Whiting George E(lbridge)

Whiting, George E(lbridge), American organist, pedagogue, and composer, uncle of Arthur Battelle Whiting;

b. Holliston, Mass., Sept. 14, 1840; d. Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 14,1923. He began to study at age 5 with his brother Amos, a church organist, and played in public at the age of 13; at 17 he became organist of the North Congregational Church at Hartford. He studied with George W. Morgan in N.Y., then went to England, where he became a pupil of W. T. Best of Liverpool (1863). Returning to America, he became organist at St. Joseph’s in Albany, N.Y., where the famous soprano Emma Albani sang in his choir. He then moved to Boston, where he was organist at King’s Chapel (1869-74); in 1874 he went to Berlin and studied harmony with Haupt and orchestration with Radecke. Finally settling in Boston, he taught the organ at the New England Cons. of Music (until 1879, and again from 1883 to 1897). In the interim he was a teacher at the Cincinnati Coll. of Music (1879-83). He was renowned as a teacher. He publ. The Organist (Boston, 1870) and The First 6 Months on the Organ (1871). He also wrote many sacred Works: 2 masses, Vesper Services, a Te Deum, the secular cantatas The Tale of the Viking, Dream Pictures, March of the Monks of Bangor, Midnight, and Henry of Navarre, the one-act opera Lenora, to an Italian libretto (1893), a Sym., a Piano Concerto, an overture to Tennyson’s The Princess, a Suite for Cello and Orch., piano pieces, songs, etc.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire