Whiting Arthur Battelle
Whiting Arthur Battelle
Whiting, Arthur Battelle, American pianist, teacher, and composer, nephew of George E(lbridge) Whiting; b. Cambridge, Mass., June 20,1861; d. Beverly, Mass., July 20, 1936. He studied in Boston with Sherwood (piano), Maas (harmony), and Chadwick (composition). In 1883 he went to Munich and took courses at the Cons. with Rheinberger (until 1885). Returning to the U.S., he stayed in Boston until 1895, then settled in N.Y. From 1907 he gave educational chamber music concerts at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia Uni vs., and in 1911 he inaugurated a series of concerts of early music, playing the harpsichord, other artists being Constance Edson (violin), Georges Barreré (flute), and Paul Kef er (viola da gamba).
Works
Concert Overture (Boston, Feb. 5, 1886); Piano Concerto (Boston, Nov. 16, 1888, composer soloist); Fantasie for Piano and Orch. (Boston, March 5,1897, composer soloist); Suite for Strings and 4 Horns (Boston, March 13, 1891); The Golden Cage, dance pageant (1926); Piano Quintet; String Quartet; Piano Trio; Violin Sonata; many piano pieces, including 6 Bagatelles, Suite moderne, and 3 Characteristic Waltzes; also Melodious Technical Studies; Pianoforte Pedal Studies (with text in Eng. and Ger.); musical settings from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam for Baritone; anthems; songs; etc.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire