Daron Hagen

Summary

Daron Aric Hagen (/ˈhɑːɡən/ HAH-gən;[1] born November 4, 1961) is an American composer, writer, and filmmaker.

Daron Hagen

Biography edit

Early life edit

Daron Hagen was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and grew up in New Berlin, a suburb west of Milwaukee. Hagen was the youngest of the three sons of Gwen Hagen, a visual artist, writer and advertising executive who studied creative writing with Mari Sandoz and enjoyed a successful advertising career as creative director of Exclusively Yours Magazine[2] and Earl Hagen (an attorney).[3] Hagen began composing prolifically in 1974, when his older brother Kevin gave him a recording and score of Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd.[4] Two years later, at the age of fifteen, he conducted the premiere of his first orchestral work,[5] a recording and score of which came to the attention of Leonard Bernstein, who enthusiastically urged Hagen to attend Juilliard to study with David Diamond.[6] He studied piano with Adam Klescewski, and studied composition, piano, and conducting at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music (where his teachers included Duane Dishaw and Judy Kramer) while attending Brookfield Central High School.[3]

Early career edit

After two years at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where his teachers included Catherine Comet (conducting), Jeanette Ross (piano), and Les Thimmig and Homer Lambrecht (composition), he was invited to attend the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia by Ned Rorem (with whom he developed a lifelong friendship).[7][8] While a student of Rorem's at Curtis, he studied piano with Marion Zarzeczna and also studied privately with Lukas Foss. Hagen moved to New York City in 1984 to complete his formal education as a student at Juilliard,[9] studying first for two years with Diamond, then for a semester each with Joseph Schwantner and Bernard Rands. After graduating, Hagen was a Tanglewood composition fellow before briefly living abroad, first at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, and then at the Rockefeller Foundation's Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy, where he has twice been a guest. Between 1985 and 1998 Hagen was also a frequent guest at the MacDowell Colony.[10] When he returned to the United States, Hagen studied privately with Bernstein,[11] whose guidance during the composition of Hagen's Shining Brow (1992) — the opera that launched Hagen's career internationally[12][13][14][15] — prompted him to dedicate the score to Bernstein's memory.[16]

Educator and arts advocate edit

A stint as composer in residence at the Music Conservatory of the Chicago College of Performing Arts led to an invitation to join the artist faculty there (2017-2023) "in a multi-disciplinary position created for him that enable[d] him to share his skills as a stage director, dramaturge, composer, and social activist with students from throughout the Roosevelt University community as they shadow him and collaborate in the development of a new Hagen opera each year."[17] He has served as the Franz Lehár Composer in Residence at the University of Pittsburgh (2007),[18] twice as composer in residence for the Princeton University Atelier (1998, 2004–5);[19] as artist in residence at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (2000–2002); Sigma Chi-William P. Huffman Composer in Residence at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio (1999–2000); artist in residence at Baylor University, Waco, Texas (1998–1999); on the musical studies faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music (1996–1998); as an associate professor at Bard College (1988–1997); as a visiting professor at the City College of New York (1997, 1993–1994); and as a lecturer in music at New York University (1988–1990).[20]

As artistic director of the Perpetuum Mobile Concerts (1982–87) he premiered compositions by over a hundred American composers on concerts produced in Philadelphia and New York.[21] Hagen served as president of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation (2004–07) in New York City, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging the performance and creation of opera and art song; from 2000 to 2018 he served as a trustee of the Douglas Moore Fund for American Opera[22] and was elected a lifetime member of the Corporation of Yaddo in 2006.[23][24] He is the founding artistic director of the New Mercury Collective, "a laboratory for artistic exploration, creative risk-taking, and performance in which its members can collaborate on the creation and performance of post-genre works combining theater, music, and emerging technology for audiences of all types."[25] Hagen has been a featured composer at the Tanglewood, Mostly Modern, Ravinia, Wintergreen, and Aspen music festivals, and has served as artistic director and head of faculty for the Seasons Fall Music Festival[26] in Yakima, Washington (2008–2012). He has served as co-chair of Composition[27] for the Wintergreen Summer Music Academy in Virginia since 2015.

Writer, director, and filmmaker edit

Hagen's memoir, "Duet with the Past," was published by McFarland & Company on March 1, 2019.[28]

Hagen made his professional debut as a stage director for the Skylight Music Theatre with his musical I Hear America Singing (2014), for which he contributed book, lyrics, and score.[29][30] In spring 2015 he directed his opera A Woman in Morocco for Kentucky Opera.[31][32]

In 2020–21, Hagen debuted as a filmmaker, releasing his first "filmopera," entitled Orson Rehearsed,[33] in which he explored Orson Welles' dying thoughts through words, images, and music.[34][35][36] Hagen crafted the music (which combined live players with an extensive Electroacoustic soundscape) and libretto, shot over 30 hours of film, directed the staged iteration at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, Illinois (in a joint production of his own "New Mercury Collective" and the Chicago College of Performing Arts), and served as both film and soundtrack editor. In advance of its 2021 streaming platform, DVD, and theatrical release, the soundtrack was released on 12 March 2021 on Naxos Records). The work garnered numerous awards on the international film festival circuit. His second "filmopera," '9/10: Love Before the Fall' was filmed on location in a Chicago restaurant and is currently in post production.

Compositional style and methods edit

Hagen's music is essentially tonal, though serial, pitch class, and octatonic procedures are customarily used for psychologically and emotionally fraught passages.[37] It is "notable for its warm lyricism, but his style defies easy categorization. While his works demonstrate fluency with a range of twentieth-century compositional techniques, those procedures are secondary to his exploitation and expansion of the possibilities of tonal harmony, giving his music an immediacy that makes it appealing to a wide spectrum of audiences. His music is broadly eclectic, drawing on a variety of styles as diverse as jazz, Broadway, Latin music, Italian verismo, and soft rock."[38] According to Hagen, "Polytonality figures prominently in the major operas as a mechanism for manifesting the interaction between characters."[39] Hagen, asked at one point by Bernstein to complete Marc Blitzstein's opera Sacco and Vanzetti,[40] acknowledges a debt to Blitzstein's music: "I find the musical DNA of which it is composed indispensable. Strands of that DNA — strict adherence to economy of means, a passion for combining words and music, the belief that music can promote social justice, an abhorrence of pretension — are woven contrapuntally, inextricably, into the music that I compose, and have been, nearly from the start."[41]

Hagen's vocal music is described in The New Grove as "the cornerstone of his compositional output."[42] He has remarked, "I love voices and I like singers, and along with the intersection of loving music and words and singers, I adore the process of composing and going through the production of musical theater. There is the communion of people coming together to commit to undertaking a work of art that is larger than any of us."[43] "Using his gift for composing vocal lines, [Hagen] produces songs that flow lyrically and illuminate texts with unerring musical and dramatic aim. His scores are full of extensive markings, requiring singers to use variety of tone color to achieve the emotions inherent in the texts."[44]

His operas embrace a particularly broad stylistic spectrum, and often "straddle the divide between the opera and musical theater worlds."[45] In Shining Brow "Hagen's baseline idiom," writes Tom Strini, "seems to be modernist-expressionist, tonal but freely dissonant. He sets all sorts of influences, from barbershop to ticky-tick dance music against that idiom, to underscore character and crystallize the period (1903–'14)."[46] In Vera of Las Vegas, Hagen, writes Robert Thicknesse, "blends idioms – neo-Gershwin, jazz, soft rock, Broadway – with soaring melodies that send the characters looping off in arias of self-revelation."[47] "Bandanna is neither fish nor fowl – as fierce as verismo but wrought with infinite care; a melding of church and cantina and Oxonian declamation," writes Tim Page.[48] Catherine Parsonage expands upon this assessment: "[it] is wholly convincing as a modern opera, ranging stylistically from the music theatre of Gershwin, Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, to traditional mariachi music and contemporary opera of Benjamin Britten. Hagen, who served his apprenticeship on Broadway,[49] acknowledges that holistically the piece falls between opera and musical theatre. Hagen's style encourages audiences to be actively involved in constructing their own meanings from the richness of the textual and musical cross-references in his work."[50] Hagen's effective fusing of many styles into a coherent personal vision is recognized by a 2014 American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award that acknowledges the "outstanding artistic achievement [of] a composer who has arrived at his or her own voice."[51]

In 2007 self-publishing enabled Hagen to become one of the first American opera composers to make evolving performance materials for the opera Amelia (and all his successive works) available exclusively in an online environment: "The opera's principals were given access to a password-protected website on which Hagen placed pdf files of Amelia's vocal score. When he modified a scene, he simply uploaded an edited file, and an automatically generated message informed the cast of the change."[52]

Critical reception edit

According to Opera News, "to say that [Hagen] is a remarkable musician is to underrate him. Daron is music."[7] The NATS Journal of Singing has described Hagen as "the finest American composer of vocal music in his generation."[53]

Hagen's debut opera Shining Brow premiered in 1993 to universally glowing reviews in the international press.[12][13][14] When the Buffalo Philharmonic released the first recording on Naxos in 2009, David Patrick Sterns noted in The Philadelphia Inquirer, "the ceaselessly inventive score hooks you early on, easily embracing a wide range of predominantly tonal modes of expression, from barbershop quartet to Der Rosenkavalier quotations. The music's theatrical timing and naturalistic sense of language – so problematic in other contemporary operas – feels effortlessly right. Dramatically speaking, the portrayal of the great architect is so unflinching that Wright (played with many layers of irony by the excellent Robert Orth) borders on being too unsympathetic to carry this sizable, two-act opera. Particularly effective is the musical creepiness that sets in as Wright's high-ego world grows refracted from reality.".[54]

Hagen's 2010 opera Amelia premiered to positive reviews in The New York Times, Financial Times, Times of London, Seattle Times, The Washington Post, and Opera Magazine, among others. Heidi Waleson in The Wall Street Journal described the work as "both highly original and gripping. ... Amelia is a modern opera with traditional values ... Mr. Hagen's restless, questioning music never loses its heart."[55] Ivan Katz, in The Huffington Post, wrote "Hagen's score is well-composed and, in many respects, a work of genius. He tends to write in a more facile manner for the women, but his writing for the men (especially tenor William Burden) is complex and highly effective."[56] Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times noted that "the opera is earnest and original, if heavy-handed and melodramatic. [It is] a serious, heartfelt and unusual work. However, there is too much lyricism and no break in the orchestral richness."[57]

His 2013 opera, A Woman in Morocco, deals with the issue of human trafficking. A "film noir, verismo, cinéma vérité".[58] While in its college workshop production at the University of Texas, the characters were felt by one graduate student to "come across as flat and largely unsympathetic and so frustratingly spineless that it's hard to care about them,"[59] when the work was given its professional premiere in spring 2015 under Hagen's direction by Kentucky Opera, professional critics noted that "[its] complex score works to underline issues with leitmotifs, musical cues assigned to different characters, and music that never settles or rests. When singers get soaring arias, they emerge naturally from this intricate texture. Hagen has a gift for writing sensually rich tunes and uses this skill to release the music at important moments."[32] Most of the universally positive reviews touched approvingly on the opera's subject matter:

Will [a new opera] find a connection with tradition while creating something fresh and timely? I believe that composer Daron Hagen and his co-librettist Barbara Grecki have [done this] with their new two-act opera. ... Hagen's score feelingly captures the deep contradictions of its story and its characters in music that evokes the beauty and mystery of an exotic landscape, the dangerous and deceptive sensuality of its inhabitants, and the intense violence that is always just beneath the surface of a culture that threatens and terrorizes women.[60]

Awards edit

List of works edit

His first composition to attract wide attention was Prayer for Peace,[42] premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra (1981), garnering him the distinction of being the youngest composer since Samuel Barber to be premiered by that orchestra;[64] the New York Philharmonic commissioned Philharmonia for its 150th anniversary (1990);[65] the University of Wisconsin Madison School of Music commissioned Concerto for Brass Quintet for its 100th anniversary (1995);[66] the Curtis Institute commissioned Much Ado for its 75th anniversary (2000). Hagen's commissions from major orchestras and performers between 1981 and 2008 included orchestral works, five symphonies (for the orchestras of Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Oakland, Albany, and Phoenix), seven concertos (for Gary Graffman, Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Jeffrey Khaner, and Sara Sant'Ambrogio, among others), several massive works for chorus and orchestra, two dozen choral works (including one for the Kings Singers), ballet scores, concert overtures, showpieces, two brass quintets, six piano trios, three string quartets, an oboe quintet, a duo for violin and cello, solo works for piano (His Suite for Piano was a featured new work for the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition), organ, violin, viola, and cello, and seventeen published cycles of art songs. (Hagen has over 300 art songs in print.) Material from Shining Brow was used in Hagen's piano piece "Built Up Dark", written for Bruce Brubaker in 1994.

A frequent collaborator with living writers, he has set poetry by Nuar Alsadir, Mark Campbell, Ze'ev Dunei, Stephen Dunn, Sarah Gorham, Susan Griffin, Peter Handke, Reine Hauser, Seamus Heaney, Robert Kelley, Richard McCann, Kim Roberts, Stephen Sandy, Mark Skinner, and Mark Strand, among others. In 1990 Hagen began a creative collaboration with the Irish poet Paul Muldoon that resulted in four major operas: Shining Brow (1992), Vera of Las Vegas (1996), Bandanna (1998), and The Antient Concert (2005). "[Writing libretti for Hagen's operas gave Muldoon], a writer who has had to weather accusations of cerebral detachment and heartlessness the opportunity to indulge in frank emotionalism," writes David Wheatley.[67] Libretti for Hagen operas have also been written by Barbara Grecki (New York Stories, 2008), J.D. McClatchy (Little Nemo in Slumberland, 2010),[68] and Gardner McFall (Amelia, 2010). He has written his own libretti (A Woman in Morocco, 2013,New York Stories, 2008,Orson Rehearsed, 2019, and 9/10: Love Before the Fall, 2023).

Recordings and publishing edit

Recordings of Hagen works may be found on the Albany Records, Arsis, Sierra, TNC, Mark, Naxos Records, Sony Classical Records and CRI labels, among others. His music was published exclusively by EC Schirmer in Boston (1982–90); and then by Carl Fischer Music in New York (1990–2006); in 2007 he began self-publishing under the imprint Burning Sled. In 2017, Burning Sled struck a licensing agreement with Peermusic Classical for Hagen's operas.[69] In 2022, Peermusic acquired the rest of Hagen's catalogue.[70]

References edit

  1. ^ Clare, John (2010), Interview with Daron Hagen (video recording Hagen's pronunciation of his own name in the course of the interview.), San Antonio: Texas Public Radio
  2. ^ Exclusively Yours
  3. ^ a b Hagen, Daron (2019), Duet with the Past, Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, pp. 12–39, ISBN 978-1-4766-7737-8
  4. ^ Strini, Tom (2010), Arts Digest: Interview with Daron Hagen (television broadcast.), Milwaukee: Milwaukee Public Television
  5. ^ Joslyn, Jay (1978), "Young Composer Shows Promise", The Milwaukee Sentinel (1/5/78)
  6. ^ Yale University Oral History of American Music Interview Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved December 11, 2013.
  7. ^ a b Rorem, Ned (1993), "Learning with Daron", Opera News (April 10): 29–30
  8. ^ Rorem, Ned (1987), The Nantucket Diary, San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, pp. 329–603, ISBN 0-86547-259-9
  9. ^ Olmstead, Andrea (2002), Juilliard: A History, Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, p. 251, ISBN 978-0-252-02487-0
  10. ^ MacDowell Colony Website. Retrieved July 16, 2021.
  11. ^ Secrest, Meryl (1994), Leonard Bernstein, a Life, New York, NY: Knopf, pp. 386–87, ISBN 0-679-40731-6
  12. ^ a b Smith, Patrick (1993), "The Fall of Taliesin", The Times Literary Supplement (5/14/93)
  13. ^ a b Kerner, Leighton (1993), "The Wright Stuff", The Village Voice (5/5/93)
  14. ^ a b Oestereich, James. "Review/Music: Shining Brow; Frank Lloyd Wright Joins Opera's Pantheon", The New York Times. Retrieved August 2, 2008.
  15. ^ Grout, Donald (2003), A Short History of Opera, Fourth Edition, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, p. 767, ISBN 0-231-11958-5
  16. ^ Hagen, Daron (1995), Shining Brow (score), Boston, MA: E. C. Schirmer Publishing Company, p. iv, ISBN 0-911318-20-8
  17. ^ BWW Newsdesk (2017). "Daron Hagen Joins Faculty at Roosevelt University's Chicago College of Performing Arts", Broadway World. Retrieved October 18, 2017.
  18. ^ University of Pittsburgh Composition and Theory Department Website. Retrieved April 21, 2014.
  19. ^ Past Atelier Artists - Lewis Center for the Arts. Retrieved July 16, 2021.
  20. ^ Press Kit at DaronHagen.com
  21. ^ Webster, Daniel (1985), "3 Musicians Who Are On the Move", The Philadelphia Inquirer (2/16/85): D01
  22. ^ Douglas Moore Fund for American Music Website. Retrieved April 21, 2014.
  23. ^ Passaro, Vince (2006), "Yaddo Elects Librarian Susan Brynteson and Composer Daron Hagen Lifetime Members", Press Release (September 25), archived from the original on May 12, 2008
  24. ^ Yaddo Website. Retrieved November 2, 2020.
  25. ^ New Mercury Collective Website. Retrieved July 4, 2019.
  26. ^ Seasons Music Festival Academy Website Archived September 4, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved February 25, 2010.
  27. ^ Wintergreen Music Festival Website Retrieved June 15, 2015.
  28. ^ Book listing at the publisher's website. Retrieved May 30, 2017.
  29. ^ Muckian, Michael (2014), "Local composer creates original work for Skylight", Wisconsin Gazette (4/17/14): 26
  30. ^ BWW Newsdesk (2014). "Skylight Music Theatre to Premiere Daron Hagen's I HEAR AMERICA SINGING, 5/9-6/1", Broadway World. Retrieved April 24, 2014.
  31. ^ Kramer, Elizabeth (2015), "New Opera Touches on Human Trafficking", The Courier Journal (5/8/15): 23
  32. ^ a b Gilliam, Daniel (2015), "Kentucky Opera's 'A Woman in Morocco' is Complex and Challenging", WFPL Website (5/15/15)
  33. ^ Orson Rehearsed Website. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
  34. ^ "An Interview With Daron Hagen". Chicago Movie Magazine. October 12, 2020.
  35. ^ Salazar, David (October 16, 2017). "Q & A: Composer Daron Hagen, Orson Welles & the Biggest Train Set Ever". operawire.com.
  36. ^ Wilson, Joshua (July 29, 2017). "DARON HAGEN AND ORSON REHEARSED: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE COMPOSER". fforfilms.net.
  37. ^ Classical Composers Database. Retrieved July 8, 2012.
  38. ^ Hagen, Daron (2012), "Daron Hagen Biography", All Music Guide, retrieved July 8, 2012
  39. ^ Hagen, Daron; Hong Kong, Naxos Records (2009), Shining Brow Liner Notes
  40. ^ Pollack, Howard (2012), Mark Blitzstein His Life, His Work, His World, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, p. 484, ISBN 978-0-19-979159-0
  41. ^ Hagen, Daron (May 14, 2012), "Obsessed – Marc Blitzstein", HuffPost, retrieved July 8, 2012
  42. ^ a b Chute, James (2001), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 1-56159-239-0
  43. ^ Reel, James (1999), "A Conversation with Composer Daron Hagen", Fanfare Magazine (September/October): 128–133
  44. ^ Kimball, Carol (2006), Song, Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, p. 347, ISBN 1-4234-1280-X, OCLC 225969165
  45. ^ Powell, Edwin (2002). Bandanna, an opera by Daron Aric Hagen with libretto by Paul Muldoon commissioned by the College Band Directors National Association -- the origins of an artwork with a glimpse at its musical character development (DMA). University of North Texas, Denton. OCLC 52230006. Retrieved March 2, 2021.
  46. ^ Strini, Tom (April 22, 1993), "Frank Lloyd Wright opera powerful, touching", The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
  47. ^ Thicknesse, Robert. "Vera of Las Vegas", The Times. Retrieved September 7, 2008.
  48. ^ Page, Tim; Albany, N. Y. Albany Records (2003), Bandanna Liner Notes{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  49. ^ Daron Hagen's Blog Memoir Archived 2015-05-04 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 8 July 2012.
  50. ^ Parsonage, Catherine (2006), "Hagen's Bandanna and the Accessibility of Opera", Winds Music Magazine (May): 12–16
  51. ^ Oteri, Frank. sixteen-composers-receive-aaal-awards-totaling-175000, NewMusicBox. Retrieved March 28, 2014.
  52. ^ Fairtile, Linda (2014), Oxford Handbook of Opera, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 982–983, ISBN 978-0199714841
  53. ^ Platt, Russell (1998), "Artful Simplicity: the Art Songs of Daron Hagen", NATS Journal of Singing, 55 (1): 3–11
  54. ^ Sterns, David Patrick (April 9, 2009). "Shining Brow". The Philadelphia Inquirer.
  55. ^ Waleson, Heidi (May 10, 2010). "On So Many Levels, a Success". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved June 19, 2010.
  56. ^ Katz, Ivan (May 11, 2010), "World Premiere of Daron Hagen's opera Amelia", HuffPost, retrieved June 26, 2010
  57. ^ Tommasini, Anthony (May 9, 2010). "A Woman's Flights of Fantasy and Fear". The New York Times.
  58. ^ Hagen, Daron (2015), The Making of A Woman in Morocco, Episode 7 (video documentary discussing Hagen's directorial aesthetic.), New York City: Burning Sled Music
  59. ^ Zeldin, Natalie (November 1, 2013). "Review: A Woman in Morocco". The Austin Chronicle (Texas).
  60. ^ Frye, Selena (May 15, 2015). "Review: Kentucky Opera's Sobering A Woman in Morocco". Louisville.com. Archived from the original on May 15, 2015. Retrieved June 13, 2015.
  61. ^ "List of Barlow Endowment Prize Recipients. Barlow Foundation Website".
  62. ^ "List of ASCAP-Nissim Prize Recipients. ASCAP Website". ASCAP.com.
  63. ^ Oteri, Frank (March 4, 2014). "Sixteen Composers Receive AAAL Awards Totaling $175,000". New Music Box.
  64. ^ Kunick, Judith Karp (1993), Ricardo Muti: Twenty Years in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 53, ISBN 0-8122-1445-5
  65. ^ Holland, Bernard. "Classical Music in Review", The New York Times. Retrieved August 2, 2008.
  66. ^ Description of the UW-Madison School of Music 100th Anniversary Commissioning Project at the University of Wisconsin Press Website. Retrieved November 2, 2011.
  67. ^ Wheatley, David (2003), "All Art is a Collaboration: Paul Muldoon as Librettist", Paul Muldoon: Critical Essays, Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, p. 152, ISBN 0-85323-868-5
  68. ^ Lowry, Sam (2011), "Sarasota Opera Hosts Press Conference to Announce New Youth Opera Commission and co-Production", Press Release (November 17, 2011), archived from the original on April 26, 2012
  69. ^ Musical America Website Retrieved April 10, 2023
  70. ^ Slippedisc Website. Retrieved April 10, 2023.

Dissertations edit

  • Jens Staubrand: Kierkegaard International Bibliography Music Works and Plays, Copenhagen 2009. In English and Danish. ISBN 978-87-92510-05-1, Including Daron Hagen's LORD, GOD IN HEAVEN from LITTLE PRAYERS, 1994
  • Paul Kreider 1999. Art songs of Daron Hagen: lyrical dramaticism and simplicity with an interpretive guide to rittenhouse songs and resuming green. DMA diss., University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona.
  • Edwin Powell 2002. Bandanna, an opera by Daron Aric Hagen with libretto by Paul Muldoon commissioned by the College Band Directors National Association: the origins of an artwork with a glimpse at its musical character development. DMA diss., University of North Texas, Denton, Texas.
  • Jane McCalla Redding 2002. An introduction to American song composer Daron Aric Hagen (b. 1961) and his miniature folk opera: dear youth. DMA diss., Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
  • Sarah Elizabeth Snydacker 2011.The new American song: A catalog of published songs by 25 living American composers. Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.
  • Wallace, Jacob 2015. Bandanna Overture. In Teaching Music through Performance in Band. Volume 10, Compiled and edited by Richard Miles, 705–714. Chicago: GIA Publications.
  • Jay B. Aiken 2016. The Choral Music of Daron Aric Hagen and a Conductor's Analysis of Flight Music. DMA, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.
  • Nicole Kenley-Miller 2012–2018. Voicing Virginia: Adaptation of Woolf’s Words to Music. DMA diss., University of Houston, Houston, Texas.
  • Noh, Shin-Yeong 2019. Emily Dickinson's Poetic Imagery in 21st-century Songs by Lori Laitman, Jake Heggie, and Daron Hagen. DMA diss., Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
  • Kosin, Kelci Dalayne, 2019 A performance guide to selected arias from Daron Hagen's opera Amelia through the study of selected Hagen art songs. DA, Ball State University, Muncie, IN.,

External links edit

Biography edit

  • Official Biography at Daron Hagen Website
  • Allmusic Biography
  • Daron Hagen at IMDb
  • Guggenheim Foundation Fellow Profile

Interviews edit

  • 2019 WILDSound Film Festival Podcast interview about "Orson Rehearsed"
  • 2019 New England Public Radio Presto: Episode #8 with John Nowacki – Daron Hagen discusses, and reads from, his memoir
  • 2018 Classical Classroom, Episode 181: The Magicians – Daron Hagen on Orson Welles
  • 2016 Houston Public Media interview about Ned Rorem
  • 2015 Houston Public Media interview about Benjamin Britten and the opera "Billy Budd"
  • 2010 Composing Thoughts Interview with John Clare for Texas Public Radio discussing Amelia, Piano Trios, and Violin Concerto
  • 2009 Yale Oral History of American Music "Major Figures in American Music" interview