Charles Haubiel (1892-1978)

[Wheesht]

Charles Haubiel, the winner in the American Music category of the 1928 Columbia Schubert competition, is a composer who has only been mentioned in passing here at UC, and that was a long time ago.
When I recently gave some of my old LPs a spin, I came across one with works by him on the Orion label and found that they are now also on Youtube and the Internet Archive.

He won the Schubert competition with 'Karma'.

Other works currently available on Youtube include:

Portraits for Orchestra, Gothic Variations and Solari.

Recordings from an LP with two other orchestral works and his cello sonata can be found here in the Internet Archive.

There is rather a dearth of information about him in the 'usual places' but some digging has resulted in a link to the The Charles Haubiel papers which are held at the Washington State University Libraries and in this article from the Los Angeles Times on the occasion of his 86th birthday, shortly before his death:

Los Angeles Times, 29 January, 1978:

86th birthday will find him still at piano

Los Feliz–Dr. Charles Haubiel is busy as ever writing music. The internationally known composer of three operas, 30 chamber music compositions, three cantatas, 23 symphonic works, numerous songs and instrumental solos expects to rise Monday (his 86th birthday) and be working at the piano in his upstairs studio by 8 a.m.
"I'm working on a cantata for soprano, chorus and orchestra," he said. "It's to honor Margot Rebeil of New York. Perhaps she will have [an] opportunity to sing it in London later this year or next."
Haubiel's birthday will not go without fanfare. Women of Phi Beta, a national fraternity of music and theater arts for which Haubiel long has been a patron, have scheduled a party in his honor in the Glendale home of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Koller Lucke.
Haubiel, who is 6-1 and 150 pounds, figures he put his first music on paper at the age of 6 while living in his native Delta, Ohio.
_"My sister Florence, who later become a concert pianist, already was into music," he recalled. "She influenced me greatly. Probably copying her, I put notes down on paper.
They were scribbled-down melodies, no doubt."
Haubiel said he finally learned piano at 10 and his first good composition was "a morning song of two or three pages."
The family had moved to New York and Haubiel's concert debut was at New York College of Music "on 58th St., as I remember."
Later he studied in Berlin and Vienna "because in those days there wasn't much in the higher echelons of piano education in the United States, as there is today."
He toured America as a concert pianist, taught at New York's Juilliard School of Music and New York University for more than a quarter of a century. A publishing firm he recently sold produced more than 600 works by 140 American composers.
Haubiel feels his best effort was a 40-minute orchestral symphony entitled "Of Human Destiny" (originally called "Karma"). It won first in an international competition in 1929.
Haubiel wants to write another opera from a play authored by Josephina Niggli.
His most-performed opera is based on a Niggli play called "Sunday Costs Five Pesos."
Of concern to Haubiel are people composing classical music today "with contrived melodies.
"It is a dangerous situation. They are abandoning traditional disciplines of composing, using new devices and equipment to create new sounds.
"They intentionally create discordance in the effort for something brand new. They add notes for shock value. They believe they are expanding the resources of musical expression. Actually, they are betraying, destroying music," he said.

[eschiss1]

I've heard of him because a friend sent me a copy of the recording of Portraits some while back. Thanks!