Howard Boatwright

Biography

He studied the violin with Israel Feldman in Norfolk, Virginia, and made his début at New York Town Hall in 1942. He was assistant professor of violin at the University of Texas, Austin, from 1943 to 1945. He then studied music theory and composition at Yale University (BM 1947, MM 1948), where he met Paul Hindemith, with whom he studied the viola d’amore. Hindemith urged him to stay at Yale to teach as assistant professor in music theory.

He planned to become a violinist instead of a composer, but began writing music in 1941 as a way to court the soprano Helen Strassburger. They were married in 1943 and performed and recorded new music, standard vocal works, and early music together for many years. Helen Boatwright continued to have a distinguished career as a teacher and performer, sometimes in collaboration with her husband and sometimes independently. The couple had three children: a daughter Alice and two sons, Howard III and David Alexander.

Boatwright became the music director at St Thomas's Church, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1949, a position he held until 1964. It was there that he established a reputation as a pioneer in the performance of early choral music. While in New Haven he also served as conductor of the Yale University Orchestra from 1952 to 1960, and he was the concertmaster of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra from 1950 until 1962.

In 1964 he became the dean of the school of music at Syracuse University, and from 1971 he also served as a professor of music in composition and theory. At Syracuse, he transformed the music school, making it an important center for composition and the performance of new music by presenting festivals and establishing an electronic music studio. He also introduced non-Western music to the curriculum, and expanded its early music programs by acquiring collections of antique instruments. From 1969 to 1988, when he stopped teaching, he also directed a summer music program in Switzerland.

He was a Fulbright lecturer in India during the year 1959–60 and received a Fulbright grant to study in Romania, 1971–2. A pioneering scholar of Charles Ives, he was elected to the board of directors of the Charles Ives Society in 1975. Indeed, he demonstrated an unusually wide breadth of erudition as a scholar, publishing writings on music theory, ethnomusicology, Charles Ives, and Paul Hindemith.

Music

Boatwright's musical compositions are full of chromaticism, although "adhering to traditional classical structures and by using rugged harmonies to support arching, shapely themes, he invariably created pieces with an appealing clarity, directness and emotional resonance".

He initially concentrated on sacred choral music, but later added secular works for chorus and solo songs with piano or instruments, and instrumental works. The most notable of his instrumental works are the Quartet for clarinet and strings, which received an award from the Society for the Publication of American Music in 1962; the Symphony; and his Second String Quartet.

His earliest choral works are modal, and he "revived the modalities of early church music, using modern harmonies and linear counterpoint". The subsequent chamber works were influenced by Hindemith's middle-period style. In 1966 Boatwright started to develop a style he referred to as 'dodecaphonic, though not serial', where he appropriated the total of chromatic resources while still exercising control over harmony, all within the context of a layered, contrapuntal approach. This technique (described in his book Chromaticism) is demonstrated in his Second Quartet, a work both consistent in style and impressive in its ability to project a wide variety of moods.

Most of his songs were inspired by his wife's "clear-voiced soprano". "Though his refined, intelligent, atonal songs require advanced musicianship, the natural declamation and pliant, expressive vocal lines make them gratifying to sing." His compiled set of Five Early Songs are highlighted by Carmen et al., requiring "an intelligent singer with good technique and musicianship." Clifton referred to his songs titled From Joy to Fire as "an effective cycle of five brief songs".

Writings

Musical works

Orchestra

Instrumental and keyboard

Large choral works

Church anthems

Voice

1. Requiescat (Oscar Wilde)
2. On Hearing the Birds Sing (Irish)
3. o by the by (e.e. cummings)
4. At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners (John Donne)
5. Revelation (B. T. Coler)

1. Grant that our prayer
2. And when at times
3. It is from thy Hand
4. When the thought of thee
5. Thou has commanded us to forgive
6. Be near to us with thy power

1. Flowing Sheets of Rain
2. The Armadillo and the Acorn
3. A Painful Sweetness
4. Rain Melodies
5. Thought Patterns

1. He Followed Me, He Courted Me
2. Here's Solitude in Which My Life Must Grow
3. Little Fruits, Wild-Herb Leaves of Summer
4. So Long, So Long Since Any Hand Has Touched Me
5. Now I Know All