Harl Mcdonald was born in Boulder, Colorado, on July 27, 1899. His music
study took place in Redlands, California and at the University of
Southern California. The winning of prizes from the American Federation
of Music Clubs for two orchestral works enabled him to go to Europe and
attend the Leipzig Conservatory. In Germany, his symphonic fantasy,
_Mojave_, was successfully introduced by the Berlin State Opera
Orchestra. After returning to the United States he was appointed in 1926
to the music faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he later
became professor of music, and finally head of the music department. At
the University he conducted various choral groups which appeared with
the Philadelphia Orchestra. From 1939 until his death he was manager of
the Philadelphia Orchestra, which introduced many of his orchestral
compositions. McDonald wrote four symphonies, a two-piano concerto, a
violin concerto, and various suites and tone poems for orchestra. He
died in Princeton, New Jersey, on March 30, 1955.
The _Children’s Symphony_ was a work intended to teach children
something about symphonic form through melodies they knew and loved. The
form of the symphony is adhered to—in the presentation of two themes,
their development, and recapitulation. Simple and unsophisticated, this
symphony makes ideal listening for children, but there is enough charm
here to provide considerable enjoyment to older people as well. In the
first movement, McDonald uses for his two main themes, “London Bridge”
and “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” In the second movement we hear “Little Bo
Peep” and “Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be?”; in the third, “Farmer in
the Dell” and “Jingle Bells”; and in the finale, “Honey Bee” and “Snow
Is Falling On My Garden.”
_Rhumba_, for symphony orchestra, is the third movement of McDonald’s
Symphony No. 2 (1935). But this movement (which in the symphony
displaces the conventional scherzo) is so popular that it is often
played apart from the rest of the work. The symphony itself was inspired
by the turbulent 1930’s, with its labor conflicts, breadlines,
unemployment, and depression. _Rhumba_ injected a gay note into these
somber proceedings, attempting to interpret “the passionate search after
good times and diversions, and the restless pursuit of intoxicated
pleasures,” as the composer explained. McDonald goes on to say that he
here used the rumba rhythm because he liked it and because it seemed to
him to be the pulse of those times.