Although Harris's orchestral compositions made little headway during the early30s, some of the chamber works, particularly the Concerto for Piano, Clarinet, et al and Quartet No. 1, brought his name to the attention of a wider concertgoing public. In addition, he had made the acquaintance of the noted patroness Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, whose Foundation in the Library of Congress was eventually to be responsible for commissioning some of his most important and durable compositions. In fact, it was at a Spring33 Coolidge concert in the Library that two of the most significant events in his career occurred: the renewal of what until then had been a tenuous acquaintance with conductor Serge Koussevitzky and his befriending by the W. W. Nortons. Koussevitzky commissioned a symphony, and the Nortons offered him the use for the summer of their New York apartment in which to write it (Mary Dowes Herter Norton, who was to remain a lifelong friend, collaborated with Harris a year or two later on a transcription of Bach's Art of the Fugue).
The Symphony 1933, with which the composer responded to the Koussevitzky commission, was accorded a mixed reception on the occasion of its premiere the following January by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the Russian conductor's baton, but the work nonetheless provided him with his first major orchestral performance in many years and was regarded by some thoughtful observers as a harbinger of great future accomplishment.
While in the East for the premiere of Symphony 1933, Harris gave a series of lectures at the New School for Social Research and also secured a summer teaching position at Juilliard, which lasted from 1934 to 1938. It was during his second summer there (1935) that he met Beula Duffey. She had been a child prodigy in both piano and composition (some of her original compositions have appeared on programs over the years under various nomsdeplume, one of them Patrico Juan Eire) and had joined the Juilliard faculty at age 15 as its youngest member. After a period of scholarshipsupported study abroad at the Berlin Hochschule, she had returned to the school not long before the composer's arrival. The two fell in love and were married 10/10/36 in the town of Union, Oregon, after he had secured what was evidently an acrimonious divorce from Hilda, who returned to England. Harris re-named his bride Johana, in honor of J. S. Bach, and the couple formed a close personal and artistic partnership that, occasional marital strains (especially during the early50s) notwithstanding, was to survive for nearly forty-three years (on 12/18/81, two years following the composer's death, Johana was to remarry, this time with one of her students, John Heggie.) She proved to be an extraordinarily rare individual who was able not only to weather the peregrinations and storms of a hectic, at times seemingly nomadic existence, but also to maintain a balance between the dual concerns of career and family, serving as a devoted, virtually revered, mother to the five children who arrived between the mid40s and mid50s: Patricia (1944), Shaun (1946), Daniel (1947), Maureen (1955), and Lane (1957).
