Harvey Worthington Loomis (February 5, 1865-December 25, 1930) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 composer. He is remembered today for his associations with the Indianist movement

Indianist movement

The Indianist movement was a movement in American classical music that flourished from the 1880s until the 1920s. It was based on attempts to synthesize American Indian musical ideas with some of the basic principles of Western music...

 and the Wa-Wan Press

Wa-Wan Press

The Wa-Wan Press was an American music publishing company founded in 1901 by composer Arthur Farwell in Newton Center, Massachusetts. The firm concentrated on publishing compositions by so-called Indianist movement members—composers who incorporated traditional Native American music into...

.

Loomis was born in Brooklyn, New York, and in his youth won a scholarship of three years' study at the National Conservatory

National Conservatory of Music of America

The National Conservatory of Music of America was an institution for higher education in music founded in 1885 in New York City by Jeannette Meyers Thurber...

. There he studied with Antonín Dvořák

Antonín Dvorák

Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...

, and quickly became a favored pupil of the Bohemian composer. He gained his greatest fame from the collection Lyrics of the Red Man, settings of American Indian

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 songs rescored for piano. Loomis also composed works for children; also in his catalog may be found numerous stage works, including comic opera

Comic opera

Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...

s and pantomime

Pantomime

Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...

s; sonata

Sonata

Sonata , in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata , a piece sung. The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era...

s for violin and for piano; and incidental music

Incidental music

Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....

 to numerous stage plays. Little of his music has been committed to disc, although some of the Lyrics may be found on a recording of Indianist piano music released by Naxos Records

Naxos Records

Naxos Records is a record label specializing in classical music. Through a number of imprints, Naxos also releases genres including Chinese music, jazz, world music, and early rock & roll. The company was founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, a German-born resident of Hong Kong.Naxos is the largest...

on the Marco Polo label.

Loomis died on Christmas Day, 1930.

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