Gates, Crawford

Commissioned by the Beloit Bi-Centennial Committee, 1976. Composed 1976-77. First performance Beloit, Wisconsin, 1 March 1977, Beloit Symphony Orchestra, the composer conducting.--Cf. Fleisher Collection.

Commissioned by the Bringham Young University Research Grant, 1964. Composed 1962-64. First performance Dallas, Texas, 7 February 1965, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, George Trautwein conductor.--Cf. Fleisher Collection.

Mormon musician and composer of music.

Crawford Gates (born 1921) is an American conductor and composer. He has written music that is very well known and loved in the Mormon community and is best known for his work "Promised Valley" and the hymn, "Our Savior's Love."

Crawford Gates was born in December 1921, in San Francisco. He grew up in Palo Alto, California, and was educated in that city, with Stanford University right there. He was influenced culturally by the plays and concerts available to him, and at the age of eight could play the piano and composed his first piece. In high school, he had the opportunity to take high quality viola lessons and played that until his two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (in the eastern states mission) at the age of eighteen. Crawford Gates composed his first piece of music at the age of eight and has since then composed over eight hundred titles. He wrote ten more pieces between the ages of eight and twelve and then the depression hit. In 1932 his family lost everything and they lived in semi-poverty for six years. He was drafted into the navy at the age of twenty. He got out of the war in 1946. After the war he received his BA at San Jose State University, his MA at Brigham Young University under the direction of LeRoy Robertson, and his PhD from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. He also studied conducting under the direction of Eleazar de Carvalho and Hans Swarowsky.

His composer debut was at Stanford University in 1938. He was a conductor of the Utah Symphony, Symphony Orchestra and Opera at Brigham Young University, and the Rockford Symphony Orchestra. His compositions include six stage works, seven symphonies, tone poems, suites, concertos, numerous choral arrangements, four major choral works, trumpet concertino and horn sonata, and a pentameron for piano and orchestra.

His recordings include Symphony No. 2, Orchestral Setting of Beloved Mormon Hymns, included on Philadelphia Orchestra Album; The Lord's Prayer and A Jubilant Song; Music to the New Hill Cumorah Pageant, 1988; Promised Valley.