ExclusivePercy Goetschius: The Teacher Who Shaped American Classical Music

Welcome to American Legends. My name is Tiffany Brannan. Each culture has its legends, and that could be myths or different stories, but here in America, our greatest legends are the wonderful heroes who are right from our history pages. Now, some of these heroes are very famous and some are obscure, but each person deserves to be discovered because each man or woman stands as a great example of how we can be better Americans Now, it might be something that seems like it's just restricted to the classroom, but without the certain individuals who have studied, taught, and written about music theory, many of the great composers whose music we know and love would never have achieved the things which they later wrote. Today we're going to talk about a little-known figure in American music who shaped the compositions of many important composers in America in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The learned man who wrote many textbooks on music theory and then became an important teacher in musical composition in the formation of American music, especially in the 20th century, has a name which not only isn't very recognizable, it's very hard to pronounce. His name is Percy Getschius, and even if you see that name written, you may not realize that's how it's pronounced, but the gentleman himself described that that was its pronunciation, saying that it's actually a Swiss name which was changed over the years, and somewhere in the mid-18th century, the U.S. was tacked onto the end so that it would sound more Latin and more elevated. Percy was born in Patterson, New Jersey on August 30th, 1853. His father was a civil engineer, and he was his parents' only son. He went to a private school as a boy, but around the age of 12, he had to drop out from conventional schooling because of his poor health. Instead, he sought something that would keep him outdoors more, and as a result, he became a surveyor's assistant. After a few years at this job, he began working at his father's business, civil engineering. Meanwhile, Percy had taught himself how to play the flute and the keyboard. He received some encouragement for his musical pursuits from a family friend who was actually his father's client. This man had the very unusual name of Ureli Corelli Hill, and he was a renowned violinist and conductor of his day. Not only did he encourage young Percy, but he gave him a book, actually a keyboard textbook, The Well-Tempered Clavichord by none other than J.S. Bach. He also arranged for the boy to attend public rehearsals of the Philharmonic Society of New York. Through these experiences and this encouragement, Percy realized that he wanted to pursue a career in music. At the age of 15, he began working as the organist at one of the local churches in Paterson, the Second Presbyterian Church. After working there for a few years, he moved to the First Presbyterian Church, and along the way, he also played the piano for a choral society in his hometown. After five years of these simple musical jobs, the young Getius wanted to take his musical training to the next level. There weren't that many opportunities to do so in the United States at the time, so he realized he needed to travel abroad for his studies. Despite the strong opposition of his father, at the age of 20, he went to Stuttgart in Germany, where he continued his training at a more formal level. Beginning in 1873, he went to the Stuttgart Royal Conservatory, where he studied music, composition, and music theory. He graduated in 1876. While he was still a student, he already had begun teaching some of the English-speaking classes there, and after graduating, he continued on at the university as a teacher. Throughout his career, he frequently taught music theory and composition, which were the main things that he had studied successfully himself, as well as keyboard. As a member of the Stuttgart faculty, he taught harmony, music theory, and composition. He also supported himself by writing for a couple of local newspapers in Stuttgart. He reviewed operas and concerts, and he was the correspondent for a German publication. In 1885, the King of Württemberg conferred on him the title the Royal Professor, which was something that he esteemed very greatly. Eventually, in 1890, he returned to the United States, having spent 17 years in Germany. At that point, he took a position at Syracuse University, where he taught music theory and composition. At Syracuse University, he became the chair of music theory, composition, and advanced pianoforte. After two years there, he joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Although he was well regarded by many teachers and colleagues, his time there was not too long, because he didn't get along with one of his superiors. Thus, he eventually left New England Conservatory and established his own private music studio, before settling in the position which he would hold for 20 years, from 1905 to 1925. That position was acting as the head of the Department of Music Theory and Composition at the Institution of Musical Arts in New York City. This organization would later be amalgamated into the famous Juilliard. As a teacher of not only music theory, but composition at the Institution for Musical Art, Goetius attracted great notoriety for the school, because so many young composers and theorists wanted to come and study with him. During his tenure there, he was a teacher and mentor to many great future famous composers in America. He was known as Papa Goetius during his time there, and people respected and helpfully feared him for his stern brow, but his loving nature. He was like a father who would be tough when needed, but still was very caring and kind. He had very strict ideas about what classical music should be, and shouldn't be. He considered the major scale to be a natural occurrence, and he would strongly scold anyone who deviated from it too much. Thus, he was not a big fan of composers like Ravel and Debussy, whom he thought were too avant-garde in their augmentation of the scale. He also was very critical of composers like Wagner, who he thought used random harmonies. However, he would encourage his individual students' creativity, as he encouraged one student's exploration of the cluster chord. He promoted the excellent work of the great classical masters of Germany in the old style, geniuses like Bach, for instance, and he encouraged their study, not only through his teaching, but through his writing. In all, he wrote 15 textbooks, most of them on music theory of one sort or other, and the work which he did through his textbooks and his teaching formed an important basis for the teaching of music theory in the United States for generations afterward. One of his main students, who would go on to great fame, was Howard Hanson, who himself would become not only a renowned composer, but an important pedagogue and teacher of music theory. He worked at Eastman School of Music. In some interviews from his later years, Hanson talked about his early musical influences, and his reminiscing about Getschies is an excellent example of the kind of teacher that this man was. He said, I didn't have too much influence from teachers. I studied, of course, with Percy Getschies back in 1914 in New York, and I learned a lot about counterpoint from him, but very little attention was paid to original composition. They were mostly exercises that we did. We wrote canons and fugues in different forms. For graduation, I wrote a prelude and double fugue for two pianos, and I remember that the old man said to me afterwards, Hanson, the fugue was magnificent, but the prelude was terrible, because in the prelude I used some whole-tone scales borrowed from Debussy, and he was very much offended by that. Did I ever tell you the story about him? He woke me after my fourth symphony won the Pulitzer Prize. It was a letter of congratulations. By that time, he was in his 80s, and he said that he had heard it on the radio, and that he liked it very much, and that it was a very fine work, but he wanted to warn me against using modern devices. Getschies lived to the age of 90, and during his long life, he dedicated most of his not so much composing himself, although he did write some music, as inspiring other composers. It's a difficult point whether one can actually teach composition. Many great composers have felt that it's impossible to do so. Others believe that you can teach format and structure, although you can't actually inspire genius. And through this quote by Howard Hanson, we see that Percy Getschies used the theory of music, as music theory says in its very title, to help young composers develop a strong basis. Listening to the music of the earlier classical composers, particularly people from the Baroque era, like Handel and Bach, we see that there was indeed a very set structure. There were melodies, of course, but earlier classical music was much more formulaic, and that's why teachers like Getschies could instruct people on such formats and formulas. Modern music, whether classical or more contemporary, is the exact opposite, as it really has no structure and it's merely based on random melodies and harmonies, which can be almost dissonant. You can see in the work of Getschies' students, particularly Howard Hanson, that he inspired them to avoid the ever-present threat of modernism or atonality. It might seem shocking to imagine that there was such modernism over 100 years ago, but it gives you some context to realize that Igor Stravinsky wrote his very dissonant Rite of Spring in 1912. Thus, composers and teachers like Getschies had to stem the tide against such modernism, and if they hadn't, well, I think that there would have been far less structured classical music in the 20th century. Through his rigid instruction of musical structure and music theory, along with counterpoint, harmony, and traditional composition, Getschies helped American music stay very melodic, tonal, and harmonically pleasing throughout at least the first half of the 20th century, even as many European composers in countries from France to Russia were dabbling in far more modern and dissonant trends. To learn a little bit more about Getschies and his very intellectual form of musical work, one can find free copies of his textbooks online through a simple Google search. His last name is spelled G-O-E-T-S-C-H-I-U-S, which is important when looking him up. Although his name is not famous, nor are any of his compositions or textbooks, Getschies's legacy continues to live on through not only the compositions of his students, but the notoriety of the musical institute which he helped form and bring to greatness, Juilliard. He deserves a place amongst the better-known American legends of classical music. Thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you'll join me next time for more American Legends.