NOTE: The New York Folklore Society Newsletter and New York Folklore Journal were replaced by Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore which debuted December, 2000.
New York Folklore Society
P.O. Box 764
Schenectady, NY 12301
518/346-7008
Fax 518/346-6617
nyfs@nyfolklore.org
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Fall/Winter 1998
FALL/WINTER 1998 NEWSLETTER MAIN PAGE
Herbert Haufrecht, 1909-1998
by Virginia Scheer
Herbert Haufrecht, composer, pianist, author, folklorist, and long-time resident of the Catskills, died on June 23 at the age of 88. I met Herb when he came to our house with an Earthwatch group to collect Catskills folk stories from my late husband, Walt Meade. Several years later Herb helped me start the Catskills Folk Music Project, a small effort to get folk musicians into classrooms at the Roxbury Central School and the Manhattan Country School. Through Herb we made connection with the wonderful folk songs he helped gather and publish while working with Camp Woodland, and we met Catskills folk musicians who shared their songs, dances, fiddle tunes, and their instruments with our students.
Because of Herb’s innate modesty, we learned only gradually about his various roles and work in life. First he came to us as a folklorist, then we learned about his musical compositions and his work in West Virginia and at Camp Woodland. After studying composition at the Cleveland Institute and the Juilliard School of Music, Herb was hired in 1937 by Charles Seeger for the Resettlement Administration of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and was sent to West Virginia. There he collected folk songs and stories, organized dances, and began an oral history project that went on for 40 years.
He returned to New York where he composed scores for the Federal Theater and the Workers Laboratory Theater. He also worked as music director for Camp Woodland, a camp near Phoenicia, New York, run by Norman Studer and Norman Cazden for kids from the New York City metropolitan area. Part of the camp’s program included collecting Catskills folk songs, recording Catskill Mountain traditions, and presenting them in an annual Folk Festival of the Catskills. In the early 1940s, Camp Woodland did not have a tape recorder for its field work, so Herb noted down by ear the tunes played and sung for the campers by Catskills folk musicians. Herb edited the results of Camp Woodland’s work in the three-volume Folk Songs of the Catskills published in 1982 by Purple Mountain Press in Fleischmanns, New York.
This song was collected by Herbert Haufrecht and appeared in his article (with Norman Cazden) "Music in the Catskills," in New York Folklore Quarterly, Spring, 1948.
At the same time, Herb created his own original compositions, some based on Catskill themes. These included "Suite on Catskill Mountain Tunes," and works for musical theater such as "We’ve Come from the City" about the building of a reservoir in the Catskills, and "Boney Quillen," a folk opera about a Catskills legendary figure. Herb also composed and arranged music for children, including the well known "Story of Ferdinand the Bull." Along the way he was national music director for the Young Audiences program and served as editor for Sing Out!, where he worked with Pete Seeger and Norman Studer.
Herb’s symphonic compositions, string suites, and piano works reflect not only his interest in folk music but also in jazz, and one was premiered by Leopold Stokowski with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1939. These works reflect his profound commitment to peace and social justice. His "Symphony for Brass and Timpani" was written as a meditation on war and peace, and his last work, a setting of Mark Twain’s "War Prayer," was written as a protest against the Persian Gulf War.
Todd Paul’s article about Herb, published in the Woodstock Times, July 2, 1998, says, "Haufrecht combined his interest in classical music with a love of folk expression and a sensitivity to the plight of the poor." Betty Haufrecht places her husband’s life work in the context of the Depression and the WPA—a time when the walls between rich and poor, as between classical and folk musical expressions, were seen to be less solid than previously supposed. Haufrecht, she says, "was one of many who fought to preserve culture through that difficult period, supported by a government that believed in feeding the unemployed on art as well as on bread."
Herb leaves his wife, Betty, two daughters, Marcia Haufrecht and Joy Lugo, a son, William Robert Haufrecht, and two grandchildren.
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