(1893–1964)
Helen Eugenia Hagan transcended boundaries as a composer, a performer and an educator. She was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on January 10, 1893. Her family moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1895, and Hagan started piano lessons with her mother. She also played piano and organ at Dixwell Congregational Church. From 1906 to 1912, Hagan studied piano at the Yale School of Music. She is likely the first African American woman to attend and graduate from this institution. In 1912, Hagan premiered her Concerto in C Minor with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. It is one of the earliest surviving pieces of music by a Black female composer, and it is Hagan’s only surviving composition. The piece earned her the Samuel Simmons Sanford Fellowship, which enabled her to study abroad.
Hagan attended the Schola Cantorum in Paris, where she studied with Blanche Selva and Vincent D’Indy. After earning her certificate in 1914, she toured the United States as a concert pianist. In 1918, the Young Christian Women’s Association invited Hagan to entertain Black soldiers in France. In 1921, she performed at the Aeolian Hall in New York City, which made her the first African American to give a solo recital in a New York venue. She also earned a master’s degree from the Columbia University Teacher’s College and served as the music director at Bishop College in Marshall, Texas. Hagan remained an active church musician and educator until her death on March 6, 1964 in New York City.
In more recent years, historians have sparked renewed interest in Hagan’s legacy. Author Elizabeth Foxwell created a campaign to purchase a gravestone for the composer, who was previously buried in an unmarked grave. The campaign was successful, and on November 29, 2016, Foxwell and members of the Yale School of Music and New Haven Symphony Orchestra uncovered Hagan’s new gravestone in New Haven’s Evergreen Cemetery. In addition, Senator Richard Blumenthal acknowledged Hagan’s accomplishments in the US Senate on January 21, 2021, and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra honored Hagan with a history award on February 6, 2021.
Elizabeth Durrant
Elizabeth Durrant recently received an M.A. in Musicology from the University of North Texas. She also earned a B.A. in English Literature (St. Mary’s College of Maryland) and a B.S. in Voice (Towson University)—as a result she is dedicated to exploring intersections between these disciplines. Her master’s thesis is titled “Chicago Renaissance Women: Black Feminism in the Careers and Songs of Florence Price and Margaret Bonds.” Elizabeth plans to pursue her PhD in musicology and continue exploring her interests in Black and female composers, twentieth-century neoromantic music, and American art song.
Sources
Ege, Samantha. “Composing a Symphonist: Florence Price and the Hand of Black Women’s
Fellowship.” Women and Music, 24 (2020): 7–27.
Foxwell, Elizabeth. “Helen Hagan, Black Pianist for the AEF.” American Women in World War.
January 18, 2016. https://americanwomeninwwi.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/helen-hagan-black-pianist-for-the-aef/.
Gellman, Lucy. “Helen Hagan’s Legacy Lives On.” Arts Council Greater New Haven. February
9, 2021. https://www.newhavenarts.org/arts-paper/articles/helen-hagans-legacy-lives-on.
———. “Helen Hagan Gets Her Day.” New England Independent. September 29, 2016.
https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/article/helen_hagan_gets_a_grave/
Metzer, David. “Hagan, Helen Eugenia.” Oxford Music Online. Last modified in 2001.
https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.49459.
Ramsey, Guthrie P. “African American Music.” Oxford Music Online. Last modified in October
4, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.A2226838.
“Remembering Helen Eugenia Hagan; Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 12 (Senate – January
21, 2021).” Congress.gov. January 21, 2021. https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2021/01/21/senate-section/article/S91-1.
Sears, Ann. “New England” In Encyclopedia of African American Music, edited by Emmett G.
Price III, Tammy L. Kernodle, and Horace J. Maxile, Jr., 659-665. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood, 2010.
Southern, Eileen. Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians. Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982.
Walker-Hill, Helen. From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers
and Their Music. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2002.
“Yale Goes to War: Helen Hagan.” Yale School of Music. April 7. 2017.
https://news.yale.edu/2017/04/07/yale-goes-war-helen-hagan.
“YSM Contributes to Grave Marking Fundraiser for Helen Hagan.” Yale School of Music. April
13, 2016. https://music.yale.edu/2016/04/13/ysm-contributes-grave-marking-fundraiser-helen-hagan.
