Harry Somers

Harry Stewart Somers, CC (September 11, 1925 – March 9, 1999) was a contemporary Canadian composer. Somers earned the unofficial title of “Darling of Canadian Composition.” He was a founding member of the Canadian League of Composers (CLC) and involved in the formation of other Canadian music organizations, including the Canada Council for the Arts and the Canadian Music Centre. He received commissions from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Canada Council for the Arts. Somers did not become involved in formal musical study until he reached his teenage years in 1939 when he met a doctor and his wife—both pianists—who introduced him to classical works. Somers described this first encounter years later: “A spark was ignited, and he became obsessed with music. Almost from that instant, he knew music would be his life, for better or for worse.” Musical education Somers was 14 when he began his study of piano under the tutelage of Dorothy Hornfelt, the neighborhood piano teacher. Weinzweig set up a program of traditional harmony study for him to study the 12-tone techniques. (Schoenberg had enforced similarly strict lessons in traditional harmony upon his own pupils, even as