Frederick Grant Gleason (born 17 December 1848 in

Middletown, Connecticut Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States, Located along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, it is south of Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated by English settler ...

- died

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, 6 December 1903) was an American

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

, and director of the Chicago Conservatory from 1900 to 1903. Gleason's father was a

banker A bank is a financial institution that accepts Deposit account, deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital m ...

. Like many other well-to-do gentlemen, Gleason senior was an amateur

flautist The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

. He considered music a pleasant pastime but not a serious occupation. He wanted his son to enter the ministry - a good old New England tradition. But the son insisted on becoming a composer, and the father yielded. Gleason spent much of his early life in the neighboring city of Hartford, as a pupil of Dudley Buck, going in 1869 to

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

to study with

Ignaz Moscheles Isaac Ignaz Moscheles (; 23 May 179410 March 1870) was a Bohemian piano virtuoso and composer. He was based initially in London and later at Leipzig, where he joined his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as professor of piano at the ...

and Hans Richter. After six years in Europe he returned to America, and in 1877 went to Chicago as a member of the faculty of the Hershey School of Music, of which

Clarence Eddy Hiram Clarence Eddy (23 June 1851 - 10 January 1937) was a United States organist and composer Biography He was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts. He studied under Dudley Buck in Hartford, Connecticut, counterpoint under Carl August Haupt, and p ...

(also a pupil of Buck) was the general director. Gleason was also active as a music critic. In 1897 he became president of an organization called the 'American Patriotic Musical League'. He was general director of the Chicago Conservatory from 1900 to 1903. His students included composer

Elsa Swartz Elsa Elene Swartz (June 25, 1874 - August 6, 1948) was an American composer and music educator. Swartz was born in El Paso, Illinois, to Barbara Elizabeth Keller and Joseph Beery Swartz. She had four brothers and three sisters. Swartz received a d ...

. According to Philo A. Otis, Gleason "was an idealist, a dreamer, though too much of a follower to be a leader." Gleason's compositions include: the ''Festival Ode'' (words by Harriet Monroe) sung by 500 voices with orchestra at the opening of the

Auditorium Theatre The Auditorium Theatre is a music and performance venue located inside the Auditorium Building at 50 Ida B. Wells Drive in Chicago, Illinois. Inspired by the Richardsonian Romanesque Style of architect Henry Hobson Richardson, the building was d ...

, Chicago on 9 December 1889; with artist's sketch of Patti on stage. ''Processional of the Holy Grail'' written for the Chicago World's Fair; a

symphonic Poem A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single continuous movement, which illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source. The German term ''T ...

, ''Edris'', based on a novel by

Marie Corelli Mary Mackay (1 May 185521 April 1924), also called Minnie Mackey, and known by her pseudonym Marie Corelli (, also , ), was an English novelist. From the appearance of her first novel ''A Romance of Two Worlds'' in 1886, she became the bestsel ...

; the

tone poem A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single continuous movement, which illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source. The German term ''T ...

''Song of Life'' (after a poem by Swinburne); a Piano

Concerto A concerto (; plural ''concertos'', or ''concerti'' from the Italian plural) is, from the late Baroque era, mostly understood as an instrumental composition, written for one or more soloists accompanied by an orchestra or other ensemble. The typi ...

; a

cantata A cantata (; ; literally "sung", past participle feminine singular of the Italian verb ''cantare'', "to sing") is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir. The meaning of ...

with orchestra, ''The Culprit Fay''; and two

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...

s: ''Otho Visconti'' and ''Montezuma''. The former was produced at Chicago in 1907. He left other scores in manuscript, with instructions that they were not to be publicly performed until fifty years after his death.

References

;Citations ;Sources * * *

External links

*
Frederic Grant Gleason Papers
at

Newberry Library The Newberry Library is an independent research library, specializing in the humanities and located on Washington Square in Chicago, Illinois. It has been free and open to the public since 1887. Its collections encompass a variety of topics rela ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gleason, Frederick Grant 1848 births 1903 deaths American male composers American composers 19th-century American male musicians