Horatio W. Parker

Parker, Horatio William (15 Sept. 1863-18 Dec. 1919), composer, music educator, and conductor, was born in Auburndale, Massachusetts, the son of Charles Edward Parker, an architect, and Isabella Graham Jennings, a poet. While a youth he received piano and organ lessons from his mother and later studied composition with George Chadwick in nearby Boston. From 1882 to 1885 he attended the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, where he studied composition with Josef Rheinberger and wrote, among other pieces, his first mature choral compositions: The Ballad of a Knight and His Daughter (1885), the cantata King Trojan (1885), and a setting of Psalm 23 (1884). While in Munich he met Anna Ploessl, whom he married in 1886. The couple had a son, who died in infancy, and three daughters.

Parker lived in New York from 1886 to 1893; there he taught at the cathedral schools of St. Paul and St. Mary (1886-1890), at the General Theological Seminary (1892), and at the National Conservatory of Music (1892-1893). His principal church position was that of organist and choirmaster at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Manhattan from 1888 to 1893. During this time his reputation as a promising composer grew with performances of his student works and chamber music, the publication of a number of choral pieces and church anthems, and the premieres of the overture Count Robert of Paris (1890), the cantata Dream-King and his Love (1893), and his masterpiece, the oratorio Hora Novissima (1893).

In 1893 Parker became organist and choirmaster at Trinity Church in Boston, a position he continued to fulfill on weekends after moving in 1894 from Boston to New Haven, Connecticut, upon being named Battell Professor of the Theory of Music at Yale University. He became dean of the Yale School of Music in 1904 and retained both positions at the university until his death. In 1902, after nearly a decade of commuting to Boston on weekends, Parker was appointed organist and choirmaster at the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas, a Dutch Reformed church in New York: Parker relinquished this position in 1910.

Parker's activity as an educator increased during the last twenty-five years of his life. Under his guidance the Yale School of Music grew from a small department into a multifaceted program. He was most vociferous among contemporaneous educators in emphasizing the importance of compositional training at the university level. Among his students were Charles Ives, Seth Bingham, Walter Ruel Cowles, Quincy Porter, Roger Sessions, and David Stanley Smith.

Conducting was closely associated with Parker's educational activities. The New Haven Symphony Orchestra, which he conducted from 1895 until 1919, became a model for university and community orchestras throughout the United States in administration, number of concerts, educational activities, "town-gown" relations, and use of a professional cadre. He conducted various choral societies in the New Haven area and, from 1907 to 1916, conducted the Orpheus and Eurydice Clubs of Philadelphia. He frequently conducted his own music at various festivals throughout the United States, among them Worcester (Mass.) and Norfolk (Conn.).

Although his other activities were numerous and varied, Parker composed steadily throughout his life. Choral works constitute the majority of his compositions, as evidenced by thirty extended works in addition to numerous part-songs. Among the most important, along with Hora Novissima, are the dramatic oratorio The Legend of St. Christopher (1897); the motet for double chorus Adstant angelorum chori (1899); two pieces for English choral festivals, A Wanderer's Psalm (1900) and A Star Song (1902); the cantata King Gorm the Grim (1908); the oratorio Morven and the Grail (1915); and the morality The Dream of Mary (1918). Such was Parker's popularity that most of these pieces were commissioned for important festivals, and several received prizes. The works encompass a variety of styles, from neorenaissance polyphony to post-Wagnerian, highly integrated dramatic writing.

Parker's two grand operas--Mona, performed at the Metropolitan Opera in 1912, and Fairyland, performed at the National Federation of Music Clubs convention in Los Angeles in 1915--were prize-winners and major musical events for their time. Although neither held the stage, both works reveal Parker at the height of his creativity and display his comfort with late Romantic and impressionist musical idioms such as those pioneered by Debussy and Richard Strauss.

Parker's orchestral compositions are few; however, his symphonic poem A Northern Ballad (1899) was played frequently throughout his lifetime, and Parker himself was soloist for his Concerto for Organ and Orchestra, performed by the Boston Symphony in 1902 and the Chicago Symphony in 1903. Two other major works by Parker for solo voice and orchestra are Cáhal Mór of the Wine-Red Hand, performed by the Boston Symphony in 1895, and Crépuscule, performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1912.

Parker composed numerous songs, anthems, hymn tunes, and character pieces for both organ and piano. Among the most popular are the song "The Lark Now Leaves His Watery Nest," op. 47, no. 6 (1899), the anthem "The Lord Is My Light" (1890), and the hymn "Fight the Good Fight" (1903). Parker served as editor and compiler for an edition of the Episcopal Hymnal (1903) and was the editor in chief of an important educational publication, The Progressive Music Series (1914-1919), for which he solicited songs from composers worldwide.

Parker and his wife made frequent trips to Europe to visit her family, meet well-known composers of the day, and hear their music. Parker's music was frequently performed at the English choral festivals at the turn of the century, and he received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University in 1902. Aside from Parker's music study, little evidence of formal schooling beyond grade school exists; nevertheless, he was considered one of the most cultured musicians of his day. Like other American classical composers of his day, only a few of Parker's works, notably Hora Novissima, have continued to be performed. Yet only Edward MacDowell exceeded him in popularity at the turn of the twentieth century. He was a commanding figure in America's musical life until his death, after a brief illness, at the home of his daughter Isabel Semler in Cedarhurst, New York.

Bibliography

Virtually all of Parker's music and most of his papers are at the music library at Yale University (Adrienne Nesnow, ed., Horatio Parker Papers [1981]). William Kearns, Horatio Parker, 1863-1919: His Life, Music, and Ideas (1990), is the most comprehensive study of Parker, containing a detailed study of his life, musical analyses of all his major and representative minor works, and critical discussion of his role in American music. George Chadwick, Horatio Parker (1922), was originally given as an address delivered before the American Academy of Arts and Letters on 25 July 1920 and is an affectionate tribute to Parker. An excellent, succinct account of the composer's life and influence by his successor at Yale is David Stanley Smith, "Horatio Parker," Musical Quarterly 16 (Apr. 1930): 153-69. Parker's daughter Isabel Parker Semler provides a moving narrative of his life based on her recollections in Horatio Parker: A Memoir for His Grand-children Compiled from Letters and Papers (1942; repr. 1973). Luther Noss, A History of the Yale School of Music, 1855-1970 (1984), reviews Parker's career as an educator. Linda Clarke, "Music in Trinity Church, Boston, 1890-1900: A Case-Study in the Relationship between Worship and Culture" (D.S.M. diss., Union Theological Seminary, 1973), is a critical examination of Parker's role as a church musician. Parker's major compositions presently available on recordings include Hora Novissima and the Organ Concerto (Albany Records, Troy 124-25), Northern Ballad (New World Records, NW339), and the Organ Sonata (Raven, OAR-290). Of the many obituaries, the most important are in the Boston Evening Transcript, 18 Dec. 1919, the New York Tribune, 19 Dec. 1919, and the New York Sun, 21 Dec. 1919. The eulogy for a memorial service held at the Church of the Advent, Boston, was delivered by Reverend Winfred Douglas and can be found in Semler, pp. 304-12.

William K. Kearns

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