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Horace Whitehouse, 25 January 1881 – 27 July 1958) was an English-born American organist, conductor, composer and teacher.

Life

Whitehouse was born in West Bromwich, Staffordshire, England, on Jan. 25, 1881.

Education

Whitehouse was educated at Washburn College and Harvard University, and was President of the Class of 1904 at New England Conservatory of Music in Boaton. He did graduate work at New England Conservatory and in Paris. He received an honorary doctorate in music from Washburn College in 1938. [NYT Obit]

Whitehouse studied piano, harmony, and counterpoint under James Hotchkiss Rogers, of Cleveland, Ohio, and violin under a local teacher. He studied organ with Wallace Goodrich and J. H. Rogers; piano with Charles Dennée and George Proctor; voice with A. Babcock; composition with George W. Chadwick, the director of the New England Conservatory; and conducting under Wallace Goodrich and Chadwick. He became assistant organist and choirmaster of Trinity Episcopal (Phillips Brooks) Church, of Boston, with Wallace Goodrich, remaining there from 1904 to 1909. He conducted choir festivals, the last with two hundred men and boys of Trinity Church, and has conducted choruses and orchestras for twenty years. In 1911, he went to Europe to study organ with Charles-Marie Widor. From 1909 to 1918, he was dean of the Fine Arts Department of Washburn College, Topeka, Kansas, and while in that city was conductor of the Topeka Musical Arts Society, which had a chorus of two hundred and fifty voices and an orchestra of fifty pieces. He conducted annual festivals with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, at which times the Messiah, Elijah, Hiawatha, Verdi's Requiem Mass and other works were performed. At one time he was organ soloist with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, of which Max Zach was conductor, and at Topeka was organist, playing upon a four manual Kimball organ. He managed concert series during his entire stay at Topeka. He was elected an associate of the American Guild of Organists in 1917, and was dean of the Kansas chapter of the Guild. He served as secretary of the Kansas State Music Teachers' organization, and in 1917, was guest professor at the University of California. From 1918 to 1921, he was director of the music department of Ohio Wesleyan University, where he conducted the chorus and orchestra. In 1919, he was assistant musical director and organist of Methodist Centenary Church, at Columbus, Ohio, and as such, trained a chorus of a thousand voices. Two years later, in 1921, he became vice-president and musical director of the Indiana College of Music and Fine Arts in Indianapolis, and in 1923 was made president and musical director of the college, positions which he now holds. He is, in addition to his many duties at the college, organist and choirmaster of Christ Church Episcopal, of this city. In September and October, 1921, he received signal recognition for his work as a conductor by being called from headquarters to take charge of the music for the American Red Cross Convention and to conduct a chorus of fifteen hundred voices and also the orchestra in the Great Pageant, held at Columbus, Ohio, during those months. He has given organ recitals from coast to coast. He is a member of Sinfonia, Alpha Chapter (a music fraternity), affiliates with the Methodist Church, is a member of various Masonic bodies, and formerly was a member of the Topeka Rotary Club. He has many manuscript compositions to his credit, although he has not cared to have any of them published, and has taken several prizes for musical composition, the last having been awarded by the Ohio State Music Teachers in 1921, in a statewide competition.

Whitehouse was professor of organ and church music at Northwestern University from 1927 to 1949. [NYT obit]

Sources

Logan Esarey, History of Indiana From Its Exploration to 1922 With an Account of Indianapolis and Marion County Vol. IV. Dayton Historical Publishing Co. 1924.

Obituary, New York Times, 29 July, 1958, p. 23.

Dean of Music at the University of Colorado. Horace Whitehouse, president and director of the Indiana College of Music and Fine Arts, located at Meridian and Sixteenth streets, Indianapolis, is one of the foremost figures in the world of music.