Henry K. Hadley

Henry Kimball Hadley (December 20, 1871 – September 6, 1937) was an American composer and conductor whose Broadway credits include the musical Nancy Brown and Audrey. Born in Somerville, Massachusetts, he came from a musically active household: his father taught music at the secondary school level and provided Hadley's earliest instruction in violin and piano, his mother participated in church music, and his brother Arthur built a career as a professional cellist. The family's musical life extended to informal chamber music sessions in which the two brothers and their father, joined by composer Henry F. Gilbert, played string quartets together.

Hadley's formal training began with harmony lessons from his father and from Stephen A. Emery. From the age of fourteen he studied composition with George Whitefield Chadwick, one of the leading American composers of the period, under whose guidance he produced songs, chamber pieces, a musical, and an orchestral overture. In 1893 he joined the Laura Schirmer-Mapleson Opera Company as a touring violinist, though he departed when the company ran into financial trouble and could no longer meet his salary. The following year he traveled to Vienna to study with Eusebius Mandyczewski, immersing himself in the city's concert and opera life and occasionally encountering Brahms in its cafes. During that stay he also formed a friendship with the German-American conductor Adolf Neuendorff, who offered guidance on his compositions, and he heard Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony for the first time, an experience that left a lasting impression on him.

Returning to the United States in 1896, Hadley accepted a position as music instructor at St. Paul's Episcopal School for Boys in Garden City, New York, where he remained until 1902. The years there were productive compositionally: he completed his overture In Bohemia and his first two symphonies, and he secured performances of these works from conductors including Walter Damrosch, Victor Herbert, John Philip Sousa, and Anton Seidl. On January 16, 1900, he made his own conducting debut at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, leading a program drawn largely from his own compositions. His 1903 Broadway musical Nancy Brown was written as a starring vehicle for actress Marie Cahill.

Believing that an American conductor needed European credentials to advance his career at home, Hadley returned to Europe in 1904 to tour, compose, and study with Ludwig Thuille in Munich, a course of study possibly suggested by Richard Strauss, whom he met shortly after arriving. In 1905 he composed his symphonic poem Salome, unaware that Strauss was simultaneously at work on an opera on the same subject. The piece was ultimately performed in at least nineteen European cities, and in 1907 Hadley was invited to conduct it alongside his newly completed Third Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic. That same year he secured a position as assistant conductor at the opera house in Mainz, where his first opera, Safié, premiered under his baton in April 1909.

Later in 1909 Hadley returned to the United States to lead the Seattle Symphony, and in 1911 he became the first conductor of the newly established San Francisco Symphony. His tenure there, which lasted until 1915, involved the challenge of building a professional ensemble from a group of theater musicians. He recruited skilled players from the east coast, among them his brother Arthur, to serve as principals, though this approach generated friction with local musicians. During his San Francisco years he also became a member of the Bohemian Club, for which he composed three music dramas intended for single outdoor performances at the Bohemian Grove in Northern California; he later adapted material from these works into orchestral suites.

Back in New York from 1915, Hadley worked extensively as a guest conductor and premiered numerous compositions. In 1918 he married lyric soprano Inez Barbour, who had already recorded his music as early as 1915 and who subsequently performed his works regularly. Between 1917 and 1920 three of his operas received prominent premieres, the most notable being Cleopatra's Night, which opened at the Metropolitan Opera on January 31, 1920. Hadley conducted several of those performances, becoming the first American composer to conduct his own opera at the Met; the work was revived the following season and was judged by several critics to be the finest among the ten American operas that had appeared at the Met to that point. His opera Bianca, a comedy that won a prize from the American Society of Singers for the best chamber opera in English, also accumulated a notable performance history during his lifetime and was staged in Japan in the early 1950s.

In 1921 Hadley was appointed associate conductor of the New York Philharmonic, becoming the first American conductor to hold a full-time position with a major American orchestra. In addition to leading regular Philharmonic concerts, he was assigned to direct summer stadium concerts, where he programmed a substantial number of works by American composers and was eventually asked to select American repertoire for the orchestra on a regular basis. He held the post until 1927. That same year he was invited to conduct the first half of the season of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires, the first American to lead that ensemble. In 1929 he took the helm of the newly formed Manhattan Symphony Orchestra, incorporating an American work into every concert, but stepped down after three seasons due to the difficulties of fundraising in the aftermath of the stock market crash. In 1930 he traveled to Asia to conduct six concerts with the New Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo; inspired by a side trip to China, he composed the orchestral suite Streets of Pekin and led its world premiere with the Japanese orchestra.

As a composer, Hadley regarded himself primarily as an orchestral writer, a view reflected in his substantial output of symphonies, symphonic poems, overtures, and orchestral suites, as well as a Konzertstück for cello and a Concertino for piano. He also produced chamber music, including a violin sonata, two string quartets, two piano trios, and a quintet in A minor for piano and strings, Op. 50, composed in 1919. His vocal output was equally extensive, encompassing cantatas, oratorios, and close to two hundred songs. He was among the most frequently performed and widely published American composers of his era.