Frederick Grant Gleason (born 17 December 1848 in

Middletown, Connecticut Middletown is a city in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States. Located along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, 16 miles (25.749504 km) south of Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford. Middletown is the largest city in the L ...

- died

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

, 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 def ...

, 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 member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

. 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 States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

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 in the Co ...

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 (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. 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 Harriet Monroe (December 23, 1860 – September 26, 1936) was an American editor, scholar, literary critic, poet, and patron of the arts. She was the founding publisher and long-time editor of ''Poetry'' magazine, which she established in 1912 ...

) sung by 500 voices with orchestra at the opening of the

Auditorium Theatre The Auditorium Theatre is a music and performance venue located in the Auditorium Building at 50 E. 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 ( ...

, ''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 a bestselli ...

; the

tone poem A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music, usually in a single continuous movement (music), movement, which illustrates or evokes the content of a poem, short story, novel, painting, landscape, or other (non-musical) source. 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 ...

; a

cantata A cantata (; ; literally "sung", past participle feminine singular of the Italian language, Italian verb ''cantare'', "to sing") is a vocal music, vocal Musical composition, composition with an musical instrument, instrumental accompaniment, ty ...

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

opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

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

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gleason, Frederick Grant 1848 births 1903 deaths American male composers 19th-century American composers 19th-century American male musicians 20th-century American composers 20th-century American male musicians American Conservatory of Music faculty People from Middletown, Connecticut Classical musicians from Connecticut