Suffice to say that Michael Daugherty and his musical style springs directly from the heart of contemporary American culture. He now occupies an esteemed position as Professor of Composition in the music school of the University of Michigan, and has written compositions for just about anybody and everybody in the “official” world of classical music culture—major orchestras, music schools and conservatories, distinguished performers, enterprising conductors—you name it, he is clearly the current darling of progressive concert music. He has a “Zelig”-like persona whose musical roots and subsequent musical education seems to have touched most every base. But his background could not be more prosaic—in the best sense of the word. He grew up, like the average American kid, surrounded by the pervasive influence of television, rock and roll, rampant commercialization, cathartic political events, in short, just about everything condemned by European intellectuals as typical of the “depravity” of American society. Growing up in a musical family of middle class tastes, he played in rock bands, accompanied country-western performers on the Hammond organ at county fairs, carried the bass drum in marching bands, studied at North Texas State, and played jazz piano, as well as cocktail piano, at a lounge on the Jersey Turnpike.
After moving to New York, where he hobnobbed with such avant-garde intellectuals as Milton Babbitt and Pierre Boulez, he moved to Paris where he studied electronic music, later studying in Germany with Ligeti and Stockhausen and, well, you get the idea. Along the way he received a doctoral degree from Yale, writing on Ives and Mahler. The nature and inspiration for his music is as varied as his life’s experiences. Some compositions hold their own with the most received, academic style and others are eclectic, to say the least. He has built a reputation in the latter mode for compositions like “Dead Elvis” (the solo bassoonist is in the costume of the “King”), orchestra compositions inspired by Superman, Jackie Onassis, Hell’s Angels, and other icons of American pop culture. But, withal, he is a thoughtful, polite, articulate, and flexible teacher of young composition students. Not at all an enfant terrible.
Harp of Ages for Solo Harp and Orchestra was commissioned by the Kenneth and Myra Monfort Charitable Foundation, in conjunction with the Colorado Symphony, and was given its première in Denver by that orchestra in 2023 with harpist Courtney Hershey Bress. It has seven movements, which the composer has associated with the seven pedals of the modern concert harp, and for each he has deriven a specific association from the long history of the instrument. Daugherty’s music often makes reference to all manner of musical styles, and this concerto is no exception. The attentive listener will be entertained by a nuanced panoply of sly allusions to familiar musical elements in these seven movements.
The first movement, “Sappho Leaps,” takes us back to ancient Greece and the lyric poet, Sappho, who accompanied himself on the harp. Legend has it that he leaped to his death. We don’t have any idea what ancient Greek music sounded like, so Daugherty regales us with a zippy, blues infected scamper. But, the first thing we hear is the harpist slapping the instrument rather like the drummer in a jazz band. Quickly an “In the Mood” riff is joined by spiky “shots” that sound like brass licks. A soft glissando in the harp leads to a series of exchanges with the oboe and bassoon and cascades of woodwind scales. This jazzy dance stomps and struts, ending as it began, with syncopated slaps on the harp. Count Basie’s great saxophonist Lester Young may have “leaped in,” but he obviously wasn’t the only one.
“Sister Juana’s Hymn” refers to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a seventeenth-century Spanish nun (and proto-feminist!), born near Mexico City. A distinguished, prolific author, philosopher, composer, and music theorist, she, too, is said to have accompanied herself on the harp. The movement opens with a rich, warm evocation of an early Baroque string orchestra. The lush texture is soon joined by a gently swaying Hispanic tune that is woven into a little fantasia with the orchestra. Familiar “Spanish” orchestral colors in the trumpet and double reeds enhance this short visit to “Nueve España.”
“Uhura’s Song.” Aficionados of the evergreen 1960s television series, Star Trek, and its film sequels will remember the vivacious communications officer, Lieutenant Nyoata Uhura. From 23rd-century Africa, she sang and played the harp on the USS Enterprise, and more so in the 1985 novel, Uhura’s Song. And what could be more appropriate than this snappy, syncopated dance that partakes of the marvelous rhythms of that continent? The harp’s catchy opening motive is the basis of the movement, and is answered immediately in the orchestra, with the harp providing its own percussive accompaniment. This motive is worked out thoroughly—up and down, and all around—as the harp and orchestra alternative in the traditional African musical “call and response.” It all sizzles along, until a brief, meditative harp cadenza finishes it off.
Our tour of the harp world now takes us to “David’s Prayer,” and the most famous harpist of the ancient world, King David. The Old Testament describes him as a harpist, “skillful in playing,” sent to court as a young man to ease the slumbers of King Saul, “troubled by an evil spirit sent by God.” And soothing, indeed, is this meditative, musical soporific. Daugherty artfully evokes the Middle East here, with his employment of some of the traditional harmonies and scales of that region. Double reed timbres complete the ethnic and cultural references.
From the sublime to the ridiculous—well, no, for although the Marx Brothers enthusiastically embraced the latter, the mastery of “Harpo” Marx of his namesake instrument was absolutely, sublimely complete. Famous for never speaking (Groucho said that Harpo couldn’t memorize dialogue, so he just foreswore it, and became the archetypal “dunce who couldn’t speak.”), Harpo did “speak” with his marvelous facial expressions, his squawky bulb horn, and penny whistle. And of course, Harpo spoke eloquently in his memorable, virtuoso harp solos in the brothers’ films. Daugherty’s “Harpo Speaks,”—also the name of Harpo’s fine autobiography–is a tribute to Harpo’s personal style, and employs some interesting special playing techniques. Self taught, Harpo’s technique was unorthodox, and his musical style was equally somewhat eccentric. Daugherty’s tribute is a kind of homage to his memorable cinematic performances. The first part of the movement is quirky, with some dissonant crashes—the bulb horn?—but the remainder is a tribute to Harpo’s extravagant glissandi and flourishes. An enigmatic clock chime and an obligatory glissando ends it all.
While jazz played on the harp is not uncommon today, decades ago it was rare, indeed. Two important pioneers of the decidedly unconventional pursuit were two women whose roots lay in Detroit: Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane. Ashby grew up in a musical family, surrounded by jazz musicians, and came into her own in 1950s. Naturally, encountering resistance to her quest to be accepted as a legitimate jazz musician, her talent and mastery of the difficult jazz style, bebop, eventually led to acceptance and musical success. Coltrane (later in her life married to jazz legend John Coltrane) led a somewhat more variegated life, and her music reflects that. She lived in Paris for a while, performed with an eclectic array of jazz musicians, and delved deeply into Hindu spiritualism. Ultimately the focus of her life submerged completely into the latter.
“Detroit Blues” is a languid exploration of dark, blues infused, reflections. It smacks of the 1962 movie score by Elmer Bernstein, “Walk on the Wild Side,” set in the troubled 1930s. The atmospherics coolly suggest three o’clock on a wet morning, cigarette butts, and stale beer. It’s a delightful, grittier version of the mood of the slow movement of Gershwin’s “Concerto in F.”
The harp, of course, has long been the national symbol of Ireland, and the last movement, “Irish Wedding” is all things Irish. Opening with the melancholy strains of the traditional Irish air, “The Minstrel Boy,” in the solo horn, the movement quickly turns to a spirited, quintessential Irish jig. But then! It morphs seamlessly into everybody’s favorite wedding music, Bach’s evergreen “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” The composer impishly sticks in a bit of “Here Comes the Bride’” as a riotous welter of all the themes weave in and out. The tempo slows, and the solo horn with “The Minstrel Boy” returns, leading to a lush treatment of that theme by the harp. But, the jig abruptly starts up again and a crashing turmoil prefaces a brief, delicate harp cadenza. A cascade of the harp’s stock in trade glissandi concludes this colorful tour of two and a half millennia of one of music’s oldest instruments.
–Wm. E. Runyan
©2025 William E. Runyan