A Tree Grows in Pittsburgh

Composer Roy Harris lay, right leg from hip to toe in plaster, in a Pittsburgh hospital after an automobile accident, but his spirit was with Conductor Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra as they rehearsed for their first performance of his Seventh Symphony. On the podium Ormandy read Harris' letter explaining how to play the music. Excerpts:

P:"I found that most symphonic brasses seem to be ashamed to play a real vibrato in the American style." ("We're not even ashamed to rent out our clothing trunks," gibed one symphonic brass.)

P:"I put mezzo forte for the double reeds instead of piano because I didn't want to get that fuzzy sound which so often comes when they try to play piano" (Indignant gasps from the woodwind players, who would toss in their union cards before playing a fuzzy sound.)

P:"The snare-drum player should really play his little solo like Fred Astaire dances!" ("Oh!" wailed a drummer.)

With these points cleared up, the orchestra played through the work. It opened somberly, a death march with sighing strings, touched here and there with sunset colors. As a climax to the symphony's first section, winds played a noble tune over massed strings that sounded as if they had just come from prayer meeting. With the second part, the composition went into dance rhythms that turned misterioso with a ululating vibraphone, then into a drunken Kerry dance with skirling reeds, then into a ragtime climax followed by a pastoral section that sounded as if it should be called Alleghennian Autumn. The end, surprisingly, was an old-fashioned rumba. The total effect was rich, but a bit too facile. Here and there were fascinating details, for Composer Harris has a great gift for invention, but somehow the whole added up to less than the sum of its parts. The music seemed to relate to a movie story rather than to reality.

Well established as one of the U.S.'s best-known modern composers, Harris at 57 works under a comfortable grant from the Mellon educational trust, is as prolific as ever. He has extensively revised the Seventh Symphony since it was first played in Chicago in 1952, has already started his eighth (specifically designed for recording) and ninth ("On the words of Walt Whitman"). Says he: "I am trying to achieve a dynamic form, something that grows like a tree grows. This new form is something I believe America is going to produce."

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