Henry Hadley

Henry Hadley (1871–1937) was an American composer and conductor. During his lifetime, Hadley’s music was immensely popular. He was one of the most performed and published American composers of his day. Born in Somerville, Massachusetts, Henry Kimball Hadley grew up in a musical family. His father was his first teacher of conducting, violin, and piano, and Hadley also studied composition with George Chadwick, who was an important influence and mentor for him. After further studies in Vienna and Munich, he taught in New York and became well known as a conductor in both the United States and Europe. Hadley considered himself first and foremost an orchestral composer, to which his many overtures, symphonic poems, orchestral suites, and symphonies attest. Yet he also wrote a large number of stage works, including several operettas and musicals, along with five operas. Hadley also wrote several cantatas and oratorios, chamber works as well as a large number of art songs, some of which he orchestrated. His later works were very successful. Hadley’s opera Cleopatra’s Night was staged at the Metropolitan Opera in 1918, and his comic opera Bianca won a prize offered by the American Society of Singers for the best chamber opera in English. Hadley’s music was a regular part of the repertory of America’s top orchestras, and was also performed in Europe. Many legendary conductors performed his works, including Gustav Mahler, Leopold Stokowski and Serge Koussevitzky. Towards the end of his life, however, his popularity as a composer began to wane, as critical opinion turned against the robust romanticism which Hadley’s music embodied.