ACHIEVEMENTS

A gifted composer, Graham has more than 300 published works to his credit.  Among them are two violin-piano sonatas, a flute-piano sonata, a piano concerto, a symphony, an orchestral suite and numerous choral works and teaching pieces.

He introduced himself to the public while still in high school, as composer, musician, and director of The Sister of Mercy, an opera he wrote in 1931, presented by the El Dorado Music Club in his senior year.  Minnie Marie Williams assisted Robert in writing the words.

The music was so superior to a majority of its kind that when another talented musician was asked to play the piano during the production, he bowed out, replying, “Graham’s music starts where mine left off.”  As a result, Robert both played the piano and directed the opera.

The two-act opera told the story of Rosalind, a beautiful young girl sent to a convent because of her love for a young man. After years of seclusion, she learns of the death of her lover.  Grieved, she is torn between reality and living in a dream world.

Robert’s work received high praise, along with constructive and encouraging criticism, from nationally known critics across the nation, who all encouraged him to continue his study of musical composition.  Among these was Rosario Scalero, director of composition of the Curtis Institute of Music at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Offered scholarships at several colleges and universities, young Graham hoped to enter the prestigious Curtis Institute. The El Dorado Music Club sponsored the presentation as a benefit, hoping to raise funds to enable this.

While later attending the Eastman School of Music in Philadelphia, some of his compositions were played by the Philharmonic Orchestra of Rochester, New York, as well as by some of the leading orchestras of New York City.  Many were broadcast on the radio.

In 1947, while serving as assistant to the Eighth Army chaplain in Japan, Graham taught music in Rikkyo Jo-Gakuin (St. Margaret’s) and at St. Paul’s University, both Anglican schools in Tokyo.  There, he found students to be hungry for learning, and also highly appreciative listeners when Robert played for them.  During stay in Japan, he was also a guest soloist with the Nippon Symphony Orchestra.

Like many G.I.’s, he often attended Christ’s Anglican church in Yokahama.  The famous church on a bluff overlooking Rokyo Bay was heavily bombed during the war.  Robert took part in the 1947 Easter dedication service, with 1000 in attendance and another 1000 turned away for lack of room.  The congregation of many denominations gathered to worship in the bomb-shattered church without roof or windows.

Bishop Todomu Sugai, who suffered in a Japanese concentration camp four and one-half years rather than disband the church, led the service.  The central altar was adorned with a four-foot Crucifix created by famous Japanese sculptor Nobumichi who had adopted the Christian faith while executing this work.

After returning to college to complete his degree, followed up by earning his master’s degree, Graham attended a six-month’s course at the Far Eastern Language School at the University of California in Berkeley.

In 1952, he and his family left for Japan to serve as a missionary teacher of music for the National Council of the Episcopal Church.  He also served as an advisor of church music at Episcopal Church Schools.  While teaching on the faculty of St. Margaret’s Episcopal school, he became the head of the music department, and a lecturer on church music at St. Paul’s University, Tokyo.

While lecturing at the All Japan Church Music Institute and Tokyo Theological Seminary, he also was an analyst for the Sei-Kwo Kai Hymnal Revisal Committee, and a critic for the Japanese Contemporary Composers Society.

The family returned to Southern California in 1954, where Graham served as Choirmaster-Organist for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Pomona.  He also served as Music Therapist at the Pacific State Hospital for Mentally Retarded Children at Spadra, California.

It was in 1955 that he first began publishing his music, with seven works, several being church anthems with works for one choral for women’s voices written by Jeana Graham.  After writing serious music for years, he had discovered that publishers were interested only in easy teaching pieces unless they came from very well known composers.  When requested to simplify a piece from his “Children’s Suite” for a forthcoming collection, he decided to write a group of eight easy pieces for piano using Aesop fable titles.  These sold very well, leading to his writing more compositions aimed at piano instruction.

In 1958, “Drop, Drop, Slow Tears” was published, a work for Passiontide in a free, flowing style.  According to the composer, it was “a direct effort on my part to set this tragic text of Phineas Fletcher, which moved me so deeply when I read it, to music in a controlled and dignified manner.”  It was written in one day, copied the next, and sent to Canyon Press where publication followed immediately.  Receiving very favorable press notices, it was performed at the twenty-eighth Annual Festival of American Music held at the Eastman School of Music, and also chosen for performance by the Moravian Music Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

“Premieres: Lyon County Suite for Orchestra” premiered in March 1959, played by the University of Wichita Symphony.  Eventually Graham had hundreds of secular and religious works published by twenty-one different publishing houses.

Graham served as judge for the National Piano Auditions in Redondo Beach and at Escondido, judging more than 200 students for the Guild. He gave several choral workshops in Los Angeles for the Keynote Music Service, where a number of his choral compositions appeared on the best-seller lists.  He was appointed as judge to evaluate pianists for six of the national piano tournaments held across the United States.

While living in Arizona, Robert’s Christmas cantata, “Dawn of Redeeming Grace,” was presented at the Music Leadership Conference at the Ridgecrest Baptist Assembly in Ridgecrest, North Carolina.  Broadman Press recorded the performance for release to the public.

Graham’s composition, “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go”, was dedicated to Miss Toyoko Kurokawa, the 80-year old matron of St. Margaret’s School in Japan.  During the war, when the Japanese military attempted to confiscate valuable religious articles from the school, she amazingly resisted them, causing them to leave empty-handed.  Graham’s song is now sung at the annual memorial services to this remarkable woman.  Graham once received a recording of the memorial event.

Living in Hawaii, Graham was looking for new ideas for an oratorio, preferably one with a “missionary theme”, when he came across the little book, The Memoirs of Henry Obookiah.  So moved was he by the story of the young Hawaiian whose life and death had inspired the coming of missionaries to Hawaii 150 years earlier, he wrote an oratorio based on the story of Henry Opukahaia (Obookiah), the first Hawaiian Christian.

Sixteen-year-old Obookiah, having seen his family slaughtered in tribal warfare, joined the crew of a passing ship.  Through his friendship with the captain, he was taken to New Haven, Connecticut, where he attended Yale University.  There he became a Christian; his earnest desire was to take the gospel to his native islands.  However, he died of typhus fever in 1818 at age twenty-six without ever returning to Hawaii.

The premiere presentation was given in February 1969 in Kawaiahao Church.  The music, in the form of Hawaiian chants and mission hymn tunes, was also performed as part of the 1970 Hawaiian Sesquicentennial. It had received enthusiastic acclaim in the press since its premiere the previous year.

In April of 1970, Graham was one of three judges for the San Francisco Opera auditions for Hawaii and Australia.

On July 18, 1976 his cantata, “The Lord’s Prayer”, had its premiere performance at the Butler County Community College Theater in El Dorado, under the sponsorship of the El Dorado Bicentennial Committee.  It was published by Broadman Press of Nashville, Tennessee.  His wife, Jeana, supplied the libretto.  According to Darryl Patten, who conducted the performance, the libretto is alternately whimsical, even amusing, exalted and spiritually uplifting, with the composer catching the varying moods of the libretto in a gem of musical excellence.

AWARDS, RECOGNITION

His first opera, performed while still in high school, won Robert Graham an award from the Kansas Federation of Music Clubs.  He was later awarded the Hubert Prize for outstanding work in the field of musical composition in 1951.

In 1956, he was chosen as one of the top twelve outstanding composers of educational music for piano in America.  Among the others chosen was Vincent Persichetti of New York City’s Juilliard School of Music, who also had ties to El Dorado, being married to El Dorado’s pianist, Dorothea Flanagan Persichetti.

The National Choir Guild chose Graham as one of the best composers of choral music in America. A biography of Robert V. Graham was published in the March 1970 edition of Journal of Church Music.


BIBLIOGRAPHY / FURTHER READING

Lawrence P. Klintworth, The Kingdom of Butler – Her People; BCHS, El Dorado, KS, 1980; pp 89-93

Local obituaries/scrapbooks, Clymer Research Library, BCHS, El Dorado, KS

Subject files, Clymer Research Library, BCHS, El Dorado, KS

The El Doradoan, El Dorado High School yearbook, El Dorado, KS, 1933

Polk’s El Dorado City Directory – 1931, R. L. Polk & Co., Kansas City, MO, 1931; pp 69

Butler Free-Lance, July 20, 1950; Jessie Perry Stratford, publ., El Dorado, KS, 1950; pp 1

Robert Graham family scrapbooks, ORIGINALS IN ARCHIVES, BCHS, El Dorado, KS

Pacific Coast Regional Convention program; Honolulu, HA; 1971

www.kancoll.org

www.rscm.u-net.co