Harvey Bartlett Gaul

Harvey Bartlett Gaul was an American composer, organist, choirmaster, lecturer, music critic, and writer from Pittsburgh. He is memorialized by an annual award — the Harvey Gaul Memorial Composition Contest — bestowed to composers for outstanding work.
He was an organist for 35 years at Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh. He is well known as a composer of church music. His students included composer Gladys Rich.

Harvey Gaul Prize winners

Harvey Gaul Award of the State Federation of Music Clubs

1942 — Catherine Latta

1947: Friends of Harvey Gaul, Inc., contest administrator and sponsor

1947 — Joseph W. Grant, Albuquerque, Scherzo for organ
1947 — Robert Elmore, Wayne, Pennsylvania, The Lord Will Come, for mixed voice anthem
1947 — Francis McCollin, Philadelphia, O Little Town of Bethlehem, for small choir anthem
1951 — Sgt. Paul Nelson, staff arranger, U.S. Military Academy, Cantata, for soprano solo with chorus, violin, cello, harp
1954 — Clifford Taylor

1960: Friends of Harvey Gaul, Inc., and the Carnegie Institute of Technology Department of Music, contest co-administrators and cosponsors

1961 — Richard C. Moffatt
1962 — Merrill Ellis
1969 — Marles Nole Smith, Two Movements for Violin and Organ
19?? — Fisher Tull
1972 — Jan Bach, Three Sonnette on Woman, for tenor voice and harpsichord
1972 — Wesley Ward, University of Pittsburgh
1975 — Robert E. Jager
1975 —, Violin and Piano Sonata

1980: The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, contest administrator and sponsor

1983 — Robert D. Morris
1989 — C. Bryan Rulon
1991 — David Cleary
1997 — Derek Bermel
1999 — Brett Dietz
2001 — Matthew Fields
2001 — Pierre D. Jalbert
2003 — Daniel Kellogg
2005 — David T. Little
2007 — Stacy Garrop
2007 — Robert Paterson
2007 — Wang Jie
2009 — Ned McGowan
2009 — D. J. Sparr
2009 — Clint Needham
2011 — Ted Hearne
2011 — Dan Visconti
2011 — Sean Friar
2013 — Dan Visconti
2013 — Amy Beth Kirsten
2013 — Kyle Duffee
2013 — Viet Cuong

Notable students

Family

Harvey Bartlett Gaul married Harriette Lester Avery June 13, 1908, in Cleveland, Ohio. They had a two children: a son and a daughter.
The son, James Harvey Gaul, had been an archeologist. During World War II, as a U.S. Naval Reservist Lieutenant, he died by German firing squad in late January 1945 at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp near Linz, Austria. Having worked with the Office of Naval Intelligence, in 1944, he had been transferred to the Office of Strategic Services. He had been captured by the Germans during a combat mission in Czecho-Slovakia, a country where he had worked as an archeologist. The President of the United States presented him with the Distinguished Service Cross.
The daughter, Ione Gaul Walker, a painter, had been married to Hudson Dean Walker, an art dealer.

Death

Harvey Gaul died December 1, 1945, of injuries from an auto accident.

General references

The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, four volumes, edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie, Macmillan Press, London Obituaries on File, two volumes, compiled by Felice Levy, Facts on File, New York Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, ninth edition, edited by Laura Kuhn, Schirmer Books, New York Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Classical Musicians, by Nicolas Slonimsky, Schirmer Books, New York