Houston Bright

Robert Houston Bright (January 21, 1916 – December 8, 1970) was a composer of American music, known primarily for his choral works.

The best-known of these is an original spiritual "I Hear a Voice A-Prayin'," but he wrote dozens of highly regarded pieces over the course of his career, including a number of instrumental compositions.

Bright was, among his peers, well known and respected as a composer, choral director, and professor.

He spent his entire academic career in the Music Department of West Texas State College (now West Texas A&M University).

Houston Bright was born January 21, 1916, in Midland, Texas.

He was the son of a Methodist minister, the Rev. John R. Bright.

Houston learned to read music and play the piano while still a small boy; he composed his first piece of music at the age of ten.

In his teens he studied voice, clarinet, and cornet, as well as piano.

After graduating from high school in 1932, he attended West Texas State.

He organized a dance band, the "Kampus Katz," in the 1935–1936 school year; the band played locally and also toured Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado during the following summer.

While a college student Houston also became known as a classical vocalist, singing baritone in solo recitals and as a soloist in college oratorio concerts; his brother, Weldon, sang tenor.

He attended high school in Shamrock, in the Texas Panhandle (although the 1938 West Texas yearbook, Le Mirage, shows his hometown to be Plainview).

Bright received his Bachelor of Science degree in music in 1938.

Afterward he was the first student in his college to be designated as a "graduate assistant."

He received his Master of Arts degree in music education in 1940 and took a full-time faculty appointment at that time.

On June 5, 1941, he was wed to Frances May Usery, a West Texas State piano instructor whom he had met while he was still a student.

"Music brought us together," he later said.

"She was my accompanist."

Beginning as an instructor, Bright rose to the rank of full professor; he taught composition and music theory, and directed the college's A Cappella Choir, which he founded in 1941.

The various West Texas choirs (which included a larger Chorale and a women's choir, along with other, smaller ensembles) frequently toured the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, and they premiered many of Bright's works.

During World War II, Bright served as an Army officer in Europe 1942–1945, leaving the service as a captain in the infantry to return to West Texas.

His earliest published compositions are the choral pieces "Weep You No More, Sad Fountains" and "Evening Song of the Weary," both dating from 1949.

(Weldon Bright, also musically gifted, went on to become a jazz pianist and organist, the leader of a regionally popular dance band, and music director of Amarillo's KGNC radio station during the 1950s; after leaving radio, he, too, turned to teaching music.)

Through summer study and a leave of absence, he completed his work for a Ph.D. degree in musicology in 1952 at the University of Southern California.

There he studied conducting under Dr. Charles C. Hirt, musicology under visiting professor Curt Sachs, and composition under Austrian émigré composer Ernest Kanitz and American composer Halsey Stevens.

His dissertation was titled The Early Tudor Part-Song from Newarke to Cornyshe.

In 1965, college president James P. Cornette, honoring Bright's twenty-five years of creative service to the college, granted him the title of Composer-in-Residence.

Throughout his three decades at West Texas, Bright was surrounded by, and worked with, considerable musical talent.

Some of his early works (both choral and instrumental) were composed specifically with West Texas music ensembles in mind, and dedicated to them.

Among his academic colleagues was Royal Brantley, the original musical director and eventual artistic director of the long-running outdoor musical drama Texas, performed each summer at nearby Palo Duro Canyon.

In the decades following Bright's death in 1970, West Texas and the Texas A&M Board of Regents honored him as a Professor Emeritus and a music department scholarship was created in his memory.

Bright's professional memberships included the American Choral Directors Association, the Choral Conductors Guild of America, the Texas Composers Guild, and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).

He also conducted numerous workshops, including two for the Texas Choral Directors Association.

Bright continued composing and teaching until his death, of cancer, on December 8, 1970 in Canyon.

He was 54 years old.

His widow, the pianist and teacher Frances Usery Bright, donated his original manuscripts and other papers to the West Texas A&M University Music Library the following year.

In 1974, Shawnee Press published his "We'll Sing a Glory" as a concluding opus posthumous.

Another colleague was band director Gary Garner, who was later honored by the Texas Bandmasters Association as 1987's "Bandmaster of the Year."

Hugh Sanders, who served as Bright's assistant director for the West Texas choral program, subsequently succeeded him as its director; Sanders ultimately gained great acclaim as choral director at Baylor University.

Bright also mentored the young choral teacher Alfred R. Skoog, who went on to serve as director of choral activities at Arkansas State University for over three decades.