Folk-Song Symphony

Roy Harris is a dry, sandy Oklahoman who may or may not be the greatest U. S. composer. His cheering section insists that he is. Of all U. S. composers, Roy Harris is the one who does the most brooding and the heaviest word-slinging about what he writes. Last week Cleveland heard the first complete performance of his Folk-Song Symphony for orchestra and chorus, which he wrote "to bring about a cultural cooperation and understanding between the highschool, college and community cho ruses of our cities and their symphony orchestras [which] are frequently too remote socially from their community." Composer Harris wrote his symphony last winter, had part of it performed and broadcast at an Eastman festival in Rochester last spring. Cleveland got first crack at the whole work because Artur Rodzinski, conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, is a friend of Roy Harris. A symphony in title only, the long work is a five-move ment setting of U. S. songs, with two dance-tune interludes. The songs: When Johnny Comes Marching Home; Oh, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie; The Dying Cowboy; Oh, Pappy'll Tie My Shoes; De Trumpet Sounds It in My Soul; The Gal I Left Behind Me.

The Folk-Song Symphony made good listening, moved Critic Herbert Elwell of the Plain Dealer to write: "Forty-five minutes swept by like a second and left one listener with the excited consciousness of having heard something like the American continent rising up and saying hello. This music is nothing if not 100% U. S. A."

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