Harold Newman papers

1921-1993 [bulk 1941-1988]

Harold Newman was born in the Lower East Side of New York City, circa 1903. His first definitive experience with music occurred in 1908 during kindergarten class, when his teacher played the piano and he asked her after class to play more for him. Newman's family directed his education towards business, resulting in his first career as an accountant. However, he continued to study music privately, as well as English literature. It was the latter pursuit that changed his life; while reading Shakespeare's Hamlet, he encountered a line about a "recorder," an instrument he'd never heard of before. He learned to play one, and quickly became so enthusiastic about the instrument that he became the first president of the American Recorder Society, a post he held from 1939-1951.

In 1940 Newman befriended the American composer Gail Kubik, and commissioned the first American composition for recorder - Suite for Three Recorders. In order to make this piece available, Newman formed a publishing firm named after himself and Kubik - Hargail Recorder Music Publishers. He also established a record label called Hargail Records to distribute recordings of the recorder, as well as other contemporary American music. During the 1950s his interests expanded to include folk music, as he saw the opportunity to publish music for recorder and guitar, and to help make the recorder part of the American cultural pattern. He also promoted the recorder in elementary schools, as a simple and inexpensive way to teach children about music.

The 1950s and 1960s were a boom time for recorder sales worldwide, and Hargail played a role as an American distributor for two foreign companies, Küng (Switzerland) and Toyama (Japan). Hargail's relationship with Toyama began with exclusive distribution rights for the Northeastern states, and in the mid-1960s, the two companies developed the plastic Aulos recorder line. Hargail also manufactured its own plastic recorder, named Harvard, and distributed it internationally.

In addition to commissioning works for the recorder, Newman contributed to more than 25 publications, either as the author, arranger, or editor of collected works. In 1975 he began work on a memoir and history of the recorder. Titled The House that Hamlet Built, it was not published. Newman continued to compose music for the recorder through the 1980s, and he remained president of Hargail until his death. He died on August 6, 1989, and left a bequest to the City University of New York, where a music library is named after him.