Edgar Stillman Kelley

Edgar Stillman Kelley (born April 14, 1857 in Sparta / Wisconsin , † November 12, 1944 in Oxford / Ohio ) was an American composer, conductor, organist, pianist, music critic and music teacher.

Kelley had his first music lesson from his mother. At the age of seventeen he went to Chicago to study with Clarence Eddy and Napoleon Ledochowski . From 1876 to 1880 he studied organ, piano and composition at the Stuttgart Conservatory . His teachers were Frederich Finck , Wilhelm Krüger , Wilhelm Speidel and Max Seifriz . In Stuttgart he also met Edward MacDowell , in whose artist colony he later worked temporarily.

After graduating, he performed with various orchestras in Europe before returning to the USA, where he worked as a church organist in San Francisco and wrote music reviews for the San Francisco Examiner . As a composer he found his first attention with the incidental music for a performance of Macbeth . From 1886 to 1891 he lived in New York and married there (1891) the singer and pianist Jessie Gregg . After a period in California, where he worked as a composer, conductor and teacher, Kelley was called to New York in 1891 to conduct an operetta company. He also taught there at New York College of Music and New York University, and in 1901 he represented Horatio Parker for one year at Yale University .

In 1902 Kelley went to Berlin with his wife, and in the following years he worked in Europe as a teacher, conductor and musician. In 1910 he returned to the United States and took a position at the Western College for Woman in Oxford, which he held until his death. He was also a lecturer in composition and later dean of the composition and orchestration department at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music . Here in 1931 his student Carl Hugo Grimm succeeded him.

In addition to the aforementioned incidental music for Macbeth, he composed music for Lew Wallace's Ben Hur (1902), two operettas ( Pompeiian Picnic , 1887 and Puritania , 1892), two symphonies ( Gulliver , 1900 and New England , 1913), orchestral works such as Alice in Wonderland (1919) and the symphonic poem The Pit and the Pendulum (based on Edgar Allan Poe , 1930), the music for the film Corianton , which was not made , as well as chamber music (including a string quartet and a string quintet), songs and piano pieces.

swell

personal data
SURNAME	Kelley, Edgar Stillman
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American composer, conductor, organist, pianist, music critic, and music educator
DATE OF BIRTH	April 14, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH	Sparta, Wisconsin
DATE OF DEATH	November 12, 1944
Place of death	Oxford (Ohio)