Composing behind closed doors

Were it possible to completely live the life of one's imagination, Harry Hewitt would have succeeded in doing so.

The Philadelphia composer created 3,000 works over 60 years - 32 symphonies, an opera, songs inspired by Lord of the Rings - but was barely known to artistic colleagues living only blocks from his apartment at 19th and Pine. His concerts were off the grid, his recordings few, his recognition level nothing remotely resembling what composers crave - and need, in order to grow.

Gentlemanly, idealistic and possessed of a smiling, Buddha-like manner, Hewitt died in such obscurity at age 82 five years ago that fellow composer Jan Krzywicki made a point of speaking at a memorial service he feared would be sparsely attended. "Harry was kind to me; I wanted to support him," he recalled. Hewitt wasn't necessarily ignored; he simply never came to the attention of many Philadelphia musicians.

That amount of music, however, tends not to just disappear. Philadelphia Biblical University in Langhorne - which has a sizable musical curriculum, but not such a well-known one - has taken up Hewitt as a cause. His papers and nonorchestral works are housed there; letters from Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy and W.H. Auden - some defensive in tone, suggesting Hewitt could be a gadfly - are displayed in glass cases, and chamber and orchestral works were performed there, some for the first time, in concerts this spring. Pianist Jennifer Kleeman, a Hewitt friend who arranged for the university's acquisition, is working on a biography.

The picture that emerges from recollections by friends, colleagues and his 89-year-old widow, Betty, is of a composer who was seized by music, though his self-protective modesty and independent spirit from his Winnebago Indian heritage conspired to limit his public profile. "Nobody was going to tell him what to write," says Betty Hewitt, "or how to write it."

But for anyone who has dared to make art, Hewitt's pervasive but shadowy existence can represent the supreme terror: What if you spend your life attempting to create beauty and nobody cares?

While his productivity wasn't unprecedented, his motivation quite possibly was. Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) wrote somewhat more than Hewitt - but in response to prescribed community duties, and with compositional precepts that allowed deadlines to be met even when inspiration flagged. Like Hewitt, British composer Havergal Brian (1876-1972) wrote 32 symphonies, but enjoyed late-in-life recognition. American Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) wrote 60, the second of which was something of a hit.

Though Hewitt had little outside impetus, composing so dominated his life that he could hold only odd jobs, among them driving an ice cream truck.

"One day he came back and said, 'I can't go to work today. I have a great idea ... ', " Betty Hewitt recalls.

Meanwhile, she happily managed the Upper Darby business office of what is now Verizon. "I believe you're put here for a purpose," she says. "I was lucky to find out what it was, and I did it. I don't want to use the word genius - but he had a lot on the ball and needed a chance to let it out. There was never any difficulty between us on that point. I wouldn't even discuss it."

And how is the music? No simple answer for that, and there may never be a complete one. Will any single person ever make his or her way through the entire oeuvre?

Hewitt began with serious encouragement. Growing up in Detroit, he led a life somewhat circumscribed by chronic asthma. He was mostly self-educated, and was lauded by the late Joseph Barone, director of the Bryn Mawr Conservatory, as "one of the most outstanding modern composers."

"He had intense blue eyes and could get just about anything he wanted with them," Betty recalls. The couple considered living in New York after a few of his pieces were played at what is now Weill Recital Hall and received good reviews plus an encouraging personal note from critic/composer Virgil Thomson. Though they often hobnobbed with composer John Cage and poet Kenneth Patchen in New York, Philadelphia was more practical.

He wrote incidental music for the Main Line Playhouse and had performances by what is now Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia. The small Opus One label recorded his first and 32d symphonies, and the Italian classical guitarist Stefano Mileto recorded an all-Hewitt disc. His own recording collection, according to Kit Crissey, producer of new-music concerts in Philadelphia starting in 1988, was full of Bach, Delius, Havergal Brian (interestingly enough), plus lots of Japanese and Balinese music.

Hewitt cast a wide net, and what came out of that wasn't necessarily meant to be heard. "Lots of times, he was trying out different things. . . . They were building blocks. Just because he'd written something didn't mean it needed to be performed," Betty says.

What performances he did have were often in concerts he produced himself as part of Delaware Valley Composers at Old Pine Church from 1976 to 1985. There, many young talents had the invaluable experience of hearing their own works for the first time. No new-music series was so welcoming.

"But there were people who would discourage students from having anything on a Harry Hewitt concert because they thought it was beneath them," says composer Kile Smith, a longtime friend and curator of the Fleisher Collection, where Hewitt's orchestral works are kept. "That grinds me in the gut when I hear things like that."

Increasingly, the Hewitts weren't just out of the mainstream artistically (without a faculty position at a local music school he had no platform) but socially as well. "We didn't own a car or a home. We didn't have children. In terms of public life, we had three strikes against us," Betty Hewitt says.

Not for Jennifer Kleeman, who adored them: "They had wonderful oddities, such as listening to music at a volume louder than the human voice while attempting to converse."

Naturally, Hewitt had to create his own definition of success - one he spelled out in the booklet notes to one of his CDs. "For the baptizing of my son, Nicholas, I wrote a song for him, as I had for his brother, Albert - 'Through a Baby's Eyes.' . . . Many people from the congregation sought me out to tell me how much they really liked the works. . . . It is why I compose and . . . means in some way . . . I was successful."

It's hard to know who Nicholas and Albert were. Kleeman says that when young people befriended the Hewitts, Harry would refer to them as children or grandchildren. Or perhaps living his dream meant living, sometimes, in dreams.

About one thing he was not deluded: his talent. He had plenty, says Smith. But his simple directness - similar to that of his Spanish contemporary Federico Mompou - didn't stand a chance amid 1970s modernism. Despite the romantic image of the lone composer struggling to realize an elusive vision, creative isolation is rarely a blessing.

Hewitt's lack of performance possibilities perhaps lent a purity of expression to his music, Smith says. But the downside is heard in Hewitt's 24-minute, one-movement Symphony No. 32: It has the unmediated manner of a completely private expression, a musical journal that's perfectly clear and has nothing to hide but doesn't court outside ears. To listen is to eavesdrop. The music goes here and there with great purpose but for reasons the composer didn't need to justify.

The marginalization reflected in that music asks relevant questions about the current state of American composers. The American Composers Forum has a growing membership of 1,700. Inevitably, accomplished composers will be unfairly crowded out of opportunities. Should creativity continue regardless of that? Does Hewitt represent an admirable unshakable determination? Or Sisyphean futility?

Hear David Patrick Stearns on Harry Hewitt on WRTI's "Creatively Speaking" at http://go.philly.com/stearnsonradio.EndText