Howard Hanson

Howard Hanson (1896-1981), American composer, educator, and Pulitzer Prize -winner. He was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, and educated at the University of Nebraska, the Institute of Musical Art in New York, and Northwestern University. The first musician to be awarded a fellowship by the American Academy in Rome, he studied there from 1921 to 1924. He was director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York State, until 1964, when he became director of the Institute of American Music at the University of Rochester. Besides composing works in the Romantic tradition, Hanson did much to foster interest in contemporary American music. His best-known works are the Nordic Symphony (1922), the Romantic Symphony (1930), and the opera Merry Mount (1933). His Symphony No. 4 (1934) won a Pulitzer Prize in 1944 and a George Foster Peabody Award in 1946. Hanson wrote Harmonic Materials of Modern Music (1960). In 1979 he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.