Originally published 1.05.23.
Legend: Dett studied with Arthur Foote at Harvard.
Status: Misleading. Dett was granted a sabbatical that paid his Harvard tuition and lodging in Somerville, but he studied privately with Arthur Foote off campus.
1. Arthur Foote did not serve on the Harvard faculty, at least not while Dett was there in 1919-1920.
Foote was a famous graduate of Harvard and noteworthy composer who taught out of his home in Dedham, a suburb of Boston that is not Cambridge. That is, he did not teach students on the Harvard campus.
OK, so how did Dett meet him?
The 1919-1920 Harvard University Catalogue lists Foote as Chair of the Francis Boott Prize Committee, a prize Dett would win in 1920. Since the submission deadline was 15 April 1920, Dett would have met him no later than around that time. Notice that I say “no later than around that time.”
Special note: Foote’s family, especially his mother, Mary Wilder, had very deep and wide connections to Boston society. Mary, in particular, had social ties (reinforced through her status among the Unitarian Church) with people such as Charles Eliot (erstwhile President of Harvard) and George Peabody. This George Peabody, (1795-1869) philanthropist and eventual founder of the Peabody Institute at John Hopkins, should NOT be confused with George Foster Peabody (1852-1938), who served as a Trustee for Hampton and personally paid the bill (i.e., dipped into his hedge fund) for Dett’s Harvard sabbatical; the two are not familial relations, either. All right, all right, semantics seem to have obfuscated this legend. So we need to ask, what was Dett actually doing at Harvard?
2. Per Lori Rae Shipley’s excellent and readily available dissertation, Dett was invited by Archibald Davison to take courses (that he had already taken at Oberlin) to learn how to do the job (he was already doing brilliantly) at Hampton.
Davison is primarily remembered today for having founded the Harvard Glee Club ca. 1920. The seminar room in the Harvard Music Library is named for him, but do not go into it lightly because the room has hosted countless acts of torture.
Here is the list of courses that Davison taught for the Music Department during the 1919-1920 year. As you can see, they are sophomore-/junior-level courses that Dett would have taken for his BM at Oberlin. Frankly, Davison did not attend conservatory, but in my personal experience as both an Eastman and Harvard alumna, the courses are not different in content.
So, the answer to our question only raises another question: what did Dett really do while on sabbatical? This is a better question than, What did Dett do at Harvard besides win the Bowdoin Literary Prize and the Francis Boott Composition Prize and not study with Arthur Foote? He beat out Randall Thompson for the Boott Prize, by the way.
You will have to wait for another blog post for the answer to that one. Additionally, there will be another blog post about why it even matters that he studied with Arthur Foote. To be continued…