Harold Boatrite

Harold Boatrite (April 2, 1932 – April 26, 2021) was an American composer.[1]

Harold Boatrite in 2002
photograph by Elliot Hoffman

After early studies with Stanley Hollingsworth, Harold Boatrite was awarded a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center where he studied composition with Lukas Foss and took part in the orchestration seminars of Aaron Copland. In 1961 he was invited by Rudolf Serkin to be composer-in-residence at the Marlboro Music Festival.[2]

He received an honorary doctorate in 1967 from the Combs College of Music and subsequently was appointed to the faculty of Haverford College, where he taught theory and composition until 1980. During that time ( 1974 to 1977 ) he served on the music panel of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

In honor of his fiftieth birthday in 1982, a series of concerts devoted exclusively to his music was presented by the Pennsylvania Alliance for American Music. Among the participants in the series were the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Thomas Jefferson University Choir and the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia.[3] Boatrite has written in a wide variety of media ranging from solo and chamber pieces to large-scale choral and orchestral works. His music has been heard throughout the United States and in Europe, most notably, at the Prague Autumn International Music Festival.

He has received many commissions including a concerto for piano and orchestra for the National Association of Composers USA, a concerto for harpsichord and strings commissioned by Temple Painter, Fantasia on a Gregorian Tune for string orchestra, harpsichord, celesta and boy choir commissioned by the Samuel S. Fels Fund, and a ballet, "Childermas," for CBS-TV which premiered on national television in 1969.

In 1992 Boatrite was appointed composer-in-residence for the Conductors Institute at the University of South Carolina. He served for many years as new music consultant to the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. His chamber music is recorded on the Capstone label and his orchestral scores are housed in the Edwin A. Fleisher Orchestral Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia.

One of Boatrite's later projects was the completion of a series of Latin motets for unaccompanied chorus.