Although raised a Methodist, Harris seldom showed evidence of strong religious convictions, believing rather in what he regarded as the "natural laws" governing the behavior of the universe (some years after he and Johana, who had come from an Irish Catholic background, were married, they explored various other religions in an effort to find a "compromise" faith they could both be happy with, eventually settling on the Episcopalian Church, in which they were confirmed cl950 in Sewanee). He did, however, reveal a strong social conscience, which led him, especially during the 1930s, to join or speak on behalf of organizations, such as the Musicians' Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, that later were to come under suspicion during the McCarthy inquisitions. Two concerns that came to occupy his attention increasingly over the years were discrimination against minorities and the burgeoning materialism and despoliation of natural resources that he saw, from the 1960s on, as corrupting the fabric of American society, particularly the values of its youth. The former concern was manifest during preparations for the 1952 Cumberland Forest Festival, when he led a mass resignation of the Festival faculty over the decision of the University of the South, one of the Festival cosponsors, to deny Negro students admission to the institution's School of Theology (the composer also revealed in correspondence that he and Johana had earlier left Colorado Springs in part due to what he perceived as the anti-Semitic/anti-Mexican bias of the head of the El Pomar Foundation). The latter concern, often allied with the former, began to surface in the texts he supplied for some of his works of the 1970s, especially Whether This Nation and the Bicentennial Symphony 1976.
II. WORKS
Harris's musical oeuvre consists of some 178 completed compositions, with nearly another three dozen either left unfinished or unverified. While this fairly extensive catalogue comprises a wealth of genres and media, it is nonetheless his symphonies and chamber music that have attracted the greatest attention and the highest regard from informed observers of the musical scene. In them, he often extended his expressive and technical resources to the limit in conveying the visionary aspiration that is often perceived as a fundamental part of his musical character.
