Frederick Fennell

Frederick Fennell (July 2, 1914 in Cleveland, Ohio – December 7, 2004 in Siesta Key, Florida) was an internationally recognized conductor, and one of the primary figures in promoting the wind ensemble as a performing group. He was also influential as a band pedagogue, and greatly affected the field of music education in the USA and abroad.

Fennell chose percussion as his primary instrument at the age of seven, as drummer in the fife-and-drum corps at the family's encampment called Camp Zeke. He owned his first drum set at age ten. In the John Adams High School Orchestra, Fennell performed as the kettledrummer and served as the band's drum major.

His studies at the Interlochen Arts Camp (then the National Music Camp) included being chosen by famed bandmaster Albert Austin Harding as the bass drummer in the National High School Band in 1931. This band was conducted by John Philip Sousa on July 26, the program including the premiere of Sousa's Northern Pines march. Fennell himself conducted at Interlochen at the age of seventeen.

Fennell found a compatible and fruitful relationship at the Eastman School of Music. As a student, he organized the first University of Rochester marching band for the football team and held indoor concerts with the band after the football season for ten years. At Eastman, he completed his bachelor's and master's degrees (in 1937 and 1939). Fennell became the first person ever to be awarded a degree in percussion performance. He was also awarded a fellowship that allowed him to study at the Mozarteum Salzburg in 1938. Attending the Mozarteum Salzburg allowed him to take several classes with Herbert Albert and visit several times with the festival’s chief conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. Returning, he sailed on the SS Bremen departing Southampton on September 3, 1938. For the purpose of the passenger manifest, he signed his name as Frederick Putnam Fennell (a rare use of his middle name).

Fennell also studied conducting with Sergei Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in 1942 (with fellow clasmates Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, and Walter Hendl). (He was appointed Koussevitzky’s assistant at the Center in 1948). During World War II Fennell served as the National Musical Advisor in the United Service Organizations.

Eastman Wind Ensemble

While Fennell was recuperating from hepatitis for six weeks in 1952, he devised a new symphonic band organization. This involved scaling the typical concert band down to the wind section of a symphony orchestra allowing for greater clarity and fewer intonation difficulties. Fennell called a meeting of nearly 40 players in May 1952. Fennell himself explained that “I chose the best students in the school, and the best solo performers, and the best ensemble players”. On September 20, 1952 he held the first rehearsal for the Eastman Wind Ensemble, and he conducted the first concert at Eastman's Kilbourn Hall on February 8, 1953. Desiring expanded repertoire, Fennell mailed letters to nearly 400 composers around the world requesting appropriate compositions for the new group. The first composer to respond was Percy Grainger, followed by Vincent Persichetti and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Fennell's Recordings

While with the Eastman Wind Ensemble, the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, and various other groups, Fennell recorded many of the standards of the wind band repertoire. He became one of America's most-recorded conductors. Starting with "American Concert Band Masterpieces" in 1953, Fennell recorded over 300 compositions on 29 albums for Mercury Records. For Mercury, Fennell recorded with the Eastman-Rochester "Pops", London "Pops" (actually the London Symphony Orchestra), and free-lance groups of New York musicians. However, best known are the twenty-two of these 29 Mercury albums that were with Fennell's own Eastman Wind Ensemble. One of these albums, "Lincolnshire Posy" by Percy Grainger recorded in 1958, was selected by Stereo Review magazine as one of the "50 best recordings of the Centenary of the Phonograph 1877-1977". The two volume "Civil War - Its Music and Its Sounds", recorded in December 1960, was a notable set of recordings also made with the Eastman Wind Ensemble, this time performing on original instruments. In 1961, Fennell received a citation and a medal from the Congressional Committee for the Centennial of the Civil War for these recordings. In 2003, the 1958 Mercury album "Winds in Hi Fi" was chosen by the National Recording Preservation Board for the National Recording Registry.

Nearly all of Fennell's Mercury recordings were reissued on compact disc. Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble were also featured in the premiere issuance of Mercury material on compact disc. In 1986, 22 Sousa marches performed by the Eastman Wind Ensemble were released as a compact disc by Philips Records, which now owned the Mercury catalog.

Fennell made the first symphonic digital recording in the United States for Telarc with the Cleveland Symphonic Winds, on April 4-5, 1978. This recording included the two Suites for Military Band by Gustav Holst. Fennell also recorded for Brain, Columbia Records, Delos, King, Kosei, Ludwig, Premier Recordings, Reference Recordings, and Sine Qua Non Superba as well as the Library of Congress label.

Career After Eastman

Dr. Fennell was associate music director of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (now the Minnesota Orchestra) from 1962 to 1964. In September 1965 he became conductor-in-residence at the University of Miami where he conducted the symphony orchestra and also founded a wind ensemble. He also served as the resident conductor of the Miami Philharmonic 1974 to 1975. He was also principal guest conductor of the Interlochen Arts Academy and Dallas Wind Symphony. At the invitation of its players, he was appointed the initial conductor of the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra in 1984. [http://www.tkwo.jp/english/about/fennell.html]

On the podium, Fennell evinced a courtly yet commanding manner despite his five foot, one inch stature. He was known to take charge of a room with just his words, and his conducting was extremely animated. His conducting workshops were famous for including calisthenics and baton technique exercises in swimming pools. He remained highly active in the world of conducting until a few months before his death at the age of ninety at his home in Siesta Key, Florida. At the time he was conductor laureate of the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Dallas Wind Symphony [http://www.dws.org/ffennell.htm] , and professor emeritus of the University of Miami Frost School of Music.

Awards and Honors

Dr. Fennell received Columbia University's Alice M. Ditson Conductor's Award in 1969, was presented the Star of the Order from the John Philip Sousa Memorial Foundation in 1985, received an honorary doctorate from Eastman in 1988, and was inducted into the National Band Association Hall of Fame of Distinguished Band Conductors in 1990. He received the Theodore Thomas Award of the Conductor's Guild in 1994. [http://www.conductorsguild.org/main.asp?pageID=20] He was also inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2001. In 2003, he received the Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award from Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. [http://www.sinfonia.org/News/SN-2004-12-07.asp]

Fennell was said to be most fond of the honorary doctorate he was awarded from Eastman, being inducted as an honorary chief of the Kiowa Nation in the 1960s, and receiving a medal of honor from Interlochen in 1989. He made frequent appearances guest conducting such ensembles as the Boston Pops Orchestra 1949 to 1978, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, the United States Marine Band, Interlochen Arts Academy, and the Interlochen Arts Camp. In 1997, Fennell became the first civilian to conduct an entire concert with the United States Marine Band; and in July 1998 he repeated this at a concert in the Kennedy Center celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Marine Band.

Dr. Fennell was a brother of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, a social music fraternity, and Kappa Kappa Psi, the National Honorary Band Fraternity.

Frederick Fennell Hall was dedicated in Kofu, Japan on July 17, 1992. On April 4, 2006, the Interlochen Center for the Arts opened up state of the art music and academic libraries, with the music library named in honor and memory of Dr. Fennell and his wife, Elizabeth Ludwig Fennell. [http://www.interlochen.org/news/ecrescendo/june_2006/grand_openings]

At the conductor's request, his ashes were scattered in the woods at Interlochen, Michigan.

Fennell's Writings

Fennell wrote several books: Time and the Winds, a Short History of the Use of Wind Instruments in the Orchestra, Band and the Wind Ensemble, 1954; The Drummer’s Heritage, a Collection of Popular Airs and Official U.S. Army Music for Fifes and Drums, 1956; and The Wind Ensemble, 1988. Fennell also edited for several music publishers: Boosey & Hawkes, Carl Fisher, Theodore Presser, and Sam Fox. For the Fennell Editions at Ludwig Music he edited over 50 scores for band performance, including many marches. One of these editions published in 1981 was for his favorite march, National Emblem by Edwin Eugene Bagley. He also wrote a series of sixteen articles published in The Instrumentalist under the heading ‘Basic Band Repertory’ beginning in April 1975 and concluding in February 1984. These articles were devoted to what Fennell called "...indestructible masterpieces for band that have survived the ravages of time and many an inept conductor".

References

The 1993 Roger E. Rickson book "Ffortissimo: a Bio-Discography of Frederick Fennell: the First Forty Years, 1953 to 1993", (Ludwig Music, Inc., publisher) ISBN 1-57134-000-9 covers in detail the Fennell story, with particular attention to recordings. There is also considerable biographical detail in the 2004 Robert Simon book "A Tribute to Frederick Fennell" (GIA Publications) ISBN 1-57999-472-5.

The Frederick Fennell Collection at the Library of Congress includes over 20,000 items (scrapbooks, letters, photographs). [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.scdb.200033609/default.html]

External links

* [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200152754/default.html Fennell, Frederick: "The Sousa March: A Personal View"]
* [http://hdl.handle.net/1802/4222 Orchestral development of the kettledrum from Purcell through Beethoven.] Fennell's MM thesis --University of Rochester. From Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection

s-ttl|title=Conductor of the Eastman Wind Ensemble
years=1952–1961