Harris' Fifth

Most prolific living writer of symphonies is Russia's Nicolai Yokovlevich Miaskovsky, who at 61 has already written 23 and is still going strong. Finland's Jean Sibelius and another Russian, Dmitri Shostakovich, may be longer on quality, but they have in their long lives written only seven symphonies apiece. In the U.S., rangy, Oklahoma-born, 45-year-old Roy Harris leads the field. Last week his Fifth Symphony (the first Fifth by any U.S. native, living or dead) was premiered by Boston's Sergei Koussevitsky and broadcast the following night over the Blue Network.

Boston critics thought up various comments. The Boston Herald's Rudolph Elie Jr. managed this: "It may even be that it is the first truly indigenous composition of any lasting significance; there are those who smell . . . the more intimate details of American agriculture in its textures."

Like most Harris symphonies, the Fifth was prefaced by an elaborate pronouncement by Harris explaining its deep relation to life, destiny and the U.S. soil. Few composers have so relied on words to plug their music. Short-waved by NBC to Russia and South America, the symphony was dedicated to "the heroic people of the Soviet Union," and played in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Red Army. The new work was stormy and large in scale. It did not seem likely to disturb either of the two kinds of Harris listeners: 1) devotees, who see in Harris' rugged themes a reflection of the energy and spaciousness of U.S. life; 2) skeptics like blind Pianist Alex Templeton, who thought Harris' Third Symphony sounded "like a lot of people moving furniture around."

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