If I have failed to illustrate the confusion afforded by the source situation for a single year of Dett’s life, well, please be my guest and write Dett’s biography because I do not believe I can fix this by myself.
As I understand it, Simpson thinks Dett took one group of courses, while Shipley thinks he took a different group of courses. Both Simpson and Shipley use materials from the Hampton Archives almost exclusively. While they present different conclusions on the details, both Simpson and Shipley agree that Dett’s supervisors (Davison, Gregg, Peabody) did not know what Dett was actually doing.
I believe that Dett intentionally kept his supervisors in the dark. Think about it. The proceedings of Davison’s visit show Dett and the Hampton Administration at serious odds with one another. Dett wanted to build a [Trade] School of Music because that is what he understood his task to be when he was hired [Shipley, p. 127], but Hampton’s refusal to invest the necessary infrastructure into it was painfully recorded by Davison as visiting reviewer. Dett wanted to take whatever courses he wished at Harvard, while Principal Gregg seemed bent on Dett taking only what Davison had personally invited him to take, with a very condescending attitude underlying that invitation. Do I need to point out the fact that Davison’s senior colleagues at Harvard—the ones who got the plum teaching assignments, the high-level seminars—had only Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees, if they had any degrees at all? Dett had a Bachelor’s degree from Oberlin and was a published composer, qualifications that should have enabled his own hiring at Harvard rather than relegating him to undergraduate status as a Special Student. Could Davison have had a chip on his shoulder? You think? There is something seriously amiss about Dett’s entire situation, on the books.
Therefore, since painstaking research by Simpson and Shipley, using primary sources from the same institution, collides so forcefully, I think it only reasonable to admit the possibility that Hampton was not given or simply did not choose to document what Dett actually did at Harvard. Correspondence between Dett and his superiors transpired in confidence, probably without expectation that its contents would be revealed to future historians. To put on a united front perhaps, a paper trail was created instead.
So put yourself in Dett’s situation. You are given a tremendous opportunity to escape the daily drudgery of butting heads with The Firm in the candy store that was Boston in the 1920s: a new, exciting conductor in Pierre Monteux, Arthur Foote nearby and available, and a sustained networking opportunity that Dett was unlikely to see ever again. You know that if you went against the wishes of the Establishment, you would be subjected to far worse than “scolding.” Would you tell The Firm what you were doing?