Halsey Stevens


Halsey Stevens was a music professor, biographer, and composer of American music.

Life

Halsey Stevens was born in Scott, New York and educated at Syracuse University and the University of California, Berkeley. He studied with William Berwald at Syracuse and with the composer Ernest Bloch at Berkeley.
Stevens served as a faculty member at Syracuse University, Dakota Wesleyan University, Bradley University, the University of Redlands, and then at the University of Southern California from 1946 until his retirement in 1976. His notable students there included Charles Lloyd, Houston Bright, Benjamin Lees, and Morten Lauridsen.
He died in a Long Beach, California, medical facility on January 20, 1989, after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.

Music

His recorded music includes, in chronological order of composition:
along with many other works.
Among his chamber works, Stevens's 1956 trumpet sonata remains a particular favorite, having been commercially recorded by over a half-dozen trumpeters, including , Jouko Harjanne, David Hickman, Wynton Marsalis, Anthony Plog, Scott Thornburg, and George Vosburgh.
A present-day music reviewer, Osvaldo Polatkan, sought in 2008 to convey something of the composer's models, influences, and mature style thus:

Writings

A Bartók scholar and musicologist, Stevens wrote a definitive study of the Hungarian composer, The Life and Music of Béla Bartók. "Mr. Stevens' book... makes one want to rehear the Bartok works in the light of what the author has found in them," observed eminent fellow composer Aaron Copland. "That is praise indeed for any book on music."
Stevens also contributed scholarly articles to Musical Quarterly, The Journal of Music Theory, Music and Letters, Tempo, Énekszós, Musikoloski Zborník, among other journals.