|
(1909-2001) Loren Crosten, Professor of Music, emeritus, died on February 19, 2001, at the age of 91. His great accomplishment, and Stanford's, was the creation of an excellent music department along unusual lines. In 1946, he earned his doctorate in musicology from Columbia University. That same year he joined the Stanford faculty as both a fine musician and scholar. Both of those abilities were essential to the realization of his vision of what a fine music department should be. He served as chair of the music department from 1947 to 1973 and was an ideal chairman for the faculty, most of whom were young. He assessed, advised, and critiqued the teaching of everyone in the department. His praise was well earned and he was not shy about confronting any shortcomings, a task that required fine perception and tact as well as courage. His purposeful guidance of the curriculum as well as the fostering of favorable working relationships among the faculty members made Stanford's music department a vibrant and innovative place for both students and faculty. Loran Crosten was born in Des Moines, Iowa, and was a precocious pianist who at the age of 10, played for a series of revival meetings of Aimee Semple McPherson and in his teens played a concerto with the Saint Louis Symphony. He learned the craft of musical composition and expanded his horizons into musical scholarship while earning degrees from Drake University, the University of Iowa, and the Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1946. His education and teaching career at Columbia was interrupted during the second world war by service in the navy as a gunnery officer serving in the Pacific with the rank of Lieutenant Commander. Columbia wished to keep Crosten; however, in a meeting held in Herbert Hoover's suite at the Waldorf Astoria, Donald Tresidder persuaded him to become the first chairman of a new music department at Stanford. The opportunity to create a curriculum at a fine university was irresistible. In the fifties he performed a series of recitals with his violinist colleague Sandor Salgo that attracted eager audiences on the campus and on concert tours. Alfred Frankenstein, then the chief music critic for the S.F. Chronicle, admired Crosten's "command of rhythm, line, and nuance on the keyboard." Crosten's doctoral dissertation, published as "French Grand Opera, an Art and a Business", was the first product of his musical scholarship, and his interests in opera and esthetics signally enriched the curriculum of the Music Department. He planned a new concert hall, Dinkelspiel Auditorium, to house opera as well as orchestral and chamber music concerts. Opera came to campus performed by students and community musicians, in West-coast premiers of Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes", conducted by Jan Popper, Douglas Moore's "The Ballad of Baby Doe", and Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress", as well as such works as Verdi's "Falstaff" and Prokofief's "The Love of Three Oranges", conducted by Sandor Salgo. The curriculum of the Music Department was his most vital concern, a subject of many searching discussions in his years as chairman. Music departments shortly after the war tended to stress historical studies, and music conservatories, aside from composition, were mainly interested in the technique of performance. Both kinds of institution were capable of offering a good but completely different musical education, but neither seemed able to work with the other. Crosten felt that scholarship, composition, and performance should be equally important in a well-balanced curriculum. Stanford had a view to bridge this split in the training of young musicians. Crosten sought a faculty that was able and willing to carry out this vision through their abilities and interests as well as through the collegial relationships that he strove to foster. Leonard Ratner, a composer, scholar, and violinist came to teach composition, music theory and history, and conduct the orchestra, Harold Schmidt to conduct singers and teach history. They joined Jan Popper, who left shortly after to conduct opera at UCLA, Warren Allen, organist and music historian, who was soon to retire, and Herbert Nanney, who then became University Organist. Sandor Salgo, a violinist and a conductor with a strong interest in the history of music, and Putnam Aldrich, were next added to the faculty. Later faculty appointments included Leland Smith and John Chowning, composers, Wolfgang Kuhn, music education, Arthur Barnes, conductor of the band and teacher of music theory, Imogene Horsley, musicologist, George Houle, performer and musicologist, and William Mahrt, musicologist and choral conductor. The foundation of a music library was one of Crosten's first and most urgent projects, critical for scholars and performers alike. Edward Colby was appointed as librarian and the existing music collection was expanded and organized as a serious resource for research and study. The acquisition of materials was closely guided by Colby and Crosten himself as a fully professional library staff was appointed and trained to carry on. Edward Colby also founded an archive of recorded sound which has been a model for other music collections. The excellence of the present music library is directly due to Crosten's vision and efforts. The Music Guild was founded in 1952, an organization of music-loving supporters of the Music Department. They have organized strong community support for departmental programs and scholarships for Stanford's musicians. Crosten was keenly interested in new directions of study as well as maintaining basic traditional requirements. He enabled the composers Leland Smith and John Chowning to study computer languages, a beginning of the Department's interest in computer-generated sound. This is continued today by Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, at the forefront of computer music and composition. Putnam Aldrich, one of Harvard's first Ph.Ds in musicology and a noted harpsichordist, was fascinated with discovering how music was performed in history through understanding early notation, theoretical concepts, esthetic ideals, and the instruments for which music in past eras was composed. Crosten established the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts to combine scholarship and performance, a pioneering study that is now carried on elsewhere by many Stanford-trained performers and scholars. To the established University Church Choir and Chamber Singers, Crosten added the University Symphony Orchestra, chamber music ensembles, and the University Chorus which often joined with the San Francisco Symphony for orchestral-choral concerts. Loran Crosten was fully consumed by and amazingly generous in his devotion to Stanford's musical life. He was also an enthusiastic sports lover, he attended almost all of Stanford's baseball games and followed the football and basketball teams as well. In his years of retirement he pursued interests in photography (he was a student of Ansel Adams) and published a photographic study of Boonville, New York, his family's summer retreat and eventual full-time residence. In his travels he satisfied his curiosity to see the diminishing wild life and wild places of the world, and he attended as many opera productions as he could. He and his wife, Mary Perry, served Boonville in many ways, including founding a recycling center that became a model for other communities in upstate New York. He brought great enthusiasm, good humor, and energy to these projects, as he did to his work at Stanford. Mary Crosten was a marvelous and much appreciated hostess for the frequent departmental gatherings that helped to unify and stimulate faculty and students. She also carried on her own work as an artist and taught many of the young of our community to draw, to see, and appreciate visual art, all the while nurturing their spirits. Their children, Lesley Ann and Stephen Perry, were raised and educated on the campus and now pursue active lives on Orcas Island and in Seattle, respectively. I, George Houle, came as a student in 1948 and found the intellectual stimulation of the Music Department to be constant, challenging, and transformative to a musician trained to be a professional performer. I received a secure foundation in analytic theory that opened a broad understanding of music history, styles and structure, and was delighted to discover that musical performance had a history. This led to a fascination with music in history, its actual sound, the performer's relationship to the composer's score, and with music previously known only to historians. As a graduate student I learned the techniques and methods of musical scholarship. I'm very grateful to Crosten for the education I received and for his generous support when I was a faculty member. I remember Loran Crosten during a visit in his ninetieth year when, his hearing and his eyesight impaired, he reached out his arms and energetically played some vigorous composition, lacking only a piano, saying "I can just feel exactly how it was and hear it perfectly." Committee: George Houle, Chair Leonard Ratner Sandor Salgo Leland Smith
|
|
Stanford Report, May 8, 2002
