Harvey Bartlett Gaul

Harvey Bartlett Gaul (b. 12 Apr 1881, Brooklyn; d. 1 December 1945, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) was an American composer, organist, choirmaster, lecturer, music critic, and writer from Pittsburgh. He is memorialized by an annual award — the Harvey Gaul Memorial Composition Contest (aka The Harvey Gaul Prize) — bestowed to composers for outstanding work.

He was an organist for 35 years (1910–1945) at Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh. He is well known as a composer of church music.

Harvey Gaul Award of the State Federation of Music Clubs (established while he was alive)

1946: Friends of Harvey Gaul, Inc., contest administrator and sponsor

1960: Friends of Harvey Gaul, Inc., and the Carnegie Institute of Technology Department of Music, contest co-administrators and cosponsors

1980: The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, contest administrator and sponsor

Harvey Bartlett Gaul married Harriette Lester Avery (b. 1886, Youngstown, Ohio) June 13, 1908, in Cleveland, Ohio. They had a two children: a son and a daughter.

The son, James Harvey Gaul, had been an archeologist (Harvard class of 1932, PhD Harvard 1940). During World War II, as a U.S. Naval Reservist Lieutenant, he died by German firing squad in late January 1945 at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp near Linz, Austria. Having worked with the Office of Naval Intelligence, in 1944, he had been transferred to the Office of Strategic Services. He had been captured by the Germans during a combat mission in Czecho-Slovakia, a country where he had worked as an archeologist. The President of the United States presented him with the Distinguished Service Cross (Posthumously).

The daughter, Ione Gaul Walker (1914–1987), a painter, had been married to Hudson Dean Walker (1907–1976), an art dealer.

Harvey Gaul died December 1, 1945, of injuries from an auto accident.