Richard Hageman
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Richard Hageman (9 July 1881 [1], Leeuwarden - 6 March 1966, Beverly Hills) was a Dutch-born American conductor, pianist, composer, and actor.
Hageman was born and and raised in Leeuwarden. He was the son of Maurits Hageman of Zutphen and Hester Westerhoven of Amsterdam. A child prodigy, he was a concert pianist by the age of six. He studied in Amsterdam and gave lessons as a piano teacher. As a young man he was an accompanist for singers and with the Amsterdam Royal Opera Company, of which he became the conductor in 1899. He came to the United States in 1906 to accompany Yvette Guilbert on a tour through the States. He stayed and eventually became an American citizen.
He was a conductor for the Metropolitan Opera between 1914 and 1932, headed the Curtis Institute from 1932 to 1936, and was music director of the Chicago Civic Opera and the Ravinia Park Opera for seven years. He was a guest director of orchestras like the Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles symphony orchestras. He conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra summer concerts for four years and from 1938 on he conducted at the Hollywood Bowl summer concerts for six seasons.
He is known to the film community for his work as an actor and film score composer, most notably for his work on several John Ford films in the late 1930s. He shared an Academy Award for his score to Ford’s 1939 western Stagecoach. He also had minor roles in eleven movies, for example as opera conductor in The Great Caruso.
He also composed more serious vocal music. While his operas are rarely heard, a few of his art songs are well-known and highly regarded, especially “Do not Go, My Love”, a setting of a Rabindranath Tagore poem.
[edit] Selected Worklist
- Stage:
- Caponsacchi (Op. 3, R. Browning), 1931
- I Hear America Call (oratorio, R.V. Grossman), Bar, SATB, orch, 1942
- The Crucible (oratorio, B.C. Kennedy), 1943
- Film scores (all dir. John Ford):
- Stagecoach, 1939
- The Long Voyage Home, 1940
- Fort Apache, 1948
- 3 Godfathers, 1948
- She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, 1949
- Wagon Master, 1950
- Orchestra:
- Overture ‘In a Nutshell’; Suite, str
- Chamber:
- October Musings, vn, pf, 1937
- Recit and Romance, vc, pf, 1961
- Songs, 1v, pf:
- Do not go, my love (Rabindranath Tagore), 1917
- May Night (Tagore), 1917
- At the Well (Tagore), 1919
- Happiness (Jean Ingelow), 1920
- Charity (Emily Dickinson), 1921
- Nature’s Holiday (T. Nash), 1921
- Animal Crackers (C. Morley), 1922
- Christ went up into the Hills (K. Adams), 1924
- Me Company Along (J. Stephens), 1925
- The Night has a Thousand Eyes (F.W. Bourdillon), 1935
- Christmas Eve (Joyce Kilmer), 1936
- Music I Heard with You (Conrad Aiken), 1938
- Miranda (Hillaire Belloc), 1940
- Lift thou the Burdens, Father (K.C. Simonds), 1944
- The Fiddler of Dooney (William Butler Yeats), 1946
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- over 50 other songs, many arranged for chorus
[edit] External links
[edit] References
Miller, Philip Lieson and Michael Mechina. "Hageman, Richard", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 20 June 2007), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
