Helen Eugenia Hagan

Helen Eugenia Hagan (10 January 1893 – 6 March 1964) was an American pianist, music educator and composer of African descent.

Life

Helen Eugenia Hagan was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the daughter of John A. and Mary Estella Neal Hagan. She studied piano from her mother and then in the public schools of New Haven, Connecticut. At age nine, she began playing organ for the Dixwell Congregational Church in New Haven.

She studied at Yale University with Stanley Knight and graduated in 1912 with a bachelor's degree in music, playing her own Concerto in C Minor with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra at her commencement. She received the Samuel Simmons Stanford scholarship to study in Paris, with Blanche Selva and Vincent d'Indy, and graduated from Schola Cantorum in 1914. She returned to the United States as World War I began, and began a career as a concert pianist, touring from 1915 to 1918. In 1918 she was invited by the YWCA to entertain the troupes in France, along with Joshua Blanton and Hugh Henry Proctor.

In 1920 Hagen married John Taylor Williams of Morristown, New Jersey, but continued her concert career. She taught at the Mendelssohn Conservatory of Music in Chicago, and pursued a Masters of Arts degree from the Teachers' College of Columbia University. In the 1930s she taught at the Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College and served as Dean of Music at Bishop College in Marshall, Texas. She also continued to work as a choir director and church organist. She died in New York after an extended illness.^[1][2]

Works

The only work by Helen Hagen that survives is the Concerto in C Minor for Piano and Orchestra. Her other compositions, including piano works and a violin sonata, have been lost.^[3]

References