Fine Arts Library Archival Collections

About the Collection

The collection contains twenty works by Professor Boatwright, including both sacred and secular works for a variety of instrumental and vocal settings.

Biography

Howard Boatwright was born in Newport News, Va., and began studying the violin when he was 10. He worked with a single teacher, Israel Feldman, until 1942, when Mr. Boatwright played a New York debut recital at Town Hall. The next year, he joined the faculty of the University of Texas in Austin, and in 1946 he went to Yale University to study composition with Paul Hindemith.

He intended to become a violinist not a composer but began writing music in 1941 as a way to court Helen Strassburger, a soprano. They married in 1943 and performed and recorded new music, standard repertory and early music together for many years. The first songs he wrote for his wife were not performed until November, when she sang them in a recital in Syracuse.

Mr. Boatwright's works were often rigorously chromatic, but by adhering to traditional classical structures and by using rugged harmonies to support arching, shapely themes, he invariably created pieces with an appealing clarity, directness and emotional resonance. Recordings of several of his works, most notably the vital String Quartet No. 2 (1975), have been released by CRI Records, and the label recently reissued them on a CD compilation (CRI 775).

He published about 100 works, including a Symphony (1976), Variations for Small Orchestra (1949), a Serenade for Strings and Winds (1952), a Clarinet Sonata (1980), about 20 choral works and 50 songs.

After Mr. Boatwright completed his master's degree, Hindemith recommended him for a faculty position at Yale, which he held until 1964. Mr. Boatwright also conducted the Yale Symphony, was concertmaster of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and first violinist of the Yale String Quartet. As a member of Hindemith's Collegium Musicum, he took up early instruments for performances of Baroque works, and as the director of music at St. Thomas Church in New Haven he presented programs of Baroque rarities.

By the time he left Yale to become dean of the Syracuse University School of Music in 1964, Mr. Boatwright had published his ''Introduction to the Theory of Music'' (1956) and two books on Indian music, ''Indian Classical Music and the Western Listener'' and ''A Handbook on Staff Notation for Indian Music,'' that he wrote after a year in Bombay as a Fulbright lecturer. His most recent book was the 1994 ''Chromaticism: Theory and Practice.''

In Syracuse Mr. Boatwright transformed the music school, making it an important center of composition and new-music performance by presenting festivals and establishing an electronic music studio. He also introduced non-Western music to the curriculum and expanded its early-music programs by acquiring collections of antique instruments. From 1969 to 1988, when he stopped teaching, he also directed a summer music program in Switzerland. 

Citation

Kozinn, Allan. "Howard Boatwright, Violinist, Composer, and Professor, 80." New York Times 24 Feb. 1999. Web.