Ilion High School - Class of 1944

Utica Daily Observer - April 2, 1944

Spring Means Music To Area High Schools

Article 13

Source pdf file is here Herkimer NY Evening Telegram 1952 01262.pdf on fultonhistory.com

Utica Daily Observer - IHS 1944 - Spring Means Music To Area High Schools

Photo Caption - THE ILION GIRIS CHOIR will be one featured in the Ilion Spring Music Festival. Its Membership includes: Front row, left to right: Jean Damon, Eluned Jones, Shirley Geesler, Alice Wagenbauer, Catherine Bailey, Kathleen Vayo, Joyce Morrisette, Marion Ashley, Lillian Farley, Gertrude Bump, Mary Antonaros, Betty Nason, Louise Pelton, Mary Putch, Dorothy Fear.

Spring Means Music To Area High Schools

Prepare For Ilion Festival

Although Ilion's annual spring Music Festival, Apr. 28 and 29, is nearly a month away, it is the main topic of conversation in youthful circles of the town and in vicinity homes. The festival is expected to attract more than 700 musicians from 14 schools in this area.

Emphasized by competition for places in the state finals, sponsored by the state State Music Teachers Association, May 20 and 27, the four sessions of the festival will serve a much higher purpose - that of welding a community, for a time at least, in a satisfying kind of enjoyment.

The war goes on, personal problems and griefs are ever present. But as one writer on things musical puts it:

We live in a country where support of music in the public schools is given on a scale unparalleled in history of education. Furthermore, we are privileged to live in a land where more music is written, played, and heard by more people than anywhere else on earth.

Utica Daily Observer - IHS 1944 - F. Fay Swift

Photo Caption - F. FAY SWIFT.

"In a world threatened with destruction, it is good that we, as a people --- our little children, our boys and girls, our plain, unselfconscious people, with their singing, dancing, playing and rhyming are proving themselves part of an unbroken stream of music-makers."

They're making war supplies in Ilion, day and night. But on two April days, at least, when young people from schools in New Hartford, Whitesboro, West Winfield, Edmeston, Sauquoit Valley, Canajoharie, Oriskany, Caroga Lake, Middleville, Newport, Little Falls, Herkimer, Dolgeville, Utica Catholic Academy, Ilion's public schools and the Annunciation School of Ilion when they take over the munitions towns --- there'll be music.

And it's a foregone conclusion that at each of the four sessions of the festival in the high school auditorium the big hall will be jammed with adults, not just to see who gets top places in the competition, but to hear the young people sing and play.

Through an arrangement with the following educational centers the Stat Music Teachers' Association has established scholarships and awards for students of music in the public schools gaining one ration in the state finals.

Skidmore, Oberlin, Houghton, Illinois Weslcyan and Ithaca Colleges, Nazareth College, Rochester, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Ill., Syracuse, Brown and Boston Universities, Eastman School of Music, Rochester, and the Julliard School of Music, New York.

A number of other colleges and universities have expressed their approval of the plan and are expected to give it favorable consideration.

The scholarship and awards are valued at more than $10,000 a year. They go to the students who wish to continue their musical study but who need financial assistance.

The Ilion festival is one of 40 similar area programs contemplated this season in the state. Students who have won ratings will take part in the stat finals in the Amsterdam SEnior High School, May 20, the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, and the Senior High School, Port Washington, L.I., May 27.

According to Frederic Fay Swift, supervisor of music in Ilion's schools, virtually every phase of music education will be evaluated starting at 4 Friday afternoon, Apr. 18, and continuing through the following Saturday.

Included among the adjudicators are such widely know judges as Frank Jetter, Amsterdam; Dean L. Harrington, Hornell, and Elvin I. Freeman, Polaski.

Mrs. Bessie Stewart Bannigan will be guest piano soloist at the Apr. 28 program, which will be given over largely to piano solos and to the Ilion Varsity Choir.

Saturday morning, Apr. 29, solo and ensemble entries will be judged and in the afternoon the adjudicators will concentrate on competition in woodwind, brass, string and percussion instruments.

The highlight of the festival when seven choirs, ... on the school stage, will be featured on a program with the Ilion Annunciation School Choir, Sister Mary Rosalie directing.

That evening there will be selections by the Ilion Junior Band, directed by Jack R. Brunner and the Ilion High School Senior Orchestra and Senior Band, Swift directing.

Sport dances will be given in the Ilion High School gymnasium, on the nights of Apr. 28 and 29, in honor of out of town guests.

The first citation awarded to a school music group in the state was voted the Ilion Public Schools Music Department last fall by the Music Ware Council of America.

The Council was set up to recognize and encourage maximum activity and outstanding patriotic service in support of the war effort by school bands, choruses and orchestras. 11 awards distinguished service citations to school music groups whose records of wartime service include unusual effort on the part of their directors and musicians outside the usual routine of school and public performances.

Since Pearl Harbor, Ilion school bands and choruses have appeared in more than 300 patriotic programs for such campaigns as those for Red Cross and War Bond sales. They have been accorded no little credit in putting Ilion on the map as one of the top cities in the country in these efforts.

The a capella choir of Ilion High has a national rating in Class A for similar groups. Through 70 broadcasts, made by the music department of the school, nine of them coast-to-coast, it has won national recognition. A few years ago, under the present supervisor, Ilion High launched the first course in student band-conduction in the the United States.

Swift, president of the National School Vocal Association, says that the success of any school system is dependent upon the whole school administration and especially, upon the co-operation of the principal.

"We're lucky in having J. G. Prindle, our principal at Ilion High, on our side 100 percent," he said.

Swift has the unqualified respect and approval of his pupils, despite a quite informal approach to his subject. Perhaps because of that very attitude, his courses are tops at the high school.

In rehearsals of various groups, the students are expected to pick out mistakes and to offer suggestions. If any of them discover that some statement the supervisor may make on a subject pertaining to music is incorrect, that girl or boy gets and A rating.

Of the 550 children in the high school, 220 are studying some form of music there. In this June's graduation class 34 per cent of the music students have earned Sate Regents music credits. Regents marks in music were stepped up this year to equal those of either subjects, for the first time in the history of music in the state's public schools.

Fifteen music students regularly attend the concerts sponsored by the B Sharp Club in Utica.

"Public school music is weathering the present upheaval in the arts pretty well," says the Ilion supervisor, "although now not a boy in any of my groups is over 15. The boys of that age, believe it or not are singing low bass. In Chicago, to point out the result of the war on public school music, within six months after Pearl Harbor, not a boy remained in most of the school choirs. Six of the high schools in that city dropped boys from their choirs for the duration."

In his years with the Ilion music department, 42 of the young people in the music department have become professional musicians of high standing: teachers, radio performers, concert artists. A record which, likely, can't be topped by any public school music system in a town of similar size. Ten members of his classes are members of the Little Falls Symphony Orchestra.

Among the brilliant young students of music attending Ilion High at present are Dorothy Fear and Virginia Ashley, already raised 95 to 100 in state contest for student conductors, and Dorothy Helmer, pianist-vocalist, who has obtained and Eastman scholarship.

Dorothy had a fine article in the March number of "The School Music News," published by the State School Music Association. Swift is editor of that publication.

Graduated in 1928 from Ithaca College, he obtained his master's degree in education at Syracuse University He has had 42 of his compositions, music for songs, largely published within the last three years.

He has just finished an Easter cantata, requested by a New York publishing house, and is working on five orchestrations which have been accepted by a New York concern. Five publishing firms print his compositions. His text book, "Fundamentals of Music," is used in many pubic schools of the state.

He likes and encourages all kinds of music, from the strictly classic to that in which modern youngsters delight. He quotes Lilla Bell Pitts new book, "The Music Curriculum is a Changing World."

"Music in truth accompanies every day life. Mother doing her housework to Tchaikovsky and children doing homework to the Hit Parade are common place these days. The main in the street and child in school are in the position to make not only choices but comparisons. Narrow, devitalized programs of 'note songs' and 'note reading,' from a limited number of preconceived books are likely to fare badly on these days of boogie woogie --- and Toscanini, Stokowski and the sound film, Walt Disney and the animate cartoon."

Each year, Swift and a group of music students from Ilion High go to New York for a weekend. This year, 18 of them will accompany the supervisor over Memorial Day weekend to the city, where they will hear Fred Waring in a broadcast, will attend a New York Philharmonic Orchestra radio performance by invitation of its sponsoring organizations, and expect, as an extra fillip, to see "Carmen Jones."

They'll stop at the Roosevelt Hotel and the round trip, including everything will cost each one of them just $35. Last year Swift, and his gang from the school saw "Oklahoma" and a Metropolitan Opera Company performance marked another trip. On the coming trip cathedral and church music are planned as part of the program .

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