From Stoeckel to Hindemith: The Early Years of the Yale School of Music
Gustave Stoeckel
David Stanley Smith
Gustave J. Stoeckel: Yale Pioneer in Music
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1939)
Gustav Jakob Stoeckel, Yale’s first music professor, was born in Maikammer, in southwestern Germany, in 1819. He was trained in music, and held positions as a high school principal and church organist. Stoeckel supported the Revolution of 1848; when it failed, he lost his job and fled Germany for the United States, where he settled in New Haven. (In America, he spelled his name Gustave Jacob Stoeckel.)
In New Haven, Stoeckel re-established his musical career, thanks in part to the support of the wealthy and influential Battell family, particularly Irene Battell Larned, a talented and energetic musician who was married to a Yale professor. In 1855 Stoeckel was named Instructor of Vocal Art, Organist, and Chapelmaster at Yale. This job, which was funded by the Battells and was not officially considered a faculty appointment, became the springboard for four decades of vigorous and varied musical activity. Stoeckel was the first official conductor of the Yale Glee Club, and he established several other vocal or instrumental ensembles. He also composed operas, a symphony, and other works. Although music remained an extracurricular activity at Yale for most of his career, Stoeckel did an extraordinary job of enhancing its quality and quantity. Yale granted him a doctorate in music in 1864, the first such degree awarded at Yale.
The author of the short book displayed here, David Stanley Smith (1877–1949), is himself a major figure in the early history of the Yale School of Music. A member of the Yale College Class of 1900, he also earned a Mus.B. degree from the School of Music in 1903. He was a student of Horatio Parker and a friend of Charles Ives. Smith joined the faculty of the School of Music in 1903, and served as Dean from 1920 (after Parker’s death) until 1940. He also succeeded Parker as conductor of the New Haven Symphony, and as the Battell Professor of Music. The Gilmore Music Library holds Smith’s papers.
Inaugural Address, Battell Professorship of Music
MSS 27, the Gustav Jakob Stoeckel Papers, Gilmore Music Library
Gustave Stoeckel
Inaugural Address,
Battell Professorship of Music
Typescript, 1890
Although Gustave Stoeckel had led a wide range of musical activities at Yale since 1855, music had no official place in the curriculum until 1890, when he was named the first Battell Professor of Music. That appointment was the culmination of a long and difficult struggle to get music recognized as a legitimate academic subject at Yale. Although music had strong advocates at Yale, it also faced opposition and even ridicule. For example, when the University announced Stoeckel’s 1890 appointment as well as a fund drive to support the creation of a Department of Music, one alumnus wrote, “It is hard to repress disgust at finding the Corporation appealing to the community for $300,000 as an endowment for a ridiculous sideshow like a department of music.”
On April 28, 1890, a formal ceremony, attended by President Theodore Dwight and other dignitaries, was held to inaugurate a pair of rooms that would house the new Department. Stoeckel delivered a lengthy address—displayed here—in which he surveys the philosophy and history of music, going back not only to the ancient Greeks and Romans, but to Adam and Eve. The entire address is designed to defend the dignity of music and to justify its place in the University. Near the end, Stoeckel writes that “the most gifted men, those of highest attainments and culture, see in music an art capable of being a vehicle for the expression of the noblest sentiments and holiest feelings; for representing as well and efficiently the dreamy fancies of imagination as also the most exalted state of the soul, which it would be impossible for other art forms to reveal. This is the view the serious, conscientious musician takes.”
Gustave Stoeckel retired in 1894 and died in 1907. Stoeckel Hall, now the home of the Department of Music, is named for him. His son Carl married Ellen Battell, a member of the wealthy and musical family that had supported Gustave’s initial appointment in 1855 as well as his professorship in 1890. Carl and Ellen established the Norfolk Festival, which featured eminent foreign musicians (such as Jean Sibelius and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor) as well as Yale musicians. The Battell name lives on in that endowed chair (now held by Richard Cohn) and in Battell Chapel.