Harris departed for France in 1926, under a Guggenheim fellowship award. (A second Guggenheim would come in 1928.) While studying with Boulanger Harris wrote the Concerto for Piano, Clarinet and String Quartet, and it was premiered in the spring of 1927 at a concert of the Soci*t* Musicale Ind*pendant. This work is generally viewed as his first major success, and his 1928 Piano Sonata also showed talent, as well. His American Portrait of 1929 was viewed by some as his crowning achievement during his years of study with Boulanger. Still, Harris would eventually withdraw the work, and use its materials for his first two symphonies and other compositions. In 1929 the composer suffered a fall when he slipped on steps at a cottage in Juziers, France, that caused severe damage to his spine. The medical treatment in France that followed proved inadequate, and Harris found it necessary to return to the United States for surgery. The operation was successful, though the composer spent a long time recuperating. During this period (1930), owing to convalescent restrictions to refrain from sitting at his piano, Harris learned to compose away from that instrument, which he found a liberating practice in his artistic regimen. In 1931 he returned to the family home in California for a brief time, and accepted a fellowship award from the Pasadena Music and Art Association. The following year he began teaching composition at the Juilliard School of Music in New York for summer sessions only, and would retain the post until 1938. Several works date from these years, including the Toccata, for orchestra (1931), and the Concerto for String Sextet (1932). In 1933 Aaron Copland introduced Harris to Serge Koussevitzky at a Washington, D.C. chamber music concert. Koussevitzky asked the composer to write a symphony, with the promise of a performance by his Boston Symphony Orchestra. Harris eagerly set about the task of fulfilling the maestro's request, turning out his First Symphony, the so-named Symphony 1933, derived from materials in previous works. Koussevitsky premiered it in Boston in 1934 to an enthusiastic reception. This was the composer's greatest success to date. His Second Symphony followed, but failed at its Boston Symphony premiere in 1935 (led by the orchestra's assistant conductor, Richard Burgin, owing to a dispute between the composer and Koussevitzky). That same year Harris accepted a post teaching composition at Westminster Choir School in Princeton, New Jersey. His association with this school is generally considered important in the development of his choral writing. In 1936 Harris married for the fourth and last time. His bride was Beulah Duffy, a Canadian pianist on the faculty at Juilliard, whom he first met in 1934. At his behest she changed her first name to Johana, after Johann Sebastian Bach. As a wedding present Harris delivered to her his Quintet for Piano and Strings (1936). She was a Roman Catholic and Harris was raised a Methodist. To avoid problems in their marriage, the pair agreed on a compromise religion, that of the Episcopal Church. The composer, however, rarely attended Episcopal services. Their relationship remained strong over the years, Johana's warm personality and considerable talent proving an inspiration and joy in the composer's life.

Harris failed to satisfy a 1937 (?) commission to write a violin concerto for Jascha Heifetz, as both he and the performer found the partially-composed work (first movement only) unsuitable. This failure, however, contained the seeds of his greatest success. Harris reused material from the unfinished concerto and fashioned his Third Symphony, written on a commission from National Symphony Orchestra conductor Hans Kindler. Upon completion of the work, however, the composer apparently realized its worth warranted a premiere far more prestigious than the NSO could offer, and thus showed it to Koussevitzky, hoping to rehabilitate his relationship with the influential maestro. The conductor agreed to perform the work, and it was a success at its 1939 premiere, though far from an overwhelming one. But it quickly became a sensation afterward, achieving over thirty performances from major American orchestras in the 1941-42 season alone and gaining currency in Mexico and England. In 1940 Koussevitzky recorded it for RCA, and that same year Toscanini, not the greatest proponent of American music, led a performance of it with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The work even received lavish kudos in Time magazine. It should be noted that the composer made some minor changes in the symphony after its premiere.

part four