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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Composing behind closed doors

Composing behind closed doors

Philadelphia's Harry Hewitt, prolific, gentlemanly and unknown, is getting a hearing five years after his death.
This is David Patrick Stearns' article on Hewitt from his interview with Jennifer Kleenman, Dr. Hsu and Betty Hewitt. Overall it's a pretty good picture of Hewitt. It also presents Hewitt with human flaws which is somewhat difficult to completely swallow after being so close to his work and his writings and being so invested in his music. While it's difficult to capture a person's life in 1000 words or less I think Stearns does a decent job. The particular item I would respectfully disagree with is Stearns' short analysis of Hewitt's Symphony No. 32. It's not entirely removed from the sphere of art that the listener is to step into a piece which begins and ends at the points that the composer thinks are important. This in support of the idea that the musical or literary idea continues both before and after the listener or reader steps into interaction with it.
I would also take slight umbrage at Stearns' insinuation that Hewitt was deluded at points in his life. While Hewitt was definitively strange I'm not entirely sure how much of a logical step it would be for Stearns to imply Hewitt was somewhat less than mentally stable. Besides that it is good to see Hewitt in print. I hope it continues.


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