Publications
Richard Hageman: The Becoming of a Song Composer
Nico de Villiers
Peter Lang Publishing (2025)
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As an important contributor to the arts in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century, Richard Hageman (1881-1966) is recognized as one of the Academy Award-winning film composers for John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939). While routinely referred to in the same context as Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, William Grant Still, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold in Hollywood, Hageman was also a celebrated pianist, coach, conductor, and composer of concert music. During his lifetime the gamut of singers of the day sang his songs, from opera stars Geraldine Farrar, Kirsten Flagstad, Lauritz Melchior, Lawrence Tibbett and recital stalwarts Lotte Lehmann, Nan Merriman, John McCormack to silver screen songbirds Jeanette MacDonald and Deanna Durbin. Later Kiri Te Kanawa, Thomas Hampson, and Roberta Alexander recorded some Hageman songs, but nowadays these songs remain generally unexplored. This volume considers these songs in depth from the unique perspective of an art song scholar-pianist.
“In our century, Richard Hageman is known throughout the vocal world for only one song. In this well-researched volume, Nico de Villiers corrects this injustice by passionately showing us the unknown, uncelebrated Hageman. Any serious fan of vocal repertoire will find this a treasure trove of information about this composer, his life, and his music.”
– Martin Katz, internationally acclaimed pianist and author
“The devoted expertise of Nico de Villiers will certainly excite singers, performers, and public alike to explore this extraordinary forgotten chapter of American creativity.”
– Thomas Hampson, world-renowned baritone
Richard Hageman:From Holland to Hollywood
Nico de Villiers, Kathryn Kalinak, Asing Walthaus
Peter Lang Publishing (2020)
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Richard Hageman (1881-1966) was celebrated during his lifetime as a conductor, pianist, vocal coach, and composer. His art songs put him solidly in the vanguard of mid-century composers and he was routinely referred to in the same context as Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, William Grant Still, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. His opera Caponsacchi was the first American opera to premiere in Freiburg-im-Breisgau and Vienna. A conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, Hageman knew the great singers of the age, conducting Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar, and accompanying Nellie Melba and Emmy Destinn. He wrote songs for John McCormack and Lotte Lehmann. By the late 1930s Hageman was composing in Hollywood, scoring westerns for John Ford and earning six Academy Award nominations. In Hollywood, he had drinks with John Wayne, rubbed shoulders with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, and shared the screen with Louis Armstrong and Elizabeth Taylor.
Richard Hageman: From Holland to Hollywood is the first critical biography to reconstruct Hageman’s colorful life while recreating the cultural milieu in which he flourished: opera in America during the first half of the twentieth century and film scoring in Hollywood in the heyday of the studio system. Here Hageman’s most important works are analyzed in depth for the first time, from his famous art song, "Do Not Go, My Love" and his opera Caponsacchi, to his film scores such as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and 3 Godfathers. This biography offers a compelling read for opera lovers, film fans, and American history enthusiasts alike.
Music in the Western: Notes from the frontier
Kathryn Kalinak, ed.
Routledge (2012)
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Music in the Western: Notes from the Frontier presents essays from both film studies scholars and musicologists on core issues in western film scores: their history, their generic conventions, their operation as part of a narrative system, their functioning within individual filmic texts and their ideological import, especially in terms of the western’s construction of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity. The Hollywood western is marked as uniquely American by its geographic setting, prototypical male protagonist and core American values.
Music in the Western examines these conventions and the scores that have shaped them. But the western also had a resounding international impact, from Europe to Asia, and this volume distinguishes itself by its careful consideration of music in non-Hollywood westerns, such as Ravenous and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and in the “easterns” which influenced them, such as Yojimbo. Other films discussed include Wagon Master, High Noon, Calamity Jane, The Big Country, The Unforgiven, Dead Man, Wild Bill, There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men.
How the West was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford
Kathryn Kalinak
Chicago University Press (2007)
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James Stewart once said, "For John Ford, there was no need for dialogue. The music said it all." This lively, accessible study is the first comprehensive analysis of Ford's use of music in his iconic westerns. Encompassing a variety of critical approaches and incorporating original archival research, Kathryn Kalinak explores the director's oft-noted predilection for American folk song, hymnody, and period music.
What she finds is that Ford used music as more than a stylistic gesture. In fascinating discussions of Ford's westerns―from silent-era features such as Straight Shooting and The Iron Horse to classics of the sound era such as My Darling Clementine and The Searchers ―Kalinak describes how the director exploited music, and especially song, in defining the geographical and ideological space of the American West.
Gevierde Friezen in Amerika / Famous Frisians in America
Peter de Haan, Kerst Huisman, eds.
Friese Pers Boekerij (2009)
When the Frisian States were the first to recognise American independence, founding father John Adams wrote: 'This province has to be remembered in America'.
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This book bears witness to the fact that many Frisians have played a prominent role in America: from Peter Stuyvesant (17th century) to Doutzen Kroes (21st century). Top scientists, designers, movie stars, politicians, authors, astronauts, Oscar winners and presidents of major companies such as Ford's John Dykstra. Celebrated Frisians in America is about four centuries of Dutch-American heritage.
