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
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

  • Garth Edmundson
  • Mary Wiggins

    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