Daron Aric Hagen

Most of Daron Aric Hagen's compositional output is opera, although he is also a prolific composer of art song. Among his song cycles are Dear Youth, which sets American Civil War texts for soprano, flute, and piano.

Photo Credit: Karen Pearson

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About

Born in Wisconsin, Hagen studied composition with Ned Rorem at the Curtis Institute and David Diamond at the Juilliard School, then worked privately with Leonard Bernstein and Lukas Foss. During the 80s-90s, he was a copyist and editor for numerous concert composers and Broadway shows, including Elliot Carter, Virgil Thomson, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Disney. A Manhattanite for 28 years, he and his wife, composer Gilda Lyons, moved Upstate in 2011 to raise their sons.

Daron Hagen is a prolific composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic music for the concert hall and stage. He is also a stage director, conductor, librettist, essayist, clinician, and collaborative pianist. His songs set the texts of numerous American writers and poets, including Walt Whitman, Sara Teasdale, Gertrude Stein, Carl Sandburg, Robinson Jeffers, Wallace Stevens, and James Merrill.

Hagen is also a passionate teacher with a commitment to social activism through art and resolute eschewing of orthodoxies. He taught for a decade at Bard College, and served on the faculties of the Curtis Institute, New York University, and the Princeton Atelier, among others. Hagen is currently a member of the Artist Faculty of the Chicago College of the Performing Arts and chairs the composition program at the Wintergreen Music Festival.

Related Information

Songs

Recordings

American Art Song Today: Alive!

(Daron Aric Hagen, Libby Larsen, John Musto and Joseph Turrin)

2009

Cosmic & Domestic Matters

(Christopher Berg and Daron Aric Hagen)

2008

Drifts & Shadows: American Song for the New Millennium

(Tom Cipullo, Daron Aric Hagen, Martin Hennessy, Richard Hundley and Lee Hoiby)

2007

New American Song Cycles

(Tom Cipullo, Libby Larsen and Daron Aric Hagen)

2002

The Opera America Songbook--Volume 1

(Mark Campbell, Richard Danielpour, Daron Aric Hagen, Lowell Liebermann, Amy Lowell, John Musto, Carl Sandburg, William Shakespeare and Robert Louis Stevenson)

2012

Songs: Daron Hagen

(Daron Aric Hagen)

1997

Sheet Music

Echo's Songs

Composer(s): Daron Aric Hagen

Song(s): 1. Never Pain to Tell Thy Love
2. I Am Not Yours
3. A Dream Within a Dream
4. Echo's Song
5. I Am Rose
6. Lost
7. Why Did You Go
8. Since You Went Away
9. Thou Wouldst Be Loved
10. Look Down, Fair Moon
11. The Mild Mother

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