Dr. Bill Harned was born and raised in Starkville, Mississippi, home of the Mississippi State Bulldogs, where his family has helped the university. His great-grandfather, Horace Harned I, ran a dairy farm adjacent to the campus, where Campus Bookmart resides, in the 1920s and has the biology building named after him. The Federal Boll Weevil Lab on Sorority Row is named after his brother, Robey Wentworth Harned. Bill got to grow up on his family’s farm across the street from his grandfather, Horace Harned II, who served as a state legislator for 24 years and started the first Grade A dairy farm in Oktibbeha County. Rice Hall is named after his Great-Great Aunt Nannie Rice, who was head librarian. Bill’s parents, Horace Harned III and Song, met in South Korea when his father was stationed in Seoul for the Army.
At MSU Bill received Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Engineering and Music. He finished his Master’s in Music from Louisiana State University and had completed credits towards a Master’s in Neurologic Music Therapy at Colorado State University. He achieved his Doctor of Arts degree in Piano Performance with a secondary emphasis in Collaborative Piano from the University of Northern Colorado.
Before pursuing his doctorate he completed an 8-month school with his church Antioch Community Church (based out of Waco, TX) in Fort Collins, CO where he volunteered in their Praise Band for eight years playing contemporary Christian music. He has been on staff at eight churches for piano and one for organ. He currently plays at First Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Columbus. Then related to it, he grew up and still attends the Oktoc Community Club with the oldest meeting club in the state since 1927, but the building also used to be Vernon Cumberland Presbyterian Church and is where his great grandmother Harriet Rice Harned went to school before they joined the schoolhouse and church together in 1935. Recently he served as a judge for the 2025 Miss Mississippi Teen pageant in Vicksburg.
For the World Piano Conference based out of Serbia, Bill presented “An Assessment of Technical Exercises for Piano Majors” in Serbia in 2017. For the 2021 World Piano Conference, Bill submitted a document about the preservation of Afro-centric cross-rhythms with Caribbean rhythmic notations from his dissertation findings. For the 2022 World Piano Conference Online Edition Bill digitally presented “Performance Practice of Misalignment in Stylized Compositions of the Haitian Méringue.” Then for the 2023 World Piano Conference he digitally presented “Tresillo-Based Rhythms in Art Music Compositions of the Caribbean and a Quantitative Categorization for Syncopated Rhythms.”
At the 2023 MTNA National Conference in Reno, Nevada he presented “Performance Practice of Innovative Caribbean Rhythmic Notations in Stylized Compositions of the Haitian Méringue.” In September 2023 he presented “Uses and Categories of Syncopated Rhythm Notation in Piano Art Music from Haiti (Méringue-Quintolet), Puerto Rico (Elastic Tresillo) and Cuba (Cinquillo)” at the symposium “Valorisation des Répertoires Musicaux Classiques Afro-Diasporiques” in Montreal where the SRDMH archive is publicizing its new digital editions of Haitian classical music. He also presented the closing performance of Julio Racine’s Vodou Jazz Flute Sonata with the SRDMH founder’s wife, Edith.
DISSERTATION RESEARCH
His dissertation exposes recently published editions of Haitian music from the SRDMH Archive in Montreal that date back to the first Haitian composers around the 1890s. His study analyzes recently published compositions of the Haitian Méringue. His two main contributions include performance practice of the Haitian quintolet rhythm, which have had no writings since those from its inventors, and proof of how this rhythm preserves cross-rhythms to keep duple and triple rhythms independent.
(The Haitian quintolet and Puerto Rican elastic tresillo rhythms represent transcriptions of the fundamental tresillo rhythm (long-long-short), which naturally occurs in all cultures, with the first two notes equally divided. Traditional transcriptions of the tresillo-based five-beat syncopated rhythm use the cinquillo rhythm 8th-16th-8th-16th-8th with a common transcription of the tresillo rhythm with a 3:3:2 ratio, which synchronizes with the duple meter. The cinquillo rhythm was used in the country’s first major composer, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, from New Orleans. The tie to this study is that the emigration of Haitian refugees after their independence to New Orleans around 1815 doubled the population to influence the hybridization/creolization to develop the jazz musical style.)
The study also creates a system to categorize syncopated rhythms to categorize syncopated rhythms, such as different transcriptions of the swing rhythm and the tresillo-based five-beat syncopated rhythm, by comparing the ratio of the first two notes. Equal values allow more room for the secondary divisions to fluctuate, especially in slower tempos as shown in the analyzed Haitian méringue; shorter values (usually 16th notes) are easier to execute.