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the College ofthe Pacific in
California).
The son of Swedish immigrant
parents, Hanson was born in Nebraska
on October 28, 1896, in the town of
Wahoo, a name he customarily pronounced
with a gleeful long accent on
the second syllable. "That name was a
memorable help to us in making up
yells for the football team," he liked to
tell people. He also relished his tale of
the Wahoo superintendent ofschools
who once advised him, "Young man,
you don't have to be a musician; you
have brains. "
It was his brains, as well as his musicianship,
that brought Howard Hanson
the invitation from George
Eastman and University ofRochester
President Rush Rhees to take over
their fledgling school of music, which
was in search of a permanent director.
In 1923, following a guest-conducting
stint with the Rochester Philharmonic,
Hanson was invited to pay a social call
at Eastman's home. The conversation
quickly turned serious as Eastman and
Rhees questioned him, at length and in
depth, on his theories of music education.
Hanson's responses-concerning
the need for a professional school,
under a university umbrella, which
would train "creators, performers,
scholars, teachers, and administrators"-indicated
the kind of thinking
his hosts had been looking for.
"It took a lot of nerve to appoint a
young sprout like me, " Hanson admitted
later. But, he recalled, Eastman
had had only one reservation about
him: that the Hanson goatee, a European
import from his years in Rome,
might be hiding "a weak chin." It
wasn't. "The Eastman School in those
days was no place for a man with one
ofthose. "
In summing up the Hanson career
at the time ofhis death, Newsweek
magazine called him "perhaps the
most influential educator in American
music. " Few would disagree with that
verdict. Among other innovations,
Hanson introduced the concept of a
Doctor ofMusical Arts degree in creation
or performance, and saw it
adopted, in spite ofstrongly expressed
divergent views, at institutions across
the country. The only doctoral level
degree previously given in music had
been in musicology. One critic, he
remembered, accused him oftrying to
establish"a doctorate in piccolo playing."
"That's right," Hanson agreed,
"but only for good piccolo players. "
"At least," he recalled later, "we
ceased creating bad musicologists out
of good performers, which should
prove a boon to both musicology and
to performance."
"A great teacher, " Hanson wrote on
one occasion, "must be immersed in
his subject; he must know it intimately,
he must love it and must believe in
it, and believe in it with enthusiasm."
Hanson met the qualifications. He
prided himselfon being a "teaching
dean." "I've always gloried in it," he
said, noting that he regularly spent
many hours a week working directly
with his students.
A visitor to the School in 1939
described the director's room as a
Decked out in patriotic trappings for a Fourth
ofJuly celebration in Wahoo, Nebraska,
1907. By this time Hanson had already composed
his first piece of music.
"large office, with a rather littered desk
and two grand pianos" and commented
about its occupant, "He hears
all exams, knows every student personally,
knows where every dollar
goes. He has six pipes in which he
smokes tobacco imported from Boston.
He looks a bit like the traditional college
undergraduate while doing so."
There was no question about who
was in charge ofthe School. Hanson
was. "When you are a pioneer, you
have to take the bull by the horns," he
once said. "I'd make up my mind and
I'd do it."
But this "benevolent dictator," as he
called himself, had his own way about
how he did it. "Such a charming
man," said one charmed colleague.
"You came away from an appointment
positively elated, and only fifteen
minutes later realized that your request
had been denied."
Ruth Watanabe '52GE, head ofthe
School's Sibley Music Library,
remembers from her student days that
"we always called him Uncle Howard
behind his back. And that'sjust what
he was, a wonderful uncle to all ofus. "
The hundreds ofstudents who wrote
to him at his retirement recorded
similar sentiments: "You knew each
student's background." "You called
me by name the first time you met
me. " "You took time to care about me
in very personal ways and on more
than one occasion." "You were a king
to a little girl from Georgia who was illprepared
but willing to work like a
horse. "
Another former student wrote firmly:
"In the long view of the history of
music, no composer has done so much
over such a long period oftime in
behalfofother composers."
Before he came to Eastman, Hanson,
unlike many of his fellow
Americans, had had ample opportunity
to hear his own works performed. It
was his realization that most other
American composers did not have this
opportunity that led to the establishment
ofthe annual Festival of
American Music, which he conducted
for forty years, and the long series of
recordings by the Eastman-Rochester
Orchestra.
When Howard Hanson died last
winter, Donal Henahan, writing in the
New York Times, observed that he had
made ofRochester a "boom town for
American music" and remarked that
Hanson had been "a progressive
educator whose special province was
American music." "It is safe to say,"
Henahan continued, "that nearly
every American composer after World
War I was in his debt to some degree. "
This champion ofother American
composers was, ofcourse, a composer
ofconsiderable note himselfwho wrote
prolifically all his life. He once playfully
told a reporter, "Writing music is a
sort ofdisease; ifyou can avoid it, do."
Hanson was infected early and per-
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