In Passing
March 20, 2009
Brooklyn College lost accomplished soprano and teacher Martha Jean Hakes on May 24, 2007, at age 77. Hakes taught at Brooklyn College from 1963 until her retirement to San Francisco in 1989. In addition to teaching, Hakes was a regular soloist at the Brooklyn College Baroque Festivals and many other Brooklyn College concerts, including the college's premier of Stravinky's Les Noces. A Washington Post article from 1970 eloquently captures the beauty of Hakes's voice: "She is a superb artist, a singer for all seasons, really. She combines vocal felicity with astonishing technical dexterity, and both of these are governed by an unerring sense of musical styles. Few are the singers in any category who can spin out a phrase as she does, with an equal mixture of emotional suspense, rhythmic flair, and stunning dynamic control." Hakes will be missed by Brooklyn College and all those who knew her music.
H. Wiley Hitchcock, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Institute for Study of American Music (ISAM) died at age 84 in December 2007. After studying at Dartmouth, the University of Michigan, and finally the Conservatoire Americain (under famed teacher Nadia Boulanger), and teaching at Michigan, NYU and Hunter College, Hitchcock came to Brooklyn College in 1971 and founded ISAM at a time when few scholars recognized the importance of American music. Wiley was a brilliant scholar with impeccable standards, and path-breaking publications. His highly esteemed work in American music studies, especially the compiling of the four-volume New Grove Dictionary of American Music (1986), was built on excellent earlier contributions to the fields of French and Italian Baroque music, especially his seminal work on Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The Amerigrove set provided one of the first comprehensive resources for American music, with entries ranging from folk and popular idioms to jazz and concert hall music. His 1969 textbook Music in the United States: An Introduction (Prentice-Hal), has gone through four editions and is still widely used. As a champion of the music of Charles Ives, Hitchcock was unmatched, as exhibited by one of his later projects — a remarkable edition of Ives's 129 Songs (A-R Editions, 2004). Hitchcock was a staunch advocate for American music of all kinds, and counted among his innumerable friends composers, scholars, musicians and enthusiasts from all over the world. Wiley was a respected colleague at Brooklyn College's Conservatory of Music as well as at the CUNY Graduate Center's Doctoral Program in Music, where he became a helpful and encouraging mentor and friend to many newly minted Ph.D.s in music, even after his retirement from CUNY in 1993.
Professor of History and Harpsichord at Brooklyn Conservatory Stoddard Lincoln died at age 82 on Arpil 6, 2007, at his home in Ringoes, N.J. after a long battle with emphysema. While teaching at the conservatory from 1964 to 1989, Lincoln also contributed regularly to The Musical Times, The Record Guide, Music and Letters, and The Musical Quarterly. In 1989 Novello published Lincoln's edition of 50 selected Scarlatti sonatas. Lincoln was an expert in English Restoration theater music from the period between Purcell and Handel and was also an active and accomplished harpsichordist and fortepiano player in New York. Those who knew Lincoln will never forget his incisive wit and his mastery as a teacher, performer and scholar.
Back to Fermata - Spring 2009
