Reid, Cornelius L.
Reid, Cornelius L.
Reid, Cornelius L. , American voice teacher and music scholar; b. Jersey City, N.J., Feb. 7, 1911. He was a member of the Trinity Church Choir in N.Y. (1920–25), and studied with Frederick Kurzweil and Ruth Kirch-Arndt at the N.Y. Coll. of Music (1945–48). He also studied voice privately with George Mead (1929), Marie Wagner (1929–30), and Douglas Stanley (1934–37), and had coaching from Frieda Hempel (1930) and Povla Frijsh (1932–40). He taught voice privately in N.Y. (from 1934), and at Marymount Coll. (1940–41) and the General Theological Seminary there (1946–49). He conducted various performing groups (1939–45) and gave master classes and lectures throughout the U.S. Reid authored 3 books defining his Functional Vocal training: Bel Canto: Principles and Practices (Boston, 1950), The Free Voice (N.Y., 1965), and Voice: Psyche and Soma (N.Y., 1975); also compiled the important Dictionary of Vocal Terminology (N.Y., 1984).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire