Whitney, Robert (Sutton)
Whitney, Robert (Sutton)
Whitney, Robert (Sutton), American conductor; b. Newcastle upon Tyne, England (of an American father and an English mother), July 9, 1904; d. Louisville, Ky., Nov. 22, 1986. He studied with Sowerby in Chicago, and took lessons in conducting with Eric De Lamarter there. In 1937 he was engaged as conductor of the Louisville Phil. (later renamed the Louisville Orch.), a post he held until 1967. A munificent grant from the Rockefeller Foundation enabled the Louisville Orch. to commission works from American and foreign composers, each to be paid a set fee of $1,000; the project proved highly successful, and the orch. was able to give first performances of works by Honegger, Milhaud, Malipiero, Petrassi, Krenek, Dallapiccola, Toch, Chávez, Villa-Lobos, Ginastera, Schuman, Virgil Thomson, Cowell, Piston, Sessions, Antheil, Crestón, Mennin, and others; it recorded some 200 contemporary symphonic works on Louisville Orch. Records. From 1956 to 1972 he was dean of the Univ. of Louisville School of Music; also taught conducting at the Univ. of Cincinnati Coll.-Cons. of Music (1967-70). He composed a Concerto Grosso (1934), Sym. in E minor (1936), Sospiri di Roma for Chorus and Orch. (1941), and Concertino (1960).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire