His college education was sporadic: there were classes at the University of California, Southern Branch (the forerunner of present-day UCLA), for one semester (Falll7) and the University of California, Berkeley, (Fall 18 and the first few months of the Spring21 semester); at least the UC, Southern Branch classes appeared to have been taken in the evening. He also explored Hindu theology on his own. No record has turned up of him pursuing any further formal education. Music figured very little in Harris's university studies: only a single Ear Training class is listed among a curriculum consisting of English, German, Biology, Economics, Philosophy, Psychology, Jurisprudence, Military Training (the Student Army Training Corps unit at the University) and Hygiene, Physical Education, and Penmanship. Toward the end of World War I (one source gives 1918), he enlisted as a private in the American Expeditionary Forces, receiving training in heavy artillery, although no record has turned up showing active duty (and certainly none overseas).
He appears to have led an active concertgoing life during this period, with attendance and ushering chores at the concerts of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Hollywood Bowl (he worked the opening night of the first season there in 1922). He also put his early study of the clarinet to use by playing the instrument in the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.
Harris began to assume family responsibilities during the early20s: while at Berkeley he met a young girl, Charlotte Schwartz, whom he married around 1922 (I have not ascertained whether the name Davida, by which she was also known, was given her by Harris or her second husband). A daughter, Jean, resulted from this union, which ended in divorce in 1924 (the composer was to maintain contact with Jean, who married and had five children by a man named Chastain, until the mid40s, when the family by his last marriage began to arrive). At least by early 1925 he had entered into a relationship with another woman, Sylvia Feningston, who became his second wife in 1926. For a while during his college years, Harris was undecided as to what career he would follow; however, after exploring a number of fields in his course work and independent study, he came to the conclusion that music was his destiny because, as he claimed, it "had no a priori meaning" and consequently could be used to a variety of ends. He began attempts at largescale composition during the Berkeley period, some initial encouragement coming from Donald Clark, a professor of History at the University, who showed Alfred Hertz, the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, a work-in-progress for chorus and orchestra. Hertz's enthusiasm led him to recommend as a possible teacher another prominent Bay Area musician, Albert Elkus; however, Elkus, aware of Harris's late start and the fact that many other aspiring composers of his age, particularly in Europe, had already acquired a solid technical background, offered little hope of success. In spite of this dispiriting reaction, the young man persisted, though he evidently heeded Elkus's remarks to the extent of accepting the need for formal study in composition. Upon returning to Los Angeles after withdrawing from U. C. Berkeley, he sought out professional guidance from, among others, Fannie Charles Dillon and Arthur Bliss (who gave him a few orchestration lessons, for which Harris traveled to Santa Barbara).
