Biography
Barbara Harbach maintains an active presence across multiple musical domains, functioning simultaneously as composer, organist, harpsichordist, and teacher while also serving as an editor who established the journal Women of Note and issued scores by overlooked composers.
She entered the world in Pennsylvania on February 14, 1946, completed a B.A. at Penn State University with a concentration in music that encompassed organ and harpsichord study, then obtained a master’s degree at Yale before earning a doctorate in composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Additional training took her to the Musikhochschule Frankfurt, where she worked on organ repertoire under Helmut Walcha; despite his stated view that women had no place in the profession, she continued and received a Konzertdiplom. Her first published score, Praise Him with the Trumpet for chorus and organ, appeared in 1977. Subsequent output spans nearly every major concert genre, encompassing at least ten symphonies together with chamber pieces, choral compositions, an opera, keyboard music, and musical theater. Two large-scale works draw on the writings of novelist Willa Cather: the symphony One of Ours and the 2009 opera O Pioneers!.
Her discography reaches back to the late 1980s, when she released the initial volume in a series of twentieth-century harpsichord recordings on the Gasparo label. She has maintained ties to Gasparo while also appearing on MSR Classics, Albany, and her own Hester Park imprint. Performance interests center on Bach, earlier keyboard and organ works by women composers, and a broad spectrum of twentieth-century repertoire. As an organ recitalist she has maintained an extensive itinerary that includes appearances throughout the United States, Europe, and parts of Asia as distant as Siberia.
Teaching positions have included Washington State University, the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, and the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point; since 2004 she has served at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, where she now holds the title of professor emerita. Critical recognition arrived with The Music of Barbara Harbach, Vol. 1, which received both a Recording of the Year citation from MusicWeb International in 2008 and a Critic’s Choice designation from the American Record Guide. In 1993 she co-established the Women of Note Quarterly and continues as its editor, in addition to preparing performing editions of early music by women composers. By 2022 more than sixty recordings featured her either as composer or performer, among them Music of Barbara Harbach, Vol. 15: Orchestral Music VI, issued that year on MSR Classics.
She entered the world in Pennsylvania on February 14, 1946, completed a B.A. at Penn State University with a concentration in music that encompassed organ and harpsichord study, then obtained a master’s degree at Yale before earning a doctorate in composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Additional training took her to the Musikhochschule Frankfurt, where she worked on organ repertoire under Helmut Walcha; despite his stated view that women had no place in the profession, she continued and received a Konzertdiplom. Her first published score, Praise Him with the Trumpet for chorus and organ, appeared in 1977. Subsequent output spans nearly every major concert genre, encompassing at least ten symphonies together with chamber pieces, choral compositions, an opera, keyboard music, and musical theater. Two large-scale works draw on the writings of novelist Willa Cather: the symphony One of Ours and the 2009 opera O Pioneers!.
Her discography reaches back to the late 1980s, when she released the initial volume in a series of twentieth-century harpsichord recordings on the Gasparo label. She has maintained ties to Gasparo while also appearing on MSR Classics, Albany, and her own Hester Park imprint. Performance interests center on Bach, earlier keyboard and organ works by women composers, and a broad spectrum of twentieth-century repertoire. As an organ recitalist she has maintained an extensive itinerary that includes appearances throughout the United States, Europe, and parts of Asia as distant as Siberia.
Teaching positions have included Washington State University, the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, and the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point; since 2004 she has served at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, where she now holds the title of professor emerita. Critical recognition arrived with The Music of Barbara Harbach, Vol. 1, which received both a Recording of the Year citation from MusicWeb International in 2008 and a Critic’s Choice designation from the American Record Guide. In 1993 she co-established the Women of Note Quarterly and continues as its editor, in addition to preparing performing editions of early music by women composers. By 2022 more than sixty recordings featured her either as composer or performer, among them Music of Barbara Harbach, Vol. 15: Orchestral Music VI, issued that year on MSR Classics.
Albums
Karl Höller: Fantasie, Improvisationen and Triptychon - Music for Violin, Cello and Organ
2016
Johann Sebastian Bach: Organ Music
2015
Milken Archive, Vol. 4 Album 13: Organ Music for the Synagogue – Cycle of Life in Synagogue & Home
2015
Bach and Handel: Music for Two Trumpets and Organ
2014
Thomas Haigh: 6 Concertos for Harpsichord
2013
Music of Barbara Harbach, Vol. 3: A Celebration of Hymns - Toccatas, Flourishes and Fugues
2012
Rosner and Pinkham: 20th Century Harpsichord Music
2012
J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988
2002