New England Conservatory of Music - Neume Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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LOUIS C. ELSON

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RALPH L. FLANDERS

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IN MEMORIAM LOUIS CHARLES ELSON 1848-1920 A Member of the Conservatory Facultij for Forty Years. In this strange work-a-day world apjicar from time to time men avIio act witli the breadth, the simplicity, the ceasclessncss and energy of the forces of nature, men of mass and weight, primary men, influencing all within their sweep. Louis C. Elson was pre-eminently one of these — a man of ample nature, soul, body and spirit, a king of men, whose presence unconsciously dominated wherever he might be. No one sensitive to what is worthy and effective in personality could fail to respond to that leonine countenance and manly figure, the embodiment of staunchness, benignity, and a noble sincerity. The humor and humanity that showed themselves in his smile and the unforgettable twinkle behind his eye-glasses, irradiated all his writings, pro- fessional and literary. His international reputation as a musical critic was based not only on his famous signed articles in the leading newspapers and magazines and his work as corres])ondent for the important musical journals of Europe, but on a body of sane, well-balanced creative and critical interpre- tation in book-form, ranging from folk-songs to Wagner, from old English ballads to the development of the national music of America. Something of the breadth and variety of his scholarship may be read in the fact that two of his best known volumes are Shakespeare in ] Iusic, a mine of stimulating information and suggestion to students and investigators, and a Dictionary of Musical Terms, which has taken its rightful place as a standard work of reference. Such achievement shows how he united with his artistic tempera- ment a capacity for exact and strenuous research. He had a genius for taking infinite pains ; he got things at first hand, and he knew how to vitalize the results. It is significant and illustrative of his wide friendships and sympa- thies that he dedicated his Shakespeare in Music to Sir James Geikie, so long the head of the department of Geology in Edinburgh University, with cordial remembrances of many pleasant conferences on this and kindred topics. No man had a greater genius for friendship than Louis C. Elson; wherever he went he drew the best to him. As a teacher he was supreme, complete in every part. Charm and dis- tinction characterized his exposition ; and in the class-room as on the public platform he was ever lucid, luminous, and vital. His success as an instructor was due not merely to his superb intellectual equipment and his inunediate knowledge and power of presentation, but to his genial, sympathizing regard for the individual student. His transparent sincerity and sense of the worth of the business on hand influenced every member of his classes. He had rev- erence for all that a true teacher stands for, and he ever approached his own work with an exalted sense of responsibility. E. Charlton Black, LL.U.