PROGRAM NOTES by JOHN SCHNEIDER Music Department, Georgia State University Program Notes Held with Distinction for Forty Years
PROGRAM NOTES BY JOHN SCHNEIDER Music Department, Georgia State University Program notes held with distinction for forty years. Mosaics As director of the school and Howard Hanson (1896- ) teacher of composition, Hanson has been a major influence on many It has been written that no single young American musicians. But he person has contributed more to the also realized that audiences for cause of music in our country during American music had to be created the second quarter of the twentieth as well as its makers, and the year century than Howard Hanson. As a after his appointment he inaugurat composer, Hanson achieved his first ed the American Composers' Or important acclaim in 1921 by being chestral Concerts under the auspices appointed the first music fellow of of his school. These were followed the newly established American by festivals of American music, at Academy of Rome. As a teacher which first performances of some and music administrator, he has dis fifteen hundred new American tinguished himself primarily as the works of our century were intro energetic and innovative head of duced through the years. the Eastman School of Music in Despite his encouragement of ad Rochester, New York. vanced musical thinking, in his own Born in Wahoo, Nebraska, of music Hanson is a traditionalist. He Swedish parents, Hanson had his shows a clear preference for the early music training at Luther Col solid structure of classical form and lege there, followed by study at the the accepted harmonies of the past. Institute of Musical Art in New He belongs to that group of com York and at Northwestern Univer posers who, although their period sity. After graduation from North of creativity has developed in the western, Hanson taught theory and twentieth century, have carried for composition for a while in Califor ward the musical concepts which nia, before being awarded the fel were new in the latter half of the lowship to Rome. During his three nineteenth. Referring to his writing years abroad, Hanson completed style, Hanson has said: "I recognize some of his early major works, in of course that romanticism is at the cluding his first symphony, known present time the poor stepchild as the N ordic, which received its without the social standing of her première in Italy. elder sister, neoclassicism. Never When he returned to the U.S. in theless, I embrace her all the more 1924, Hanson met the Kodak ty fervently, believing as I do that ro coon, George Eastman, who had manticism will find in this country recently endowed a music school rich soil for a new, young and vig at the University of Rochester. The orous growth." Because of the dynamic young composer, clearly beauty of his melodies and the gifted with a strong personality and somber moods and melancholy an administrative mind, seemed the strains so often found in his music, right man to head this new venture. Hanson has been called "The Amer At twenty-eight, Hanson suddenly ican Sibelius." Perhaps his own found hmiself in charge of the new Scandinavian roots have something Eastman School of Music, a post he to do with the kinship of his music