ETHEL GLENN HIER - USA
BORN 25 JUNE
BORN 25 JUNE
Ethel Glenn Hier was an American composer, teacher and pianist of Scottish ancestry. Ethel was born in Madisonville, a neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Ethel graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory in 1911 where she studied composition under Stillman-Kelly and Percy Goetschius and piano under Marcian Thalberg. She then continued her studies at the Institute of Musical Art in New York before going to Europe to study privately with Hugo Kaun in Berlin as well as Gian-Francesco Malipiero in Italy and Ernest Bloch. At that time, European music was greatly influenced by the composers Alban Berg, Egon Wellesz and Arnold Schoenberg of the Vienna School. They, too, would leave a lasting impression on Hier. She wrote many vocal pieces as well as for the piano and orchestra. In 1930–31, she was one of only two women awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.She studied at Ohio Wesleyan University and the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where she graduated in piano in 1908. She continued her education in 1911 with composition classes, and in 1917 entered the Institute of Musical Art (later Juilliard).
After completing her studies, Hier worked as a composer and became a teacher of piano and composition in Cincinnati and then New York.
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KATHERINE KENNICOTT DAVIS - USA
BORN 25 JUNE
Katherine Kennicott Davis was an American former teacher, who was a classical music composer, pianist, and author of the famous Christmas tune "The Little Drummer Boy".
Davis composed her first piece of music, "Shadow March," at the age of 15. She graduated from St. Joseph High School in 1910, and studied music at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. In 1914 she won the college's Billings Prize. After graduation she continued at Wellesley as an assistant in the Music Department, teaching music theory and piano. At the same time she studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.Davis also studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. She taught music at the Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, and at the Shady Hill School for Girls in Philadelphia.
She became a member of ASCAP in 1941 and was granted an honorary doctorate from Stetson University, in DeLand, Florida. Katherine K. Davis continued writing music until she became ill in the winter of 1979–1980. She died on April 20, 1980, at the age of 87, in Littleton, Massachusetts. She left all of the royalties and proceeds from her compositions, which include operas, choruses, children's operettas, cantatas, piano and organ pieces, and songs, to Wellesley College's Music Department. These funds are used to support musical instrument instruction.
Many of her over 600 compositions were written for the choirs at her school. She was actively involved in The Concord Series, multiple-volume set of music and books for educational purposes. Many of the musical volumes were compiled, arranged, and edited by Davis with Archibald T. Davison, and they were published by E.C. Schirmer in Boston.
She wrote "The Little Drummer Boy" (originally titled "The Carol of the Drum"), in 1941. It became famous when recorded by the Harry Simeone Chorale in 1958: the recording sailed to the top of the Billboard charts and Simeone insisted on a writer's royalty for his arrangement of the song. Another famous hymn by Katherine Davis is the Thanksgiving hymn "Let All Things Now Living" which uses the melody of the traditional Welsh folk song The Ash Grove.
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