About Howard Hanson
Howard Harold Hanson was an American composer, conductor, educator and music theorist. As director for forty years of the Eastman School of Music, he raised its quality and provided opportunities for commissioning and performing American classical music. In 1944, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 4, and received numerous other awards, including the George Foster Peabody Award for Outstanding Entertainment in Music in 1946. In 1916, Hanson was hired for his first full-time position as a music theory and composition teacher at the College of the Pacific in California. In 1921 Hanson was the first winner of the American Academy in Rome's "Rome Prize" in musical composition, awarded for both The California Forest Play and his symphonic poem Before the Dawn. Hanson held the position of director for forty years, during which he created one of the most prestigious music schools in America.
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