Arts and Letters

He was born at Newton, Massachusetts, January 5, 1871, the son of Edmund and Charlotte Converse. He was a lineal descendant of Deacon Edward Converse, who came to America from England in 1630. He attended the Newton High School, Cutler's Preparatory School in the same town, and in 1893 was graduated from Harvard with highest honors in Music. I myself had the honor of teaching, in a course known as "daily themes" at Harvard, many men from the undergraduate classes of 1892 and 1893, and I have a pleasant recollection of him and of his work. He was married in 1894 to Emma C. Tudor, and after a business career that lasted fortunately only six months, he decided to make music his chosen life-profession. For about a year and a half he studied in Boston under Carl Baermann and George W. Chadwick; and then for two years at Munich at the Royal Academy of Music under Josef Rheinberger.

After his return to America, he taught Harmony at the New England Conservatory of Music, later was Instructor in the Music Department at Harvard, and was promoted in 1905 to an Assistant Professorship. In 1907 he resigned his post at Harvard to devote himself to original composition; but in 1921 he returned to teaching as Professor at the New England Conservatory, was Head of the Theory Department, and from 1930 to 1938, was Dean of the Faculty, retiring only on account of ill-health.

He was awarded the David Bispham Medal for The Pipe of Desire; he was one of the founders of the Boston Opera Company, of which he was the first Vice-President; he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1908 and to the American Academy in 1937.

He died at his home in Westwood, Massachusetts, on June 8th, 1940.

In the recently published Memories of the Opera by the famous Director of the Metropolitan Opera Company, Giulio Gatti-Casazza, whose death in 1940 removed one of the ablest Directors of Music the world has ever known, and one of the most upright and noble characters, I find that he paid tribute to Mr. Converse for having composed the first American Grand Opera ever produced at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. This was The Pipe of Desire. The production took place March 18, 1910, and the six members of the cast were all Americans except one. Gatti wrote, "Learning of the existence of Frederick Converse's opera, which had been given a quasi-professional production in Boston, I myself made the contract for its presentation at the Metropolitan."

Mr. Converse composed more than one hundred pieces, with a large variety of forms: five symphonies, three suites, eight symphonic poems for orchestra, four operas, an oratorio, several cantatas, a fantasy and concerto for pianoforte and orchestra, string quartets, and many other pieces. Among his most distinguished works are The Mystic Trumpeter, American Sketches, and Flivver Ten Million, which was called A Joyous Epic for Orchestra.

Wallace Goodrich, the distinguished Director of the New England Conservatory of Music, who had already furnished me with many facts in the career of Mr. Converse, was kind enough also to send me some personal reminiscences which are of the highest importance in revealing his personality and character and are written with charming intimacy:

"My own acquaintance with Mr. Converse goes back to the time when we were about three years old and played together on the floor. From that time on, he was one of my closest friends, and during the last twenty years we were associated here at the Conservatory. It would be difficult to express a full estimate of Mr. Converse in a brief space. He was one of the finest characters I have ever known, and from the very first took a most sympathetic interest in the welfare of those about him. In his later years, he became devoted to the Church, and at the time of his death was Warden of St. Paul's Church in Dedham. He was an indefatigable worker, as the number of his compositions will show. He had great success with the latter, but was able to devote a great deal of time to reading and to matters of general educational importance, particularly as related to musical instruction for students; but I know that you knew him well in the Academy, in which he prized his membership highly. I suppose his most prominent characteristics were his uprightness and conscientiousness, his devotion to his family, and his generous thought for all his fellow men."

And, as Mr. Goodrich remarked, "It was fitting that Mr. Converse's last composition should have been a setting of the great hymn of praise—Te Deum Laudamus—the tribute of a noble Christian character to the Divine Lord in whom his faith and trust had never wavered."

It is not always that talent and character are so harmoniously united; and it is a pleasure to add that the members of the Institute and of the Academy who came into close contact with Frederick Converse felt the irresistible charm of his unselfishness and good will.