Helen studied at Yale University with Stanley Knight and graduated in 1912 with a bachelor's degree in music, playing her own Concerto in C Minor in May 1912 at Yale. She was the first known African American woman to earn a degree from Yale University.
Awarded the Samuel Simmons Stanford scholarship to study in Paris, Helen travelled to France to study with Blanche Selva and Vincent d'Indy, and graduated from the Schola Cantorum in 1914. She returned to the United States when war broke out in 1914 and began a career as a concert pianist, touring from 1915 to 1918. In 1918 she was music director (meaning music department chair) at Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College.
In early 1919, Helen travelled to France to entertain black troops of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), along with Joshua Blanton and the Rev. Henry Hugh Proctor, under the auspices of the YMCA.
In 1920 Hagan married John Taylor Williams of Morristown, New Jersey but continued her concert career (they divorced ca. 1931).[3] She had a music studio in Morristown for at least a decade and was the first African American woman admitted to the Morristown Chamber of Commerce.[4] She taught at the Mendelssohn Conservatory of Music in Chicago and pursued a Masters of Arts degree from Teachers College, Columbia University. In the 1930s she served as dean of music at Bishop College in Marshall, Texas. She also continued to work as a choir director and church organist. She died in New York City on 6th March 1964, after an extended illness.
On September 29, 2016, a crowdfunded monument for Helen Hagan's previously unmarked grave was unveiled at New Haven's Evergreen Cemetery, and the day was declared "Women Making Music Day" by New Haven mayor Toni Harp.
Works
The only work by Helen Hagan that survives is the Concerto in C Minor for Piano and Orchestra. Her other compositions, including piano works and a violin sonata, have been lost.
Source: Wikipedia
