Roy Harris - The Symphonies

The Symphonies

Harris composed at least 18 symphonies, though not all of them are numbered and not all are for orchestra. A full list is as follows:

  • Symphony - Our Heritage (1925 rev. 1926, abandoned), sometimes referred to as Symphony No. 1 - only an Andante survives
  • Symphony - American Portrait (1928-1929)
  • Symphony 1933 (1933), sometimes referred to as Symphony No. 1
  • Symphony No. 2 (1934)
  • Symphony for Voices (1935) after Walt Whitman
  • Symphony No. 3 (1937-1938, rev. 1939)
  • Folksong Symphony (Symphony No. 4) (1939 rev. 1942)
  • Symphony No. 5 (1940–42 rev. 1945)
  • Symphony No. 6 'Gettysburg Address' after Lincoln (1943-1944)
  • Symphony for Band 'West Point'(1952)
  • Symphony No. 7 (1951-1952, rev. 1955)
  • Symphony No. 8 'San Francisco' (1961–62)
  • Symphony No. 9 (1962) for Philadelphia
  • Symphony No. 10 'Abraham Lincoln' (1965) ; revised version for speaker, chorus, piano and orchestra (1967; missing)
  • Symphony No. 11 (1967) for New York PO 125th
  • Symphony No. 12 'Père Marquette' (1967-1969)
  • Bicentennial Symphony 1776 (1969-1974), numbered by Harris as Symphony No. 14 out of superstition over the number 13 but posthumously re-numbered as No. 13 by Dan Stehman with the permission of the composer's widow

In addition there is a missing (and perhaps not completed) Symphony for High School Orchestra (1937) and the following unfinished or fragmentary works:

  • American Symphony (1938)
  • Choral Symphony (1936)
  • Walt Whitman Symphony (1955–58)

Naxos Records is in the process of recording the 13 numbered symphonies with conductor Marin Alsop.

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