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OUR COMPOSERS
Hal H. Hopson
Hal H. Hopson (b. 1933) is a full time composer/church music clinician residing in Dallas, Texas. He has over 1,300 published works that comprise almost every musical forum in church music. Hal has a special interest in congregational hymn-tunes and responsorial psalm settings as evidenced by the proliferation of his settings that are included in newly published hymnals and psalm collections.
Mr. Hopson was born in Mound, Texas into a family of thirteen children where music-making was a way of life. At the age of twelve, Hopson began playing music services in a small village church. He received the Royalty-Edwards Scholarship in music to attend Baylor University where in 1954 he graduated with the Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1956 he was awarded the Master of Sacred Music degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Hopson has done further study at the University of Erlangen (Germany), the Peabody Conservatory and Southern Methodist University.
Hopson taught church music at the prestigious Westminster Choir College (1983-1984) and at the Scarritt Graduate School (1984-1988). In addition, Hal Hopson has served congregations in several different states.
His cantata, God With Us, was one of the few compositions selected by a panel at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C., to be placed in a capsule during the American Bicentennial in 1976. The capsule will be opened at the Tricentennial in 2076 and the cantata will be heard again as a representative piece of American Choral composition of the century.
Mr. Hopson is active as a conductor and clinician, having conducted choral festivals and workshops in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and Korea. He has been recognized for his contribution to music by being included in The International Who's Who in Music, Cambridge, England, and by being awarded the esteemed title of National Patron by Delto Omicron, a national professional fraternity of musicians. He is active in several professional organizations including the American Guild of Organists (AGO), having served on the national boards of the Presbyterian Association of Musicians and Choristers Guild. As a member of ASCAP, Mr. Hopson has received an annual award from that agency for many consecutive years.