LEROY ANDERSON
1908 — 1975


   The music of Leroy Anderson is firmly entrenched in American popular culture. A composer of distinctive and delightful miniatures, his best-known works include Sleigh Ride, The Syncopated Clock and Blue Tango. He wrote nearly all his pieces originally for orchestra, then transcribed most of them himself for band and often for other groups of instruments as well. Mitchell Parrish added lyrics to seven of the works after the pieces were written.

   "Leroy Anderson is considered by many to be one of America's four greatest 20th century composers of instrumental music, alongside George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Charles Ives."
    - Mark Azzarra, Waterbury (Connecticut) Republican


 


Swedish Parents


   Leroy Anderson was born on June 29, 1908 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His parents were Swedish immigrants who had come to the United States as children. They lived at 269 Norfolk Street in Cambridge. His father, Bror Anton Anderson, came from near Kristianstad in the province of Skåne. He worked as a postal clerk at the Central Square post office and played the mandolin. His mother, Anna Margareta Anderson, came from Stockholm. She was an organist at the Swedish Church in Cambridge. They moved to 12 Chatham Street when Leroy was one year old. As one writer has said, "that suburb of Boston would continue to be the center of Anderson's world for the next three decades."


   He lived at 12 Chatham Street with his parents and brother from 1909 until 1936, when he moved to New York City. He often returned to 12 Chatham Street where his parents continued to live. It was at this house that he arranged many Broadway show tunes for Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra, and he composed his Irish Suite in eleven days.


   Leroy said that he received all his education on one street - Broadway, Cambridge. He attended Harvard Grammar School, at the corner of Harvard Street and Broadway, and Cambridge High and Latin School (now Cambridge Rindge and Latin School). In 1919 he began piano and music studies at the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1925 he composed, orchestrated and conducted the Cambridge High and Latin School orchestra in the class song for his graduation. He was in high school when his father bought him a trombone so that he could play in the front row of the Harvard University Band where he had been accepted as an underclassman.


1926 - 1930    Harvard Years


   At Harvard Leroy studied musical harmony with Walter Spalding, counterpoint with Edward Ballantine, canon and fugue with William C. Heilman, and orchestration with Edward B. Hill and Walter Piston. Leroy received a B.A., Magna cum laude in 1929 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned an M.A., Music in 1930. In Harvard University Graduate School, he studied composition with Walter Piston and Georges Enesco; organ with Henry Gideon and double bass with Gaston Dufresne of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

   He continued his studies at Harvard through the early 1930's working toward a PhD in German and Scandinavian languages(Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Old Norse), while working as a music tutor at Radcliffe College. A gifted linguist, Leroy eventually mastered Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, German, French, Italian, and Portuguese in addition to the English and Swedish of his upbringing. Not thinking that a career in music held much promise, Anderson intended to become a language teacher. He applied for and was offered a position at a private school in Pennsylvania. At the last moment he decided to give music a final try and sent his regrets to the school in Pennsylvania. This turned out to be a pivotal decision for him.


1931 - 1939    Boston Pops Orchestra arranger


   As a graduate student Leroy became Director of the Harvard University Band and wrote numerous clever arrangements for the band that brought him to the attention of Arthur Fiedler, Director of the Boston Pops Orchestra. His first arrangement for Fiedler in 1936 was a medley of Harvard songs - Harvard Fantasy. In 1938 the Boston Pops performed his first composition, Jazz Pizzicato. It was an immediate hit. Fiedler encouraged him to write original compositions for the orchestra. Leroy wrote Jazz Legato in 1939. This was followed by a succession of his now famous delightful miniatures. Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra were the first to perform and record many of these compositions. During these years Leroy also performed along with his brother Russell in various popular dance orchestras. They also played on cruise ships of the Norwegian Line crossing between New York and Scandinavia.


1940 - 1945    WW II - Military Intelligence


   At the start of World War II Leroy was drafted as a private into the U.S. Army, which made use of his fluency in languages. He married Eleanor Firke before shipping off to Iceland where he served as a translator and interpreter in the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps, beginning in 1942. While there he wrote an Icelandic Grammar for the U.S. Army. After promotion to the rank of Captain and while assigned to the Pentagon as Chief of the Scandinavian Department of Military Intelligence, he wrote The Syncopated Clock. While still in service, Leroy conducted the Boston Pops Orchestra in premieres of The Syncopated Clock and Promenade. Their first child, Jane, was born while the Andersons lived in Arlington, Virginia. Leroy was offered the position of U.S. Military Attaché to Sweden but declined, deciding that composing was now to be his sole occupation. He was released from active duty in the Army in 1945 and moved to New York City. Their son Eric was born here.


1946 - 1952    International Success


   The Andersons spent the summer of 1946 at Painter Hill in Woodbury, Connecticut. It was here that he composed Sleigh Ride during a heat wave. Two years later the Andersons settled in Woodbury permanently. Sons Rolf and Kurt were born in the early 1950's. The Andersons moved into their new home at Grassy Hill in Woodbury in 1953. During these years Anderson wrote many of his well-loved compositions, among them Blue Tango, The Typewriter, Serenata, Belle of the Ball, Bugler's Holiday and Forgotten Dreams.


   Arthur Fiedler continued to premier Leroy's works including Sleigh Ride, Fiddle-Faddle and Trumpeter's Lullaby, until 1950. After that Leroy conducted the premieres of his works when he recorded them for Decca Records. Among these pieces were Belle of the Ball, Blue Tango, Bugler's Holiday, Forgotten Dreams, Horse and Buggy, Plink, Plank, Plunk!, Serenata, The Typewriter and Waltzing Cat. It was his own recording of Blue Tango that made #1 on the Hit Parade of 1952. The popularity of Leroy Anderson's music was rapidly spreading around the world. By 1952 Leroy had established himself as the pre-eminent American composer of light concert music.


1953 - 1959    Piano Concerto and Musical Theater


   Though Leroy primarily utilized the medium of "orchestral miniature", he also experimented with the longer form in his most ambitious work - Concerto in C for Piano and Orchestra. It received its premiere in 1954 with Anderson as conductor and Eugene List as soloist. After mixed reviews he withdrew the composition with intentions to revise it. He later remarked that he thought the composition had great merit but that it could be slightly improved. Although he never got around to making the intended changes, the Anderson family released the work posthumously (unrevised) in 1988. The Concerto in C is now performed many times around the world each year. He also tried his hand at musical theater.

   He wrote Goldilocks, his only musical, with Walter and Jean Kerr. It opened October 11, 1958 in New York City. While the story was criticized as being weak, critics praised Anderson's score.


1960 - 1969    Television and Guest Conducting


   Over the years, Leroy's pieces have been employed as themes in both radio and television. In the early 50's, CBS-TV chose The Syncopated Clock as the theme for its new program "The Late Show". CBS used it for more than 25 years. Plink, Plank, Plunk ! was known to many in the '50's as the theme for the TV game show "I've Got a Secret", and The Typewriter has become a favorite for a variety of radio news productions.


   During these years Leroy often took his family to New York to see Broadway shows and to visit the sites of the city he and his wife had come to know. In 1968 the Andersons spent the summer in Europe where the composer introduced his children to a continent where he fit right in. Back home in Woodbury he was an active member of St. Paul's Episcopal Church which the family regularly attended. He guest-conducted orchestras throughout the United States, Canada and Sweden. In the late sixties Leroy served on the boards of the New Haven and Hartford Symphonies and also as acting manager of the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra.


1970 - 1975    Recognition


   In 1972 the Boston Pops Orchestra paid tribute to Leroy in a televised concert that was broadcast nationwide. Leroy appeared on the program and guest-conducted one piece. It was, as he said to his wife Eleanor, "the most important evening of my life." Leroy returned to Cambridge the following year to conduct the orchestra at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in 1973. Anderson continued to compose and to conduct his music throughout North America until his death from cancer in 1975.


1976 - 2006    Honors and Tributes


   Leroy Anderson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1976 at 1620 Vine Street for his contribution to the recording industry. The Woodbury Lions Club built a bandstand on Woodbury's North Green in 1986, dedicated it to Leroy Anderson and gave it to the town of Woodbury. Leroy was elected posthumously to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1988.


   In 1995 Harvard University named its new Harvard University Band headquarters the Anderson Band Center in honor of Leroy Anderson. Cambridge, Massachusetts Mayor Michael Sullivan and the Cambridge City Council dedicated the corner of Chatham and Crawford Streets as Leroy Anderson Square on May 31, 2003. Leroy Anderson's grave is in Woodbury's New North Cemetery.


2007 - 2009    Leroy Anderson Centennial


   During the Leroy Anderson's Centennial, orchestras throughout the world performed tribute concerts during the 2007-2009 concert seasons which celebrated the composer's musical legacy. Conductor Leonard Slatkin has recorded all of Leroy Anderson's compositions with the BBC Concert Orchestra which have been released on five CDs by Naxos Records. In September 2006 Kultur released the biographical video "Once Upon a Sleigh Ride" on DVD with additional material not on the original VHS tape. In conjunction with Yale University, the Anderson Family has created an extensive exhibit about the composer's life and music which is being displayed at libraries and museums across the country.


The Legacy of Leroy Anderson


   The music of Leroy Anderson is firmly entrenched in American popular culture and is enjoyed by millions of people throughout the world. His music continues to be extensively recorded and performed by a wide range of musicians. Among them are symphony orchestras, concert and marching bands, classical and jazz ensembles, vocalists of many styles, virtuosi of almost every instrument as well as music students of all ages.


   Anderson's music is frequently used to entertain visiting dignitaries at the White House as well as to greet U.S. Presidents when visiting foreign countries. Its use by radio and television as background music for commercials and theme music for many programs ensures Anderson's music remains familiar with each new generation. More than 50 years after Anderson wrote many of his compositions, in the words of John Williams, composer and laureate conductor of the Boston Pops - "Anderson's music remains as young and fresh as the very day on which it was composed."


   Almost 30 years after Leroy Anderson's death, his music has taken on a timeless quality. "It's hard to imagine that someone actually wrote Sleigh Ride," remarked one listener. "It's as though it came from the ether. Sleigh Ride is one of those pieces of music that seems as though it has always been around; just another wonderful part of everyday life." It is safe to say that somewhere in the world someone is either performing or listening to Leroy Anderson's music every moment of every day.


   Anderson sensed during his later years that the music he wrote had achieved an identity and a popularity that surpassed his own fame as the composer. At the time he was probably right. In recent years however, the awareness of Leroy Anderson has increased dramatically. This is due in part to new recordings of his music, re-releases of Anderson's original recordings on compact disc, numerous concerts of his works, a PBS video about him broadcast to millions each year since 1999, a book about the composer, and to this website.

- the Leroy Anderson family
January 2006