By the time of the Third's premiere Harris and his wife had settled in New York, having for a while lived in New Jersey. In 1940 Harris, who had left his positions at Juilliard and the Westminster Choir School, accepted a post at Cornell University, and he and his wife then moved to Ithaca, New York. He also now completed his Fourth Symphony, the so-called Folksong Symphony, for chorus and orchestra. Its premiere at the 1940 American Spring Festival, hosted by the Eastman School of Music, was a success, but not nearly on the level with that of the Third. Around this time Harris began writing music for band, including Cimarron (1941) and Freedom's Land (1942), which, like several of his works in this genre, incorporates a chorus. His Fifth Symphony (1942; rev. 1946) came on a commission from Koussevitzky and was also considered a success. In 1943 Johana gave birth to a daughter, Patricia. Later that year the family relocated to Colorado Springs, where the composer had spent previous summers collaborating with Hanya Holm on some ballet projects.

Harris was appointed composer-in-residence at The Colorado College, and his wife was given a faculty post there teaching piano. His next major work, the Sixth Symphony, the Gettysburg (1943-44), was also premiered by Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony (February, 1944), but failed to gain much notice. In 1945 the composer was appointed to serve under the U.S. Office of War Information as its Director of Music, a position entailing the promotion and dissemination of American music abroad.

The following year the composer took his growing family to Logan, Utah, where he took the position of composer-in-residence at Utah State College. By now his most productive years were behind him, though he would yet produce some significant works. The post-war years also seemed to usher in a restlessness in his life. He remained in Utah only a year, then moved to Nashville, Tennessee, again assuming a position of composer-in-residence, this time at Peabody College, and also taking on a faculty position there. But this resettlement lasted only two years (1949-51), after which Harris and his wife moved to Pittsburgh, on a Mellon Foundation Grant, and accepted faculty posts at the Pennsylvania College for Women (shortly to be renamed Chatham College). He did produce a violin concerto in 1949, but his Seventh Symphony (1952; rev. 1955) was perhaps his finest work from the post-war era. Commissioned by Koussevitzsky and premiered by Rafael Kubelik and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, owing to the death of the former in 1951, the work achieved some success, even eliciting a recording from Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1955. From the early 1950s onward the composer's works were turning up regularly on the new Long-Playing recordings.

In October, 1955, Harris was involved in an automobile accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, leaving him with a badly fractured leg. He recuperated slowly, remaining wheel-chair bound for several months before finally walking again. A daughter, Maureen, was born to the Harrises in 1955, and another, Lane, in 1957. Harris accepted a position on the faculty of Indiana University in 1957, relocating to Bloomington alone for a time, his wife remaining at Chatham College until 1958. In 1958 Harris, along with composers Peter Mennin, Roger Sessions and Ulysses Kay, traveled to the Soviet Union on a cultural exchange mission for the U.S. Department of State. There he conducted the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra in a performance of his Fifth Symphony, and met prominent Soviet composers, including Dmitri Shostakovich.

In the late 1950s Harris again showed signs of a further slackening in his inspiration. In 1960 he ended a year-and-a-half drought in his output, producing Canticle of the Sun, for voice and chamber orchestra, on words of St. Francis of Assisi. Its companion work, the San Francisco Symphony (Symphony No. 8), was composed near the end of 1961 and early 1962. Ironically it came on a 1961 commission from the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. The composer's personal life was going through more change at this time: in 1961 he accepted a visiting professorship at UCLA, and his subsequent return to California may have spurred him on to continue his recent productivity, as he turned out his Ninth Symphony in 1962, probably his last significant work in the genre. The following year Harris and his wife were offered faculty posts at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. The composer alone accepted, but only on a part-time basis, owing to his obligations at UCLA. In 1964 he ended that relationship, and at the same time his wife accepted a faculty post with the California Institute of the Arts. The couple purchased a home in Pacific Palisades, overlooking the ocean. Several scores come from this year, including Epilogue to Profiles in Courage-J. F. K., for orchestra. The composer's so-called Abraham Lincoln Symphony (Symphony No. 10), for speaker, chorus, brass, two pianos and percussion, followed in 1965, but failed to gain currency. His next two works in the genre, The Eleventh (1967), composed on a commission from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Twelfth, the Pere Marquette Symphony (1967-69), for tenor, speaker and orchestra, were also generally viewed as disappointments. Thereafter the composer wrote mainly choral, vocal and band music.

In 1971, Harris retired from his post and once more accepted a composer-in-residence appointment, this one at California State University, Los Angeles. Around this time Johana left the California Institute of the Arts to teach piano at UCLA. The Roy Harris Archive was established at Cal State in 1973 to coincide with the composer's seventy-fifth birthday. There emerged a renewed interest in tonal music beginning in the early 1970s, and Harris, after a two-decade snubbing in many musical circles, found himself the recipient of a at least a minor revival. In 1976 Harris produced his last symphony, the Bicentennial Symphony, for band, which is generally regarded as among his least compelling large-scale works.

In his later years Harris gave up driving automobiles, making what had to be a sacrifice of great dimensions, as he had held a lifelong interest in cars, buying as many as four in a single year and known to be an easy target for aggressive salesmen. But Harris was happy in his addiction to automobiles. In September, 1979, he was injured in a fall in his home and taken to the hospital. He initially appeared to be recovering from its effects, but his advanced age and generally declining health combined to bring on his passing on October 1, 1979.
-- CUMMINGS, ROBERT