About this Piece

In the 1930s, composers in the United States grew increasingly interested in developing a music from distinctly American roots. Aaron Copland achieved this goal conspicuously with his series of ballets on American themes (e.g., Rodeo, Billy the Kid, Appalachian Spring). But one of the most successful works during this time to postulate a national style was the Third Symphony by Roy Harris. Harris was born in Oklahoma but grew up mainly near Los Angeles. He studied composition with Arthur Farwell, a composer who was one of the first to champion the cause for an American music. Later, like Copland and so many others, Harris went to Europe to study with Nadia Boulanger. This experience allowed him to refine his compositional technique while gaining the confidence to embark on his stylistic quest.

Much of the material in Symphony No. 3 originates in an earlier, unsuccessful work. In 1937 the violinist Jascha Heifetz commissioned a violin concerto from Harris, but Heifetz disliked the music and the composer withdrew the work. About a year later he was commissioned to write a symphony for Hans Kindler, founder and conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra. Harris took some of the material from the concerto to build his Symphony No. 3. When the work was finished, however, Harris presented it not to Kindler but to Serge Koussevitzky, who offered to perform it.

The symphony unfolds in one long movement, but it nevertheless presents five main sections and a number of subsections. The composer himself provided a detailed outline of the music: 

Section I. Tragic—low string sonorities 

Section II. Lyric—strings, horn, woodwinds 

Section III. Pastoral—woodwinds, with a polytonal string background 

Section IV. Fugue—dramatic 

A. Brass and percussion predominating 

B. Canonic development of materials from Section II constituting the background for further development of the fugue

C. Brass climax, rhythmic motive derived from fugue subject 

Section V. Dramatic—Tragic 

A. Restatement of violin theme of Section I; tutti strings in canon with tutti woodwinds against brass and percussion developing rhythmic ideas from climax of Section IV 

B. Coda—development of materials from Sections I and II over pedal timpani  

The symphony opens with an earnest, soulful melody in the low strings. The lonely openness of the texture and the expansive slow uncurling of the melody perhaps serve as traces of Harris’ early childhood in rural Oklahoma, where, as he recalled, “I lived quite alone for the first five years of my life” in a log cabin with a bedridden mother and a father always at work. The melody for a time remains fixed within a diatonic scale, but Harris creates a vast spaciousness by avoiding clearly defined tonal centers and by using asymmetrical phrases, broadly arched and angular lines, and a plain-spoken quality rendered by the steady, uncomplicated surface rhythms. The harmony gradually deepens, growing from simple modality into rich triads, then finally into more complicated polytonal moments (in which simple triads from different keys are sounded together).  

The pastoral third section presents a rippling melody tossed back and forth among wind instruments. The strings provide a shimmering tremolando (and polytonal) accompaniment. At the end of the section, the winds join together in whirling scalar currents that descend to a cadence. The fugue subject contrasts with the other melodies in the symphony, featuring short bursts of sharply accented motives. Moreover, its syncopated bumptious rhythms embody what Harris himself considered to be an idiomatic “American” character. The subject first enters in the strings, but it soon transfers to the brass, where it appears with sharp timpani attacks. The final section signals its tragic character mainly with the steady, march-like beats of the timpani. The melody here, beginning in the strings, returns to the broadly arched profile so typical of other lines in this symphony. The melody telegraphs the closing of the work by spiraling gradually downward, culminating in heavily weighted chords.

—Steven Johnson