School of Music Records

Carnegie Mellon University School of Music: The First 100 Years

Founded in 1900 by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie Mellon University has developed a global reputation for excellence and innovation in the sciences and arts. Music was a core focus from the University’s beginning, as it was for Carnegie himself, who donated 7,689 organs to churches, municipalities, served as president of the New York Philharmonic Society, and helped to establish the Pittsburgh Symphony. Carnegie also constructed six concert halls internationally, including New York’s renowned Carnegie Hall and Pittsburgh’s 2,000-seat Carnegie Music Hall, former home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and now the main venue of the Carnegie Music Hall.

On April 25, 1912 the cornerstone was laid for the Fine Arts building, whose magnificent Great Hall was soon decorated with statuary, a ceiling fresco, and inlaid marbled floors. The College of Fine Arts became the first institution in the United States to offer degrees in all the arts. Carnegie himself visited the campus five times, attending a concert by a sixty-piece student orchestra on his final visit in November 1914. Although instruction in the School of Music began in the autumn of 1912, music had been part of the university since its first classes in 1905, when Men’s and Women’s Glee Clubs and a Mandolin Club (including a string quartet) were at the heart of student activities. Additionally, to support the school football team in 1908 a seven member band formed that became the Kiltie Band in 1922 after performing in traditional Scottish kilts in honor of Andrew Carnegie.

The School of Music was founded in 1912 partly to train future members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO). Begun in 1895, the Symphony suspended operations between 1910 and 1926. Former members of the PSO joined the School of Music faculty and later joined the reconstructed PSO. Pittsburgh Symphony musicians (often principal players) have taught in most studios at Carnegie Mellon University since the School’s beginning. Students have frequently played in substitute positions with the Symphony, performed solos with them, listened to their compositions, and frequently won positions as members of the orchestra. Student choruses have joined the ranks of the Symphony and School of Music faculty have delivered pre-concert lectures and written program notes for them. These two leading musical organizations regularly collaborate on special events.

In its early years, the growth of the School was inhibited by the First World War, during which the School hosted the only government-sponsored program in the country for training military bandmasters. J. Vick O’Brien, founding head of the School and a former student of composer Engelbert Humperdinck, wrote and produced an opera reflecting on the destruction of the war. The School reprised the opera during the Second World War.

The School of Music graduated its first students, Hazel Inez Smail Benecke, in 1917. Recital programs suggest that even the earliest students were highly skilled performers, playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and Brahm’s Clarinet Sonatas. One of the most gifted students in the School’s history, legendary pianist Earl Wild, entered in 1933, played in the first ever coast-to-coast live radio broadcast concert with the Carnegie Symphony Orchestra in 1936 Wild enjoyed immense success as a performing and recording artist, and returned to Carnegie Mellon University as a faculty member in 1991. Initiating a long tradition of diversity among the faculty and student body in the mid-1930s (years before many other institutions) the School of Music graduated its first African American students, Lawrence W. Peeler and James Miller, whose arrangements of spirituals were recorded by Robert Shaw and whom jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal acknowledged as of his “masters.”

In its first decades, the School of Music excelled in programs for music educators. It launched an internationally celebrated Eurhythmics curriculum in 1921; two years of study became a requirement in 1931, integration with performance followed in 1943, and international workshops were later organized under the direction of Marta Sanchez. The School of Music’s Preparatory School pioneered music education for children in 1922, before similar instruction was offered at sister institutions such as Julliard and New England Conservatory. The annual number of concerts nearly tripled at his time, from 13 in 1921 to 37 in 1922. Over its decade long history, the School has continued to grow robustly in size, professionalism, and activity, offering 60 concerts in 1953 and 152 in 1988-1989. Student ensembles were in demand locally that the School had to reduce its service to the community in the late 1930s and 1940s in order to focus on its educational mission. The School remains relatively small compared to its peer institutions, in accordance with its longtime emphasis on individual, conservatory-style instruction.

Adding to its existing programs in orchestral instruments and piano, the School established a vocal department in 1927 and a master’s program in music education 1934. The student theater organization, Scotch ‘n’ Soda formed in 1937, serving as the workshop for successful Broadway musicals such as Stephen Schwartz’s Pippin (1967). In 1938, as per the recommendation of Eugene Ormandy, Fredrick Dorian, a founding member of Arnold Schoenberg’s Society of Private Performances, joined the School of Music faculty. Dorian taught music history and succeeded O’Brien as the orchestra’s conductor. His research contributed to the establishment of the National Endowment of the Arts.

The School of Music’s growth continued after the Second World War. The authoritative presence of faculty member Oleta Benn, hired in Music Education in 1945, helped to run the school in subsequent decades. Two students of Arthur Schnable, Webster Aitken, and Beveridge Webster soon joined the piano faculty. The composer, Nikolai Lopatnikoff, arriving in 1945, expanded graduate offerings in composition. Starting in 1946, the School hosted numerous musicians with the International Society of for Contemporary Music. Copland, Hindermith, Poulenc and other famous ensembles visited in the following years. Eventually, these activities became known as the Composer’s Forum under whose auspices Stockhausen, Boulez, and other internationally known composers came to campus. The Composer’s Forum continues today.

In 1958, the School launched an Opera Workshop and its series of endowed Andrew Mellon Professorships brought musical luminaries to campus. Holding the chair in 1965, Pablo Casals gave master classes, led the orchestra, and conducted all six of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. The following year, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra commissioned faculty composers Lopatnikoff and Rolan Leich fir work celebrating Pittsburgh’s bicentennial.

Former Chicago Symphony Orchestra concertmaster, Sidny Harth, became Head of the School of Music in 1963, led the orchestra, and founded the Carnegie Fine Arts Quartet. (Another faculty ensemble, the Carnegie Mellon Trio began in 1983.) in the mid-1960s, the Kiltie Band became the School’s foremost student ensemble, playing at the Carnegie Hall numerous times, earning review in the New York Times, issuing recordings, and premiering works by leading composers. In the 1970s, Leonardo Balada replaced Lopatnikoff on the composition faculty and founded the Contemporary Music Ensemble in 1972.

Under the leadership of Robert Page, longtime director of choruses and assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, the School intensified its focus on performance in the mid-1970s with the establishment of a Baroque Ensemble and a program in Music Theater (founded in collaboration with Larry Carra, Head of Drama at the time).

Additionally, the School of Music expanded from the Fine Arts Building into parts of Margaret Morrison Carnegie College in 1975. In November of 1980, the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic played the first of many concerts in Carnegie Hall, earning praise from the New York Times.

Growth and innovation have accelerated since the 1980s. The Computer Music Studio was founded in 1983 and in 1987 the Cuarteto Latinamericano first arrived for their twenty-year residency. Pittsburgh Symphony Concertmaster, Andres Cardenes, joined the faculty in the late 1980s. A decade later, Julius Baker, a principal flute of the New York Philharmonic, joined the faculty in 1990. Later, Alberto Almarza and Jeanne Baxtresser helped to establish the studio as perhaps the most competitive flute program in the country. Under the guidance of James McIntosh, the School of Music created the first ever major in bagpipes in 1991.

In 1990, the School began to recruit in China when Pianist Hanna Li and School of Music theorist and School of Music Head, Marilyn Taft Thomas traveled on tour with the PSO. Many of the School’s gifted graduate students have since come from a number of countries in Asia; in 1993, 35 international students were enrolled from 13 countries. Since the mid-1990s, the size of the graduate programs has greatly increased.

The first long-distance, internet-based master class was conducted from the basement of the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute in 1996, and in 2006 an innovative program called Repertory + Listening was established by Paul Johnston, which exposes students to the large repertory of classical music through streamed audio. In 2009, School of Music head, Noel Zahler and computer music theorist and composer Roger Dannenberg created a highly selective master’s program in Music and Technology, building on Carnegie Mellon University’s historic strengths in music, composing, and engineering.

In the 1980s, an advisory board ranked the School of Music among the top 25 nationwide; by 2010 it ranked amount the top 10. Its success builds upon the world-class faculty from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the world-class educational opportunities of Carnegie Mellon University, a history of innovative curricula, and a culture of superior achievement.