Howard Hanson

Howard Hanson 28 October 1896 - 26 February 1981) was a leading American composer, symphonic orchestra conductor, educator and music theorist who served as the music director of the Eastman School of Music for forty years. He was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 4 (1944) and the George Foster Peabody Award for Outstanding Entertainment in Music (1946).

Quotes

• My music springs from the soil of the American midwest. It is music of the plains rather than of the city and reflects, I believe, something of the broad prairies of my native Nebraska."
  • Howard Hanson "Music From the Soil of the American Midwest", Nebraska History 81 (2000) p. 33 Howard Hanson quoted in his biography by the Nebraska State Historical Society on archive.org

• As a music theorist, I have always contended that the historical approach to music theory is not enough. The modern theorist should, of course, be able to analyze the music of the masters, to explain (as much as possible) the sources of their musical language. They should also, however, be able to suggest new paths, new theories, including those that break with creative and scholarly tradition....This attitude has puzzled some of my academic colleagues, since I am in my own composition essentially a traditionalist. I do not believe that this is a contradiction or an inconsistency.
  • Howard Hanson "A Romantic Symphony: The Autobiography of Howard Hanson", JSTOR, 14 October 2024  Editor Vincent A. Lenti Meliora Press at The University of Rochester Press/Boydell & Brewer, 2024 ISBN 9781648251030 Chapter 35, pp. 229-234 on JSTOR.org

• In music, the great essential after creation itself is communication through performance...it is of immediate and primary importance to the creator. For the composer, if he is to develop, must hear his own works. An orchestra composer without an orchestra is like a scientist without his laboratory or a dramatist without his stage or actors.
  • Howard Hanson Cultivating a Climate for Creativity, 14 October 1960  Music Educators Journal The National Association for Music Education. Vol 46, Issue 6 p. 28 on journals.sagepub.com

• The artistic contribution of any nation and any age must be in terms of creation. Performers, symphony organizations, opera houses, museums, libraries - important as they are - are not enough. The arts, if they are to live, must be living arts.
  • Howard Hanson Cultivating a Climate for Creativity, 14 October 1960  Music Educators Journal the National Association for Music Education. Vol 46, Issue 6 p. 28 on journals.sagepub.com

• The most complete knowledge of tonal material cannot create a composer any more than the memorizing of Webster's dictionary can produce a dramatist or poet. Music is, or should be, a means of communication, a vehicle for the expression of the inspiration of the composer. Without that inspiration, without the need to communicate, without— in other words— the creative spirit itself, the greatest knowledge will avail nothing.
  • Howard Hanson Harmonic Materials of Modern Music, 14 October 1960  Appleton-Century-Crofts 1960 New York Preface pp. VIII-IX on archive.org

• To the artist, to the musician, is given the task of creating and expressing beauty--of sensitizing the souls of men.
  • Howard Hanson History of the University of Rochester 1850-1962, 14 October 2026  1977, University of Rochester Press Chapter 39: The Eastman School--The Post-War Years, as quoted from the Rochester Times Union by Ricker on September 25, 1951 on rbscpexhibits.lib.rochester.edu

External links

• The Howard Hanson Collection at the Eastman School of Music – archive of scores, compositions, arrangements and recordings by Howard Hanson at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music – Sibley Music Library- Ruth T. Watanabe Special Collections
• Photograph of Howard Hanson, 1959

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