Henry Hadley: The Ocean

Day 244

Henry Hadley: The Ocean

Ukraine National Symphony Orchestra

McClaughlin Williams

I’m on holiday this week so it seems a good idea to explore music inspired by water and the sea.

Our view of American music in the early 20th century is now somewhat distorted as we see it largely through the eyes of Ives and the other modernist - I explored some of this earlier in this project - but if you been a typical American concert goer at the time these composers would either have been totally unknown or regarded as nothing more than eccentrics. Instead it is much more likely that you would have been aware of more mainstream figures writing in a more overtly romantic idiom.

Henry Hadley (1871-1937) was a typical figure in this tradition - he was American born but studied in Vienna and was part of the Brahms circle. Back in the US he did important work as a conductor and teacher. This symphonic poem dates from 1921, though there is little in it that could not have been written 50 years earlier. I found it a highly attractive work, obviously well written and effectively scored. But after the rather striking open ending there was nothing particularly distinctive about it - it could have been written by any number of composers anywhere in Europe or the USA. I don’t know if I was influenced by the fact that Hadley was one of the earliest composers to have been involved in film music but it did think that as I listen to this peice that it would make a good film score. I’ve commented before that what was original and innovate music in the 1870s and 1880s became the cliches of film scores in the 1930s.