Hadley Henry was an American composer and conductor. He was a prolific composer, his music is melodious and rather conservative in style.
Background
Hadley Henry was born in in Somerville, Massachusetts, to a musical family. His father was a secondary school music teacher, his mother was active in church music, and his brother Arthur went on to a successful career as a professional cellist.
Education
He studied piano, violin, and composition with his father. Hadley also studied harmony with his father and with Stephen Emery, and, from the age of fourteen, he studied composition with the prominent American composer George Whitefield Chadwick. Under Chadwick's tutelage, Hadley composed many works, including songs, chamber music, a musical, and an orchestral overture.
In 1894, he travelled to Vienna to further his studies with Eusebius Mandyczewski. During this period Hadley also befriended the German-American conductor Adolf Neuendorff, who gave him advice regarding his compositions.
Career
He returned to the United States in 1896 and took a position as the musical instructor at St. Paul's Episcopal School for Boys in Garden City, New York, where he worked until 1902. Hadley made his own debut as a conductor on 16 January 1900, at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, leading a program mostly made up of his own works.
He returned to Europe in 1904 to tour, compose, and study with Ludwig Thuille in Munich.
In 1907, he obtained a position as an assistant conductor at the opera house in Mainz. In April 1909, his first opera, Safié, premiered in Mainz under his baton.
He directed various orchestras in the United States, and from 1929 to 1932 he conducted the Manhattan Symphony Orchestra, which he organized with the purpose of sponsoring the works of American composers.
In 1933, Hadley founded the National Association for American Composers and Conductors, which exists to this day. In spite of a cancer diagnosis in 1932, he decided to pursue his dream of establishing a summer classical music festival.