Hadley, Henry Kimball (20th December 1871-6th September 1937)

He was a composer, conductor and instructor born in Somerville, Massachusetts, where his father was a music teacher, his mother was involved with music for the church a pianist and a singer and his brother was a professional cellist.

He was given his first music lessons by his father and had taken lessons in harmony and violin by the time he was a teenager. When he was fourteen he took a step further and became a composition student of George Whitefield Chadwick and during his time with him wrote many of his early works that included an overture, chamber music pieces and several songs.

When he was in his early twenties he became a touring violinist with the Laura-Schirmer-Mapleson Opera Company in 1893. This didn’t last too long though because they were unable to pay his salary after being hit with financial problems so in 1894 he took a trip toAustria to study in Vienna. Here he struck up a friendship with the conductor AdolfNeuendorff and it wasn’t too unusual for him to sometimes see Brahms when he was visiting various cafes in the city.

In 1896 he travelled back to New York in the United States to work at Garden City’s St. Paul’s Episcopal School for Boys as a music instructor. It was during this period that his first two symphonies were written as well as his In Bohemia overture. These works caught the attention of several acclaimed conductors of the period and he made his conducting debut just a couple of years later in January, 1900.

In 1904 he toured Europe alongside composing further works and taking further studies with Ludwig Thuille at the possible suggestion of the composer Richard Strauss.

Between 1905 and 1907 he wrote the symphonic poem Salome and his third symphony and was the conductor of both with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 1907. He followed that by taking a job with at the Mainz Opera House as its Assistant Conductor and it was there that he conducted his first opera Safie. It wasn’t long before he went back home to the United States though, where he joined the Seattle Symphony’s Orchestra as their conductor.

Within just a couple of years he found himself as San Francisco Symphony’s First Conductor in 1911 and by the end of his time with them in 1915 he had managed to greatly raise the status of the orchestra. He also joined the Bohemian Club while he was there and wrote three outdoor music productions for them. He went back north to New York after he left the Symphony and led the premieres many of his works as a guest conductor.

From 1917 to 1920 he had three premieres of his operas at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, with Cleopatra’s Night in 1920 being deemed one of the best American operas to date and later giving him the honour of being the first American conductor to lead his own opera at the Met. He conducted several of the opera performances after that and after marrying the singer Inez Barbour in 1918 she sang on many of his works.

By the time it was 1921 he had been given the position of the New York Philharmonic’s Associate Conductor giving him yet more recognition as the first full-time American conductor with any of the nation’s top orchestras. He was greatly respected in his work with the Philharmonic, conducting them for the music for the soundtrack of John Barrymore’s Don Juan in 1926 which was the first movie to feature synchronised music. The following year he wrote the original score for John Barrymore’s When a Man Loves. He stayed with the orchestra until his resignation in 1927 but remained busy that year as he moved on to become the first American conductor to lead Argentina’s Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires for the first few months of their new season.

Back in New York by 1929 he joined the new Manhattan Symphony Orchestra and conducted them for the next three seasons. He left the orchestra after the stock market crash and when the fundraising became problematic and travelled to Japan and China which gave him experiences that he used for his Streets of Pekin and where he conducted the New Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo in 1930.

Two years later he was struck down with cancer but after successful surgery he carried on guest conducting and composing and became the founder of the National Association for American Composers and Conductors in 1933 and followed that in 1934 by being involved in the creation of the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood.

Recognised for his contribution to music in Europe, the French awarded him an Order of Merit.

Sadly the cancer he had fought returned and in September 1937 he passed away in New York City when he was 65 years old. He left behind him a legacy of compositions which include operas, operettas, symphonies, symphonic poems, concertos, cantatas, oratorios, chamber works, stage and film music and art songs.

National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine recordings
Naxos 8.559064 (CD: Henry Kimball Hadley: Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 64; The Ocean, Op. 99; The Culprit Fay, Op. 62)
The Ocean (Henry Kimball Hadley)
Conductor – John McLaughlin Williams

Sources:

Hadley, Henry Kimball (20th December 1871-6th September 1937)

Navigation