Harold Brown
Harold Brown
Genres: composer, Classical, contemporary classical, renaissance, modern classical
Similar artists via Last.fm
Isaac Albéniz
About Harold Brown
Harold Brown - violist, composer, teacher, choral director - was born October 31, 1909 in New York City to Rose and Sam Brown (originally Braunstein). While at Columbia College (1925-29). He was the founder of the Renaissance Chorus of New York, the first Renaissance Chorus in America. Harold's musical abilities were recognized and acknowledged by faculty members who referred him to summer resort orchestral jobs as violinist/violist. By the age of twenty, in 1929, Harold was managing and playing in the Columbia University Orchestra under the direction of Douglas Moore. The following year, his composition, the "Christopher Robin String Quartet," won the Bearns Prize, and he was named the Mosenthal Fellow in Composition in 1930. He earned his Master's degree at Columbia University, 1948-49. Over the years, his teachers included L. J. Bostelmann and H. Dittler for the violin, Leonard Bernstein, Seymour Lipkin, Leon Barzin for conducting, and Aaron Copland, Bernard Wagenaar and Rubin Goldmark for composition. He also studied under Nadia Boulanger at École Normale de Musique in Paris in 1930-31 as part of the Mosenthal Fellowship. He often acknowledged the early influence of Herman Katims, elder brother of Milton; this relationship might have contributed in some way to Harold's unique views. Although he took classes with Copland, he also mentioned other composers whose work he was personally attracted to. One was Alexi Haieff, who like Harold, was also drawn to an ancient – in his case Russian Orthodox – liturgical tradition. He was also quite fond of Otto Luening, with whom he shared performances at Yaddo in the summer of 1938. Moreover, Edgard Varese showed an interest in Brown's choral work. Harold¹s expertise in musicology, first stimulated by Boulanger, and continually supported by student colleagues exposed to Medieval works at Notre Dame c. 1930, — L. Engel (whose important Flanner publications were subsequently used by Harold), Bernard Herrmann, Elie Siegmeister — was further developed by his study of Gregorian Chant at the College of the Sacred Heart under Mother Stevens in 1938. The decades 1930-1950 are the years during which most of his compositions were written. While teaching theory at The New York High School of Music and Art in the fifties, Harold developed a performance grade chorus from an after-school group of interested students. A midnight performance of Bach at Carnegie Hall (December 25, 1954) in direct opposition to his Principal¹s injunction, cost Harold his teaching job. Undaunted, the after school singing group followed their teacher to other rehearsal venues. Harold was subsequently hired as Associate Professor of Music (1957-61) at Mansfield State College, Pennsylvania, where he taught composition and orchestration and conducted the orchestra, making the long weekly commute to Manhattan to rehearse the chorus. Now, completely involved in music from the Renaissance, Harold cultivated in the singers the low vibrato and accurate pitch he felt the music demanded, and trained their voices exclusively for a cappella singing. Young people other than his students asked to sing in the chorus and Harold welcomed them. This expanded group, which included college students and musicians, became the official Renaissance Chorus of New York. It gave concerts and cut several records under the direction of Harold from 1952-1975, bringing the repertoire to many new venues, including churches, concert halls, and once, to Carnegie Recital Hall. Throughout the years, Harold continually stressed the open, clear sound he felt was needed by Renaissance music and taught the techniques to produce that particular sound. His last concert and services offered the Missa Tecum Principium by Fayrfax in May/June 1975.
Taken from Last.fm
92 listeners · 1,901 plays via Last.fm