Finding Their Voices - Amherst College

Treatment).” The course was offered three times a week. Only three Juniors joined the
class. 164 Despite the low enrollment, Paine had great success in these first two years of
elective studies, and, upon the completion of the above review, was promoted by the
President and Fellows of Harvard to the position of Assistant Professor in Music, which
put him in full academic standing with his peers. It is this event that is often lauded as
the “first” time such position ever granted to a music instructor in an American college.
As we have seen, this claim is hardly justifiable. Paine’s new position was, however, the
first such appointment at an all-male institution, and, due to Harvard’s reputation, was
certainly the most visible.
Paine added another course the following year, on fugue (two to four voices),
double-fugue, and instrumentation. Only two students took this latter course, both having
passed the previous two courses with high distinction. There was now a three-year
theory program from learning the principles of harmony to the composition of a complex
fugue. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these courses is that they were so strictly
oriented toward composition. Just learning the theory was not enough; Paine made sure
to teach students to apply it to various compositional forms. His efforts, particularly in
instrumentation, were limited by a lack of opportunity to have the students’ exercises
performed or otherwise demonstrated. A second review of Paine’s courses, undertaken in
1874 and summarized here by Dwight, found similar problems:
The examiners […] suggested in their report of 1874 whether perhaps Mr. Paine
was not trying to cover too much ground, considering the limited time the
students have for it amid so many other studies, and whether it would not be wiser
to give more time to making them more thoroughly grounded in the earlier stages
of Harmony, plain Counterpoint, the harmonization of Chorals [sic], &c., rather
than attempt to carry them into Instrumentation, when no orchestra or opportunity
of trial of their exercises existed in the college. And also whether the teacher’s
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164 The Harvard University Catalogue, 1872-73 (Cambridge: Charles W. Sever, 1873), 73.
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