The classical music world suffers the loss of a legend...
Frederick Fennell dies at age 90
He was one of the classical music world's most innovative conductors and founder of the Eastman Wind Ensemble
by Jeff Spevak, staff music critic
(December 8, 2004) — Bedridden with hepatitis for six weeks in 1952, Eastman School of Music professor Frederick Fennell dreamed up a lean and mean Eastman Wind Ensemble capable of handling sophisticated compositions beyond the traditional parade fare.
In the process of creating the innovative and internationally acclaimed group, Fennell revamped the way students learn to play wind instruments. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians writes that Fennell's ideas created a "reconsideration of the wind medium, establishing a model for the twenty thousand wind ensembles subsequently established in American schools."
Fennell, a giant in the development of the Eastman School, died in his sleep early Tuesday morning at his home in Siesta Key, Fla. He was 90.
Mark Davis Scatterday, current director of the Wind Ensemble, suggests that Fennell was "the most-recorded American conductor ever." That included work with the Dallas Wind Symphony, the Cleveland Symphonic Winds and Tokyo's Kosei Wind Orchestra.
"He was a guy that had his hands in the complete music world," Scatterday says.
"He changed the way we teach our students today. He changed that way 52 years ago. I think he's one of those rare people that can say they created something that lasts 52 years, and has caught on all over the world, and lasted from the 20th century into the 21st century."
Fennell also cut a very striking image, with a commanding head of shoulder-length white hair, pronounced stage mannerisms and a way of taking charge of the room with just his words.
"He had a way of doing things at the podium that drew attention, and drew you into the music," Scatterday says.
"The gestures that he gave were so unique, and very appropriate to the music."
Fennell once taught conducting classes under water, to show how the baton must be controlled — "to demonstrate a perceived resistance while wielding the baton," recalls former Wind Ensemble director Donald Hunsberger.
"He was a man for whom 'No' was not an answer," he says.
That quality worked for Fennell as he battled musicians who were resistant to change.
"Other musicians had spent years and years establishing how many instruments, what instrumentation, went into a wind ensemble," Hunsberger says. "Symphonies didn't work that way, chamber orchestras didn't work that way. But he took this big, unmovable group and made it work."
Born July 2, 1914, in Cleveland, Fennell was brought to Eastman as a student in 1933 by the famed composer, conductor and dean of the school, Howard Hanson. Six years later Hanson put Fennell on the faculty. Hanson was also instrumental in signing Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble to Mercury Records in the 1950s. Their recordings have never gone out of print, in part because of the high-fidelity stereo equipment that was used, quite rare for that time.
Among those 22 albums was a collection of Civil War songs. That era of music was something that ran in his family: Fennell's father participated in Civil War re-enactments and frequently brought his son along.
"He spent a year, at least, gathering the music and instruments to do this," Scatterday says of the maestro's two-volume recording that won him a citation and medal from the Congressional Committee for the Centennial of the Civil War in 1961.
A recording that Fennell and the ensemble did of Percy Grainger's Lincolnshire Posy was selected by Stereo Review as one of the Fifty Best Recordings of the Centenary of the Phonograph, 1877-1977.
Among his many other honors was the dedication in 1992 of the Frederick Fennell Hall in Kofu, Japan; a Frederick Fennell Prize awarded by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and the College Band Directors National Association to a gifted American composer; and his induction into the American Classical Hall of Fame in Cincinnati. Fennel's hall of fame class of 2001 included pianist Van Cliburn and violinist Itzhak Perlman.
The last time Fennell was in town was October, when he conducted Sousa with the Eastman Wind Ensemble for alumni weekend at the Eastman Theatre.
"The greatness was still in that body," recalls James Undercofler, Eastman School of Music dean.
During that visit, Scatterday says, Fennell told him he had always admired Elgar's "Nimrod" from the Enigma Variations, although he had never recorded it.
"And I thought, if I ever could dedicate a piece to Fred — and I knew it was going to be on my watch to do something for him — this would be the piece to dedicate to him."
Scatterday is dedicating the remainder of the ensemble's season, including a Feb. 26 performance at Carnegie Hall in New York City, to Fennell. That dedication begins with the performance of Elgar at 8 tonight at the Eastman Theatre.
"He said it was something that touched his heart in a very unusual way," Scatterday says. "It was something that always brought him to tears."
Fennell is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and a daughter, Cathy Fennell Martensen. There will be a memorial service in Siesta Key, although no time or date has been set.
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