislike his creations and have grave misgivings as to their ultimate value? ... My own answer is, as you may have guessed, ‘yes.’”74 On multiple occasions Hanson listed the five most important
American composers, a list which for Hanson included George Gershwin, Aaron Copland,
Walter Piston, Roy Harris, and Howard Hanson.75 Hanson’s interest in creating a performance canon of American music, and his ideas about the place of his compositions in it, permeates many of his writings, yet his program choices, while still including many of his works, attest to his broad conception of American music:
Almost every one of the more than six hundred compositions I’ve directed in Rochester … has in it the American flavor, the American smell—the works of the conservatives, the left-wing and the right-wing progressives, and the middle-of-the-road men alike … I can’t devine [sic] the quality for you, except perhaps to call it a downright honesty. It’s as elusive as the thing which makes such differing composers as Debussy and Faure each seem to so many people characteristically French.76
Hanson initiated the Festival of American Music and the American Composers’ Concerts at Eastman in 1925. These two concert series lasted for the duration of his forty-year tenure in
Rochester. Although both series featured works by a wide variety of American composers from
73 Hanson, “The Material of Music,” Louis C. Elson Memorial Lecture, Harvard University, Lecture 1 (of 2), March 17, 1948, 1-2. 74 Hanson, “The New Vision of the Composer,” March 20, 1955, 3. 75 Hanson, “A Quarter Century of American Music,” Saturday Review of Literature, July 5, 1949. On at least one other occasion, in an undated radio broadcast script, Hanson includes Samuel Barber on his list. 76 Hanson, Interview with Morris C. Hastings, “Dr. Hanson and Americanism: An Interview,” December 13, 1939, 1.
52 Eastman composition students to the most established artists, the Festival concerts tended to include more works that Hanson considered canonical; unsurprisingly, Hanson programmed many of his own compositions for Festival concerts.77 In a speech from the 1930s Hanson outlined the successes of these concert series:
First, they have been the means of enabling young composers of technical maturity to hear the first performance of their works without the necessity of submitting them through the regular “commercial” channels … Second, these concerts have given performances of both new and old works of established composers, enabling the hearers to form some estimate of the directions in which American music is moving. The concerts have in this way served as a valuable meeting ground – an open forum, so to speak – where composers from all sections of the country have come and met together for performances of their own works … In the third place, the concerts have made it possible to test and retest the value of certain manuscript works which, for commercial reasons, have never achieved publication.78
Hanson’s role in leading these concerts featuring the works of Americans not only boosted the careers of many composers (including William Grant Still, William Bergsma, and Peter Mennin) but also secured Eastman as an important center for the performance and support of American music.
During his career Hanson was revered as a composer who espoused musical nationalism.
In an article he wrote on the occasion of the hundredth birthday of Charles Ives, Hanson wrote of his own career:
I have spent well over 50 years of my adult life working for the right of the American composer to express himself in his own country in his own way, in sum, to declare his artistic independence from Europe. For my troubles I have been referred to in some scholarly journals as “an indefatigable protagonist for American music,” and other titles somewhat less complimentary.79
77 It is likely, although undocumented, that the Festival concerts were better attended by the Rochester public. 78 Hanson, “American Composers’ Orchestral Concerts,” undated, 1-2. 79 Hanson, untitled article, Rochester Times-Union, January 6, 1975, 1.
53 Although his efforts at contributing to and promoting an American brand of music were great, several comments on nationalism he made throughout his career suggest that the idea of nationalism was too simplistic and limiting to him:
Actually, though, I believe in individualism in music, not in conscious nationalism… Constantly looking for and insisting upon “nationalism” in compositions is what I call “the women’s club” approach to American music. What the American composer must do is to express himself, not his country, in music. He is not in duty bound to make use of folk-tunes or Indian melodies, just because he’s an American composer. Let him write as he is impelled from within to write and your Americanism, if that’s what you’re looking for, will appear because he’s expressing himself and he is, after all, American. Now that American music has come of age, the best thing we can do for our composers is to leave them alone and not impose restrictions of any sort upon them… For, if no restrictions should be imposed on the American composer from without, neither must he impose on himself. By that I mean he must not put himself into a category.80
Addressing the issue of nationalism in American music in a 1952 article, Hanson wrote,
“Perhaps the problem is one of semantics. Perhaps if we substitute for ‘nationalism’ some phrase such as ‘community interest and support’ we may state our case more clearly.”81
Intertwined with his notions of nationalism is Hanson’s ever-present heritage. While earlier in his growth as a composer he seems conflicted about how his own musical memory should play into his American compositions, after spending several years as administrator at
Eastman, Hanson began to cope with his mixed identity in his music. In a 1933 speech he addressed American nationalism and the role of heritage:
The first thing that should be noted is that the prime requisite for musical expression is spontaneity. No mature composer who is worthy of our serious concern is moved by a consideration of what he ”ought to write.” All discussions of what American music “should be” are beside the point. No theory of Americanism in music can ever be effective. Each composer will write what seems good to him. He may be entirely uninfluenced by the American scene – though this is difficult to understand – and write music which is essentially international in character. Or again, if he represents perhaps
80 Hanson, Interview with Hastings, 1-2. 81 Hanson, “Nationalism and the American Composer,” in Review of Records, April 1952, 1.
54 the first generation of native-born Americans in his family, the influence of heredity may be so strong as to almost obliterate the effects of his environment. What is most likely to happen, however, is that each composer influenced by his inheritance and by his own creative personality will be re-influenced by those aspects of the American scene which appeal most to his. He will do this not consciously but rather sub-consciously, and his music will bear the marks of these various influences. Anyone, therefore, who is looking for the growth of a standardized form of American music will, I believe, be doomed to disappointment – and fortunately so. For the development of a standardized expression is much less to be desired than the development of all of those rich heritages which constitute our enormous spiritual wealth.82
Although Hanson gradually added some elements (primarily harmonic) of the modern concert music idiom to his music as he matured as a composer, the dedication to his personal musical experiences and the music of his childhood was an enduring factor in his music. Clearly
Hanson’s statements from his 1933 speech are autobiographical: Hanson did not copy the styles of his peers or his late nineteenth-century predecessors, focusing more on the influence of
Scandinavian folk music. Presented with the option of writing music in the manner of other popular American composers, Hanson wrote themes that spoke to and for his heritage. In
Hanson’s aesthetic Swedish-inspired music became recontextualized as American.
As Hanson’s popularity as a composer grew, so too did his connection to his
Scandinavian heritage, made manifest in his compositions, become well-known. In 1944, shortly after Hanson’s Fourth Symphony won the Pulitzer Prize, the musician, historian, and musical commentator Nicolas Slonimsky published an article in Christian Science Monitor dubbing
Hanson “The ‘American Sibelius.’” Hanson’s interesting biography and heritage is forefront in
Slonimsky’s article:
In American musical geography Howard Hanson is the first important American musician to come out of the Middle West. He is also the foremost Scandinavian- American among composers. Throughout Hanson’s cosmopolitan career that has taken
82 Hanson, “Tendencies in American Music,” July 31, 1933, 4-5.
55 him across the breadth of the continent and to Europe, Hanson has kept the ties that connected him, an American-born musician, with the land of his ancestors.83
Slonimsky explained his new moniker for Hanson by comparing his stylistic traits to those in the music of the Finnish master: “Because of the modal flavor of his melodies, the austerity of his instrumental writing, and the evocation of Scandinavian moods, Hanson has been called the
American Sibelius.”84 Slonimsky mentions the composer’s Nordic Symphony, describing it as “a reflection of the Northland, Swedish and American.”85 The connection to Sibelius stuck with
Hanson, as indicated by later articles by other authors. In May 1945 Newsweek published an article about Hanson titled “The American Sibelius,” in which the author described Hanson’s
Swedish inclinations: “Though Hanson’s trademark is his tiny European goatee, he was born in
Wahoo, Neb., of Swedish parents. This Scandinavian heritage is so apparent in his music that he has been called the American Sibelius. This is especially true of his four symphonies, of which the Fourth—dedicated to the memory of his father—won the 1944 Pulitzer Prize.”86 The following year a similar article appeared in The Econograph, focusing mainly on Hanson’s popular Second Symphony.87
Hanson did not back away from his public portrayal as heir to the Sibelian style. In his autobiography he comments on Slonimsky’s article: “Having myself been under the influence of
Jan Sibelius I can sympathize, although my affection for Sibelius has never diminished. When, in an article for the Christian Science Monitor, the distinguished historian, Nicholas [sic]
Slonimsky, labeled his article, The American Sibelius, I did not know whether to feel
83 Nicolas Slonimsky, “The ‘American Sibelius,’” Christian Science Monitor, October 14, 1944, 4. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid. 86 “The American Sibelius,” Newsweek, May 7, 1945, 96. 87 See “An American Sibelius,” The Econograph, March 1946, 1, 7.
56 complimented or insulted!”88 Later, in the draft of his autobiography, Hanson responds to the critics who claim his music it too similar to Sibelius:
This critical charge of Sibelian influence has followed me almost from the beginning. Some reviewers have found the influence of the Finnish master in my first symphony, the Nordic, although I doubt very much that I had heard a single Sibelius symphony at the time of writing it! I can also find no influence of Sibelius in my second symphony. The third is, however, a different matter. I had, in the meantime, conducted most of his symphonies and some of his shorter works and was, I am sure, influenced by them. It is actually difficult for me to assess the degree of influence. Sibelius was of Swedish and Finnish descent and was himself undoubtedly influenced by the folk-music of both countries. I was brought up as a child on Swedish folk-songs and folk-dances. It is very likely that we have both drawn inspiration from the same sources.89
Significantly, Hanson points out that he and Sibelius likely shared similar upbringings, with musical memories founded in similar folk music styles. Hanson views Sibelius not as a folk- based compositional model but rather as a kindred mind whose music stems from the
Scandinavian peoples. In a 1939 speech to the Rochester chapter of the Fortnightly Club, a group of community intellectuals who meet at regular intervals to deliver papers they would probably not deliver elsewhere, Hanson outlined the “Modern Masters of Music,” placing Sibelius as number one. Hanson praised the Finnish composer:
Therefore, taking it as more or less axiomatic that the creative artist will always be the most important figure in his art and in his period, I would say somewhat dogmatically that the most important living musician is Jan Sibelius. Sibelius, a Finnish composer and, incidentally, a Finnish patriot with considerable Swedish blood in his veins, is today about seventy-three years young—seventy-three years young, he is still actively composing and, what is more important, actively growing in his art. As a man he looks as enigmatic as his music may sound to the uninitiated. I recall him from only one meeting as a large man with a stone face in which could be detected slight trace of any emotion except a certain spirit of simple kindliness… To the young composer he is a symbol of encouragement for his progress has been slow, logical and sure. In his early works he was frowned upon by some as an
88 Hanson, Autobiography, Chapter 11, second folder, 10. 89 Hanson, Autobiography, Chapter 32, 3-4. Hanson’s remark that he was likely unfamiliar with Sibelius in 1923 seems doubtful. This idea that a composer was not influenced by other famous composers is a recurring theme among American composers, especially Charles Ives and Leo Ornstein.
57 imitator, by others as a sweet romanticist. Curiously enough this latter title was applied to him by the late romanticists of Germany, than whom nothing could be sweeter. In his works each symphony has learned from the past and discarded. Each new symphony has discovered something new for the future and built together more firmly what he has taken from the past. To the student of composition his seven symphonies are a veritable textbook of growth in composition technique.90
While many of Hanson’s later compositions do not betray his predilections for the musical style of Sibelius, Hanson did not back away from either his praise for the Finnish master or from the association by critics; the final two paragraphs of Hanson’s statement about Sibelius could even read as autobiographical. Hanson’s affinity for Sibelius’s Scandinavian sound exposes what some critics may have considered a curious dichotomy, that a composer at the forefront of
Americanism could be so heavily inspired by the most famous Finn.
During his Eastman years, Hanson enjoyed a number of compositional successes. Even though his style evolved to adapt some of the modernist tonal languages that became infused into
American music, he was widely viewed as a tonal conservative. Allusions to Swedish music become much fewer after 1925, perhaps due in large part to his perceived need to contribute to and promote American music. While it can be argued that many of the same types of folk music imitations could possibly be heard in his later works, pinpointing which themes resemble visa and polska styles when the composer gives no Scandinavian-inspired title or program to the work would be an elusive task rising only slightly above guesswork. Hanson wrote a few isolated, smaller-scale works based on Sweden (including the short piano arrangement of the folk song
“Vermeland” from 1926) during his time at Eastman. The only large-scale work from this time that is definitely inspired by Sweden and Hanson’s heritage is his Symphony No. 3, composed in
90 Hanson, “Modern Masters of Music,” February 9, 1939, 2-3. Following Sibelius, Hanson includes in his list Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, and Maurice Ravel.
58 1937 and 1938. Hanson describes his reason for writing the work in the foreword to the published score:
This symphony was written in commemoration of the 300th Anniversary of the first Swedish settlement on the shores of Delaware in 1638. It has its inspiration in the composer’s reverence for the spiritual contribution that has been made to America by that sturdy race of northern pioneers who were in later centuries also to constitute such a mighty force in the conquering of the West.91
Hanson echoes these remarks in program notes provided for the Boston Symphony Orchestra premiere of the entire Symphony in December of 1939:
Temperamentally, the Third Symphony is more closely related to the First Symphony, the “Nordic,” than to the Second. The Third Symphony springs definitely from the north, and has its genesis in the composer’s reverence for the spiritual contribution that has been made to America by the sturdy race of northern pioneers who as early as 1638 founded the first Swedish settlement on the Delaware, and who were in later centuries to constitute such a mighty force in the conquering of the West. The Symphony pays tribute to the epic qualities of those pioneers. The first movement, which has the sub-title andante lamentando – agitato, is both rugged and turbulent in character, alternating with a religious mysticism. The second movement, andante tranquillo, is, as its name implies, for the most part peaceful and brooding in quality. The third movement, tempo scherzando, is in the tempo of a fast scherzo, and is vigorous and rhythmic. The fourth movement, marked largamente e pesante, begins with the brooding character of the first movement, developing into an extended chorale in antiphonal style rising to a climax in the full orchestra out of which appears the principal theme of the second movement, the Symphony ending in a note of exultation and rejoicing.92
Hanson’s Third Symphony is the result of a commission by the Swedish Tercentenary
Committee and the Columbia Broadcasting System’s first Composers’ Commission Project.
With his Third Symphony Hanson claims to have achieved a level of musical maturity. In a letter to John Tasker Howard responding to a questionnaire, Hanson wrote about the Symphony’s place in his output:
I feel that every composer must constantly grow both technically and creatively, must constantly search himself to test the basic qualities of his own esthetic philosophy, must
91 Hanson, Foreword to Symphony No. 3 for Orchestra (New York: Carl Fischer, Inc., 1941). 92 Hanson, quoted in “Program Notes – Boston Symphony Orchestra – December 11, 1939,” 1-2.
59 constantly seek for new beauties and must turn the microscope of his own analytical mind on each new approach which is evolved either by himself or by others, for the purpose of finding in that new approach that spirit of life which is the basis of all art. For myself, I feel that in my new Third Symphony I have come closer to the realization of those ideals which I have set for myself than in any other work that I have previously written.93
By connecting the work with the Nordic Symphony, Hanson links the Third to Swedish influence, even if the work lacks a descriptive title or program.
Some of the Symphony’s themes, especially in the second and third movements, can be interpreted as imitations of Swedish dance genres. The most salient feature of the work, though, is Hanson’s composition of a hymn in the last movement (see Example 3.1 below). As can be observed clearly in many of Hanson’s earlier statements, Lutheran hymnody asserted a large influence over the composer’s output. In the interview with David Russell Williams, Hanson commented on the influence of hymns in his music:
I think the greatest musical influence undoubtedly were the chorales. Some were German and some were of Swedish descent – I’m not too sure of my musicology there – but the symphonies and the Chorale and Alleluia and the Dies Natalis are full of chorale-like passages. They are not from chorales, not quotations, except for the Dies Natalis, but they’re just chorale-like. I don’t think I would have written those if it hadn’t been for the tremendous influence of the Swedish Lutheran church which I attended as a youngster. Hearing the music impressed me very much emotionally.94
Hanson writes of this hymn that he wished to “express something of the religious faith which has always been a powerful force in the land of Gustavus Adolphus.”95
93 Hanson, Letter to John Tasker Howard, December 7, 1937. 94 Williams, 17-18. 95 Hanson, untitled article, May 21, 1938, 1. Gustavus Adolphus was a seventeenth-century Swedish king, widely considered to be a Swedish hero. In 1943 Hanson presented a lecture on Gustavus Adolphus called “Lions of the North, Gustavus Adolphus and his Predecessors” to the Rochester Fortnightly Club.
60 Example 3.1: Symphony No. 3 movement 4 “Largamente e pesante,” measures 50-56 (reduction)
Hanson also transformed this hymn tune into a work for male voices and piano that he titled
Hymn for the Pioneers, in reference to the Swedish settlers of America, which was broadcast along with the Symphony and Swedish composer Hugo Alfvén’s Symphonic Rhapsody –
“Midsommarvarka” live from Eastman to Sweden in June 1938. During the radio broadcast
Hanson addressed the audience in Swedish; after extensively detailing his biography and the successes of the Eastman School, Hanson concluded with a call for renewed cultural diplomacy between the two nations:
It is my hope that in the future we in the United States may come to know more of the music of the Swedish composer, and that you in Sweden may come to know more of our music. With this end in view I hope that it will be possible for us to arrange an interchange of programs so that our musicians and composers may come to know each other better. The Swedish people and the American people have much in common. They have similar ideals, similar beliefs, and similar convictions. Above all they are united in the same belief in the ideals of freedom, human liberty, and the opportunity of the individual to rise from the position to which he is born to whatever stature his ability and labors may entitle him. Under these conditions many of our pioneers of Swedish descent have risen from humble beginnings to positions of importance where they have made
61 notable contributions to the progress of the United States. For these contributions we are, as Americans, all very grateful, and in them we of Swedish descent take particular pride.96
Hanson clearly counted himself as one of the sons of Swedish immigrants who made a lasting cultural impact on America. Additionally, by programming his works alongside a composition by one of Sweden’s most successful nineteenth-century composers, Hanson sought to legitimize himself to the Swedes as one of their own sons.
The reviews of Hanson’s Third Symphony link the work to the symphonies of Sibelius.
Bruno Usher wrote, “It has less of the mystic elements which may have come to him by virtue of
Scandinavian lineage, although on[e] senses definitely rugged, refreshing characteristics of that heritage. It is northern music in the sense that Sibelius is Nordic.”97 Likewise, Francis Perkins commented, “It is an important contribution to American symphonic music in scope, emotional content and imaginatively pervasive atmosphere. At times, especially in the first movement, the thematic material and its development suggest the influence of Sibelius.”98 Comparisons to
Scandinavia’s most prominent composer followed Hanson throughout his career, although as his musical style crystallized he seemed to embrace such associations.
Because of his work commemorating the tercentenary of Swedish immigration to
America, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music awarded Hanson membership in their academy, a significant honor. The following is the text of the official announcement of Hanson’s honor:
The Royal Swedish Academy of Music, which deems it a duty and privilege to number among its members those individuals who have with unusual distinction worked in the interest of the art of Music, has elected and called to membership in token of their esteem the composer, Howard Hanson, as a member of the Royal Academy, in confirmation of
96 Hanson, Radio Address to Sweden, 3. 97 Bruno Usher, quoted in “Hanson’s 3rd Symphony Broadcast,” in Alumni Bulletin of the Eastman School of Music 9, no. 1 (November 1937), 4. 98 Francis D. Perkins, “Hanson Music Draws Praise at New York / Third Symphony on Program in Carnegie Hal” in Herald-Tribune. Undated newspaper clipping, most likely 1939.
62 which this diploma has been written, signed, and provided with the seal of the Royal Academy at Stockholm May 27, 1938.99
Hanson’s remarks on his nomination in his autobiography serve as an answer to his earlier struggles with his personal and musical identity:
I was pleased by my election to the Royal Academy of Music of Sweden because it provided some link with the land of my parents. Such an election probably means less to Swedes than to other nationalities. The Swedes have a way of being absorbed by the land to which they migrate. The French seem always to be French although they may have come here many years ago. The Hungarian seems to remain Hungarian. The Pole seems to remain a Pole. Perhaps the Swedes should be complimented.100
In his maturity Hanson discovered a balance between the force of heritage and the responsibilities of citizenship.
After his Third Symphony, Hanson composed many more important works, including four more symphonies, never to return to a work inspired explicitly by Scandinavia. Yet while
Hanson’s later works do not betray Nordic programmatic elements, as much as he adopted modernist harmonies, his compositional foundations remained firmly grounded on the melodic principles introduced to him in Wahoo as the Swedish folk music tradition, a tradition that in the context of American music became one of the most recognizable musical styles in twentieth- century American concert music. During his tenure at Eastman Hanson’s power over American music, exercised as one of the most important promoters and selectors of new repertoire, never waned. The effects of his multifaceted life’s work are felt both in the broad spectrum of the constituents of American music and in the few Americans whose contributions to the repertoire
99 Royal Swedish Academy of Music, “Nomination of Howard Hanson.” Membership in the Academy is largely a symbolic honor; the Academy reports that of the current 170 members, 60 are non-Swedish musicians (but with some connection to Sweden), including composers John Adams, Arvo Pärt, and Steve Reich; conductors Gustavo Dudamel, Nicolas Harnoncourt, Neeme Järvi, and Riccardo Muti; and pianists Martha Argerich and Leif Ove Andsnes. See Kungl. Musikaliska Akademien, http://www.musakad.se/snabblanksidor/inenglish.16.html (accessed February 1, 2013). 100 Hanson, Autobiography, Chapter 34, folder 1, 8.
63 have proven lasting. The words of one of the many composers whose career soared after
Hanson’s promotion sums up the Eastman director’s contribution to American music best in a letter to the New York Times critic Harold Schonberg:
Dear Mr. Schonberg: From time to time in recent years, we have noted the use of the expression, “Dean of American Composers” – not always with reference to people whose seniority or accomplishments qualify them for that honor. I would like to suggest that America now boasts a composer who is eminently qualified, by virtue of his achievements as creator, conductor, writer and educator: Howard Hanson of Rochester. I am sure that all of us to whom his assistance over the years has meant so much feel that he will grow and grow in the light of history as one who – so far – has done the most to further our national musical culture. Dr. Hanson’s 72nd birthday is coming up on October 28th of this year. As a birthday gift, may we not give him widespread recognition, for the remainder of his time with us, as the “Dean of American Composers”? It is a tribute which he richly deserves, and which will also do honor to those of us who give it. Sincerely, William Grant Still.101
101 William Grant Still, Letter to Harold Schonberg, September 4, 1968. No source indicates that Schonberg ever awarded this title to Hanson, or to any other composer.
64 CONCLUSION
A COMPOSITE NATIONALISM
Howard Hanson’s unparalleled career as composer, conductor, teacher, administrator, theorist, writer, community figure, and mentor left behind a number of important legacies. He served the Eastman community for forty years, transforming the small institution into one of the most noted and vibrant music conservatories in the country, in fulfillment of its founder’s dream.
At the helm of Eastman, Hanson became a well-respected and active member of the Rochester community, through his patriotic obligations to participate in society and contribute to the promotion of good citizenship. As the author of hundreds of papers and speeches and an important theoretical treatise (Harmonic Materials of Modern Music, 1960), he served the community of his peers and colleagues through contributing to the scholarly discourse and furthering the missions of the organizations in which he participated. As a conductor Hanson selected repertoire representative of the widest possible range of American music available to orchestras, mentored a number of young composers whose musical style was much different than his, and launched the compositional careers of many composers whose works would come to comprise an American symphonic canon. As a composer Hanson achieved a balance between active contribution to the development of an Americanist musical tradition and style and a reliance on the music of his non-American ancestors. He was an artist who sought constantly to validate American music (and America in general) next to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.
During Hanson’s childhood in Wahoo, Nebraska, Swedish folk songs and dances permeated the rural community’s soundscape, forming the musical memory from which the young composer would draw thematic material for his first works. Later, with years of training
65 and experience behind him, Hanson would continue to draw on these traditions either as direct quotation, as in the Nordic Symphony, or as the basis for original melodic formations. Pulling from the traditional visa and polska repertories of Sweden, the composer established a link to the land of his parents’ birth that saturates his earliest, unpublished works. Though Hanson composed some of these pieces in Wahoo, he penned a portion of them in New York, Chicago, or California. Hanson’s use of these themes indicates the workings of two types of nostalgia: a nostalgia for Wahoo, for his family and for the people with whom he shared a common upbringing; and an invented nostalgia for a country whose people he knew and whose customs were his, but to which he would not travel until a decade later. Although it is unclear whether
Hanson considered his compositional process to result in Americanist music, these early works paint a picture of America as a land of immigrants adapting to a new country and system while clinging to old traditions.
While studying at the American Academy in Rome, Hanson composed works that launched his career as a composer and raised awareness in his home country about his talent and his promising potential. Yet while in Europe the young composer reveled in being a Swede, traveling for the first time to Sweden to plunge the depths of his Scandinavian heritage and to discover the proper role that heritage should play in his increasingly popular music. The Nordic
Symphony is a symphonic ode to the heroes of northern Europe about whom he heard epic stories as a child; North and West is an autobiographical essay that deals with the composer’s struggles with identity. Although Hanson would later dismiss the Nordic Symphony as youthful and transform North and West into an organ concerto, these works display their composer’s mastery over Swedish elements. As Scandinavian as these works are, Hanson recontextualized
Swedish-inspired music to stand as his first forays into major American works.
66 From his post at Eastman just a few years later, Hanson became a leader of broad
Americanism. Hanson stood alongside luminaries such as Serge Koussevitzky as one of the chief promoters of American concert music, propelling the careers of many composers through performances (and repeat performances), recordings, and writings praising their works. As much as Hanson advanced American concert music, his own music retained the personal stylistic elements of his upbringing, to the point that he was known in popular culture as “The American
Sibelius.” While the two shared important neo-Romantic traits, and while Hanson’s heritage was an always present factor in his composition, Eastman’s effect on the composer, the effect of being the leader of a great American music institution, elevated Hanson’s reach as a composer, his status as a commenter on American culture, and the degree to which his Scandinavian- inspired musical memory was recontextualized as American music. Despite the obvious Swedish influences in his Third Symphony, a work commissioned for the three hundredth anniversary of
Swedish immigration to America, the work revolves around America; the Third Symphony is not merely a work about Sweden but came to fruition because of America, less an homage to his ancestors and more a joining of traditions.
Hanson’s Americanism, the nationalistic quality that drove his composition and placed him in the realm of the American masters, is not a simple idea but the result of a composite nationalism. This concept stems from Hanson’s careful and well-considered mixture of
American patriotism with the unavoidable forces of heritage. Hanson’s musical style was informed by the immigrants of Wahoo, the Swedes of Sweden, the Americans of Rochester, and the blend that comprises American music culture. At work in his compositions are the influences of nostalgia as much as forward-looking ideals, conservatism as much as new aesthetics, folk music as much as the tradition of large works for the concert stage.
67 It is important to consider that Howard Hanson is one American composer of many whose musical style is the result of a composite nationalism. This underscores the fact that no single composer’s style can be reduced simplistically to one influence; moreover, it highlights the complexity that serves as the foundation of Americanism in music, a style or set of styles that cannot be graphed or summarized simply. The roles of heritage, nostalgia, and musical memory in the development of American music, especially those based in non-American cultures, are worthy of further exploration; the number of case studies such explorations can provide is abundant.
Hanson was a leading authority on American music during the time of its maturation, and his role in the process, in the gathering of resources, in the nurturing of its builders, and in the stimulation of its growth, was essential. Presented with the option of fighting for the sole promotion of his personal style or lending his full-voiced support behind a multiplicity of styles, he chose the latter. Yet in his style, his acceptance of heritage and his embrace of the opportunities of American culture provided a compelling example for generations of American composers, artists who owe the son of Wahoo Swedes the deepest debt of gratitude.
68 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hanson Speeches and Articles
“A Quarter Century of American Music.” Saturday Review of Literature (July 5, 1949).
“American Composers’ Orchestral Concerts.” Undated Address.
“Lions of the North, Gustavus Adolphus and His Predecessors.” Address to Fortnightly Club. November 9, 1943.
“The Material of Music.” Louis C. Elson Memorial Lecture, Harvard University. Lecture 1. March 17, 1948.
“Modern Masters of Music.” Speech for Fortnightly Club. February 9, 1939.
“Music, A Democratic Art,” Address for NCMA First Annual Dinner, October 10, 1939.
“Nationalism and the American Composer.” Review of Records. April 1952.
“The New Adventure,” Address for New Citizens’ Dinner — Chamber of Commerce. November 7, 1945.
“The New Vision of the Composer.” March 20, 1955.
“Practical Needs in the Development of American Composition.” Address. 1932.
Radio Address to Sweden. 1941.
“Tendencies in American Music.” Address. July 31, 1933.
Personal Papers
Autobiography, Typed Manuscript. Eastman School of Music, Sibley Music Library. Howard Hanson Archive – Collection Hanson 2005.3.25. Subseries 1C.
Personal Letters. Eastman School of Music, Sibley Music Library. Howard Hanson Archive – Collection Hanson 2005.3.25. Sub-series 2A.
Scores and Manuscripts
Concerto for Organ, Stings and Harp. New York: Carl Fischer, Inc., 1947.
69 North and West. Manuscript. Undated. Eastman School of Music, Sibley Music Library. Howard Hanson Archive – Collection Hanson 997.12. Series 4.
“Scandinavian” Sonata. Manuscript. Undated. Eastman School of Music, Sibley Music Library. Howard Hanson Archive – Collection Hanson 997.12. Series 4.
“Scandinavian” Symphony. Manuscript. Undated. Eastman School of Music, Sibley Music Library. Howard Hanson Archive – Collection Hanson 997.12. Series 4.
Swedish Fantasia. Manuscript. 1913. Eastman School of Music, Sibley Music Library. Howard Hanson Archive – Collection Hanson 997.12. Series 4.
Symphony No. 1 in E minor “Nordic.” Boston: Carl Fischer, Inc., 1929.
Symphony No. 3. New York: Carl Fischer, Inc., 1941.
Interviews
Hastings, Morris C. “Dr. Hanson and Americanism: An Interview.” December 13, 1939. Typescript.
Williams, David Russell. Conversations with Howard Hanson. Arkadelphia, Arkansas: Delta Publications, 1988.
Literature about Hanson
Alter, Martha. “American Composers, XVI: Howard Hanson.” Modern Music 18 (1940-1941): 84-89.
“An American Sibelius.” The Econograph. March 1946:, 1, 7.
“The American Sibelius.” Newsweek. May 7, 1945: 96.
Cohen, Allen L. Howard Hanson: Theory and Practice. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publications, 2004.
“Hanson Honored in Sweden,” Eastman School of Music Alumni Bulletin 9, no. 4 (August, 1938): 4-5.
“Hanson’s 3rd Symphony Broadcast.” Alumni Bulletin of the Eastman School of Music 9, no. 1 (November 1937): 4.
Johnson, Barry Wayne. "An Analytical Study of the Band Compositions of Howard Hanson." EdD Diss., University of Houston, 1986.
70 LaFavor, William Franklin. “The Piano Music of Howard Hanson.” DMA Diss., Indiana University, 1997.
Lenti, Vincent A. Serving a Great and Noble Art: Howard Hanson and the Eastman School of Music. Rochester: Meliora Press, 2009.
Monroe, Robert C. “Howard Hanson, American Music Educator.” Master’s Thesis, The Florida State University, 1970.
Perone, James E. Howard Hanson: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1993.
Simmons, Walter. Voices in the Wilderness: Six American Neo-Romantic Composers. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2004.
Skoog, William M. "The Late Choral Music of Howard Hanson and Samuel Barber." DMA diss., University of Northern Colorado, 1992.
Sutton, Robert. "Howard Hanson, Set Theory Pioneer." Sonus: A Journal of Investigations into Global Musical Possibilities 8, no. 1 (September, 1987): 17.
Tuthill, Burnet C. “Howard Hanson.” The Musical Quarterly 22 (1936): 140-53.
Watanabe, Ruth T. and James Perone. "Hanson, Howard." Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed February 25, 2013, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/123 42.
Witucki, Alan Philip. "Thematic Transformation and Other Considerations in the Six Symphonies of Howard Hanson." Master’s Thesis, Michigan State University, 1978.
Selected Histories of American Music
Chase, Gilbert. America’s Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present. 3rd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Crawford, Richard. America’s Musical Life. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.
Gann, Kyle. American Music in the Twentieth Century. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997.
Hamm, Charles. Music in the New World. New York: W.W. Norton, 1983.
Hitchcock, H. Wiley. Music in the United States: A Historical Introduction. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1979.
71 Howard, John Tasker. Our American Music: A Comprehensive History from 1620 to the Present. 4th ed. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1965.
Tischler, Barbara L. An American Music: The Search for an American Musical Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Sources on Swedish Music
Arwidsson, Adolf Iwar. Svenska Fornsånger: En Samling af Kämpavisor, Folk-Visor, Lekar och Dansar, samt Barn och Vall-Sånger. Stockholm: Norstedt & Söner, 1837.
Dybeck, Richard, Svenska Vallvisor och Hornlåtar: Med Norska Artförändringar. Stockholm: J.L. Brudnis, 1846.
Horton, John. Scandinavian Music: A Short History. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1963.
Jersild, Margareta and Märta Ramsten. “Sweden: II. Traditional Music.” In Oxford Music Online http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/271 99 (accessed January 1, 2013).
Levy, Mark. “Scandinavian and Baltic Music.” In The United States and Canada, edited by Ellen Koskoff, volume 3 of The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, 866-81. New York: Garland, 2001.
Ling, Jan, Erik Kjellberg, and Owe Ronström. “Sweden.” In Europe, eds. Timothy Rice, James Porter, and Chris Goertzen, volume 8 of The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, 434- 50. New York: Garland, 2000.
Ramsten, Märta. Einar Övergaards folkmusiksamling. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1982.
Royal Swedish Academy of Music. http://www.musakad.se/snabblanksidor/inenglish.16.html (accessed February 1, 2013).
Swedish Music – Past and Present. Special Edition of Musikrevy (1967).
Westling, Göran. “My Traditional Swedish FolkSongs.” In Umeå Akademiska Kör, Umeå University, http://www.acc.umu.se/~akadkor/theory/My_folkmusic.html (accessed January 1, 2013).
Yoell, John H. The Nordic Sound: Explorations into the Music of Denmark, Norway, Sweden. Boston: Crescendo, 1974.
72 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Originally from Centre, Alabama, Matthew Robert Bishop received his Bachelor of
Music in Piano Performance from Furman University (Greenville, South Carolina) in 2011 and will complete his Master of Music in Musicology at The Florida State University (Tallahassee,
Florida) in 2013. In addition to his work as a musicologist, Matthew is active as a conductor, accompanist, and a member of various chamber ensembles. Matthew also serves as music director at Centenary United Methodist Church in Quincy, Florida. After completing his degree in musicology, Matthew will pursue a Master of Music degree in Orchestral Conducting at FSU.
73