John Harbison (1938 - present)

Introduction
John Harbison is an American composer born on december 20th, 1938 in Orange, New Jersey. Harbison would be raised into a musical family where he would study violin, viola, piano, tuba, and even voice throughout high school. Harbison would continue to go with music through college and received his MFA at princeton university in 1963. John Harbison is seen as one of the most prominent composers in the united states and created principal works, such as :four string quartets, three symphonies,three operas, and most notable the cantata The Flight Into Egypt.

https://nationalsawdust.org/event/bag-of-tails-and-occasional-pieces-piano-music-of-john-harbison/ - Photo

Work Analysis
Symphony no 5. Is a  4 movement work by John harbison for baritone, mezzo-soprano and orchestra and premiered in 2008. The 4 symphonies Harbison wrote before this hand never used vocals. In his 5th, harbison uses the added vocals as if it were just another instrument. He believed “Every piece with singers and instruments should be coherent as a lucid sequence of sounds. These sounds, without reference to their verbal origins, aspire to a significant musical shape, something symphonic”. The first two movements are based off texts from Polish Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz. The two texts are Orpheus and Eurydice and are sung in the third person. Harbison also takes some creative freedom in this piece by replacing the harp from Orpheus with an electric guitar, taking the text away from the mythological setting and into more reality. Harbison also uses the music to create auditory sounds that the characters would make. Harbison uses sandpaper blocks which can be heard as the shuffle of feet quietly as Orpheus ascends out of the underworld.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnWJZ5dhveE

Comparisons
This symphony sound more like an orchestra because of the text being used. Harbison also uses the orchestra to create noises the characters are making, a technique that is used frequently in opera.

Observations
The work was really enjoyable. I liked the fact that the vocals were sung in english so i could pay full attention to the whole orchestra. The use of the electric guitar caught me off guard at first because from what we’ve listen to in class it has never been used.