Frank Llewellyn Harrison

Francis Llewellyn Harrison, FBA, better known as "Frank Harrison" or "Frank Ll. Harrison" (29 September 1905 – 29 December 1987) was one of the leading musicologists of his time and a pioneering ethnomusicologist.

He became a chorister at St Patrick's Cathedral in 1912 and was educated at the cathedral grammar school (until 1920) and at Mountjoy School (1920–1922).

In 1920, he also began musical studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he studied with John F. Larchet (composition), George Hewson (organ) and Michele Esposito (piano).

A competent organist, he was deputy organist at St Patrick's from 1925 to 1928.

In 1926, he graduated Bachelor of Music at Trinity College Dublin and was awarded a doctorate (MusD) in 1929 for a musical setting of Psalm 19.

He then worked in Kilkenny for one year, serving as organist at St Canice's Cathedral and music teacher at Kilkenny College.

In 1930, Harrison emigrated to Canada to become organist at Westminster Presbyterian Church in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia.

During his years in Canada he still pursued the idea of remaining a performing musician and composer, winning three national composition competitions: for Winter's Poem (1931), Baroque Suite (1943) and Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon (1945).

On a year's leave of absence from Queen's Harrison studied composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale University, also taking courses in musicology with Leo Schrade.

In 1933, he studied briefly with Marcel Dupré in France, but returned to Canada in 1934 to become organist at Knox Presbyterian Church in Ottawa.

In 1935, he took a position as organist and choirmaster at St. George's Cathedral in Kingston, Ontario, as well as taking up the newly created post of "resident musician" at Queen's University.

His duties included "giving lectures, running a choir and an orchestra, and conducting concerts himself. His course in the history and appreciation of music was the first music course to be given for full credit at Queen's."

He resigned from St. George's in 1941 to become assistant professor of music at Queen's in 1942.

In 1946, he took up a position at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, and then moved on to Washington University in St. Louis, as head of the new Department of Music (1947–1950).

Initially trained as an organist and composer, he turned to musicology in the early 1950s, first specialising in English and Irish music of the Middle Ages and increasingly turning to ethnomusicological subjects in the course of his career.

In 1951, Harrison took the degrees of Master of Arts (M.A.) and Doctor of Music (DMus) at Jesus College, Oxford, and became lecturer (1952), senior lecturer (1956), and reader in the history of music (1962–70) there.

His Music in Medieval Britain (1958) is still a standard work on the subject, and Time, Place and Music (1973) is a key textbook on ethnomusicology.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, Harrison was the second son of Alfred Francis Harrison and Florence May, née Nash.

The Welsh origin of his second given name, "Llewellyn", derives from his maternal grandmother, a Williams from Anglesey.

He also held Visiting Professorships in musicology at Yale University (1958–9), Princeton University (spring 1961 and 1968–9), and Dartmouth College (winter 1968 and spring 1972).

In 1965, he was elected Fellow the British Academy and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford.

In 1965, he married the noted organologist Joan Rimmer, with whom he collaborated in ethnomusicological fieldwork and its scholarly documentation in a number of common publications.

From 1970 to 1980, Harrison was Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, retiring to part-time teaching in 1976.

Harrison's honorary titles also included Doctor of Laws at Queen's University, Kingston (1974), Corresponding Member of the American Musicological Society (1981), and Vice President and Chairman of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society (1985).

At Queen's also, the new Harrison-LeCaine Hall (1974) was partly named in his honour.

Harrison was married twice: with his first wife Nora he had two daughters.

He also briefly returned to Queen's University at Kingston as Queen's Quest Visiting Professor in the fall of 1980 and was Visiting Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh for the calendar year 1981.

In 1989, Harry White appreciated Harrison as "an Irish musicologist of international standing and of seminal influence, whose scholarly achievement, astonishingly, encompassed virtually the complete scope of the discipline which he espoused."

David F. L. Chadd wrote of him "He was above all things an explorer, tirelessly curious and boyishly delighted in the pursuit of knowledge, experience and ideas, and totally heedless of artificially imposed constraints and boundaries."

Since 2004, the Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI) awards a bi-annual Harrison Medal in his honour to distinguished international musicologists.

(all unpublished)