Roger Lee Hall | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | |
| Alma mater | Binghamton University |
| Occupation(s) | Composer, Music Historian |
| Years active | 1972–present |
| Notable work | "Simple Gifts": Great American Folk Song (2014) "Dedication": Singing in Stoughton (1762-1992)(2017) Variations on a Shaker Marching Tune (1971) |
| Website | www |
Roger Lee Hall (born 1942) is an American composer and musicologist.
Hall was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey [1] He grew up in Bloomfield, New Jersey and spent several years in the 1950s attending Eastern Military Academy at Oheka Castle, where he had his first music training in the glee club. He graduated from Bloomfield High School in 1960, where he was already involved with writing songs. [2] He began his music career with piano lessons and as a songwriter during the 1960s. Later he turned his attention to studying music in more depth and received his B.A. in music theory and composition from Rutgers University in 1970 and his composition teachers were Robert Nagel and George Walker. His M.A. degree was awarded from Binghamton University in 1972. He also did Ph.D. studies at Case Western Reserve University, where he taught his first class on American popular music, formerly taught by well-known Cleveland disc jockey, Bill Randle. During his early college years, Hall composed his first classical compositions.
In 1977 he moved to Massachusetts and he was a music instructor at Stonehill College and the Brookline Adult and Community Education Program where he taught both classical and popular music courses. He also conducted various church choirs and composed music for them to perform.
Since 1998, he has been involved as a film music critic and the editor of an online magazine, Film Music Review. He is a member of the International Film Music Critics Association. He is the author of "A Guide to Film Music" which has been reprinted in seven editions. In addition, he has been a lecturer and consultant on various topics concerning music of the United States.
As a longtime music preservationist, Hall has helped preserve music of the Shakers and other music from earlier America. He has written over fifty publications in the PineTree Multimedia Editions series, including music guides on Shaker music, Film music, Christmas music in America, George Gershwin, Old-Time Radio, and Old Stoughton Musical Society. In addition, he has written several memoirs about his songwriting years, "Songs of Survival" in 1996 and "Free As The Breeze" in 2015, and he has written autobiographical multi-media books with audio in the series, Memories and Music.
In 1971, he began studying Shaker music and has become an authority on the subject, especially the Shaker song, "Simple Gifts". [3] He compiled and edited numerous Shaker songs and hymns for a series in a national magazine on Shaker culture and has edited and arranged over one hundred Shaker spirituals and published many of them in music collections and on CDs.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Hall was vice-president, Historian and Conductor of the Old Stoughton Musical Society, the oldest choral society in the United States. He has published several monographs and music collections about this choral society, including a monograph about Stoughton composer, Edwin Arthur Jones. [4] With his interest in community music, he has produced and hosted several cable television series. He has been a frequent guest on radio programs and hosted his own radio program, In the Mood, playing music of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.
In 2006, he became the moderator of an extensive site devoted to preservation of American music. He is also Director of the American Music Recordings Collection (AMRC), a large archive of vintage recordings, and Director of the Center for American Preservation (CAMP) which specializes in preserving lesser known music.
Hall has been listed in various directories; including International Who's Who in Music, Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World.
For various ensembles
For solo voice and piano
For unaccompanied chorus
For chorus and piano or organ
The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers, are a millenarian restorationist Christian sect founded c. 1747 in England and then organized in the United States in the 1780s. They were initially known as "Shaking Quakers" because of their ecstatic behavior during worship services.
Sir Henry Walford Davies was an English composer, organist, and educator who held the title Master of the King's Music from 1934 until 1941. He served with the Royal Air Force during the First World War, during which he composed the Royal Air Force March Past, and was music adviser to the British Broadcasting Corporation, for whom he gave commended talks on music between 1924 and 1941.
David Conte is an American composer who has written over 150 works published by E.C. Schirmer, including six operas, a musical, works for chorus, solo voice, orchestra, chamber music, organ, piano, guitar, and harp. Conte has received commissions from Chanticleer, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Harvard University Chorus, the Men’s Glee Clubs of Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame, GALA Choruses from the cities of San Francisco, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., the Dayton Philharmonic, the Oakland Symphony, the Stockton Symphony, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, the American Guild of Organists, Sonoma City Opera, and the Gerbode Foundation. He was honored with the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Brock Commission in 2007 for his work The Nine Muses, and in 2016 he won the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Art Song Composition Award for his work American Death Ballads.
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George Theophilus Walker was an American composer, pianist, and organist, and the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, which he received for his work Lilacs in 1996. Walker was married to pianist and scholar Helen Walker-Hill between 1960 and 1975. Walker was the father of two sons, violinist and composer Gregory T.S. Walker and playwright Ian Walker.
Joseph Brackett Jr. was an American songwriter, author, and elder of The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, better known as the Shakers. The most famous song attributed to Brackett, "Simple Gifts", is still widely performed and adapted.
Robert Nathaniel Dett, often known as R. Nathaniel Dett and Nathaniel Dett, was a Canadian-American composer, organist, pianist, choral director, and music professor. Born and raised in Canada until the age of 11, he moved to the United States with his family and had most of his professional education and career there. During his lifetime he was a leading Black composer, known for his use of African-American folk songs and spirituals as the basis for choral and piano compositions in the 19th century Romantic style of Classical music.
Organized in 1786 as The Stoughton Musical Society, it is America's oldest performing musical organization. For over two centuries it has had many distinguished accomplishments. In 1908, when incorporated under the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the name was changed to Old Stoughton Musical Society and it has retained that designation.
Edwin Arthur Jones, was an American composer. His works include a cantata and a large oratorio in three parts, modeled after Handel's Messiah.
"Simple Gifts" is a Shaker song written and composed in 1848, generally attributed to Elder Joseph Brackett from Alfred Shaker Village. It became widely known when Aaron Copland used its melody for the score of Martha Graham's ballet, Appalachian Spring, premiered in 1944.
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