Charles C. Hirt at the University of Southern California: significant contributions and an enduring legacy

PDF

Download

Open document

Transcript (if available)

Content CHARLES C. HIRT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA:
SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTIONS AND AN ENDURING LEGACY

by

Shawna Lynn Stewart

A Treatise Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC THORNTON SCHOOL OF MUSIC
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS
(CHORAL MUSIC)

MAY 2013

Copyright 2013 Shawna Lynn Stewart
ii
DEDICATION
In thirteen years of marriage, my husband has only known me sans doctoral work for four
months. My children have known me only as the one who “needs to be working on her paper.”
They have joyfully and with great encouragement joined me on this journey. Thank you for being
the first smiles of every day and that last hugs of every evening, and for being my constant reason
to finish. I love you.
From my first church solo at age five to the last sentence of this document, my parents
Roger and Jan Cross have provided emotional, physical, and spiritual support along every twisted
and straight path I have walked. The love and encouragement they have shown is without
measure. With a glad heart to see them at this “finish line,” I say, “Thank you.”
I would like to include an additional dedication to the students of Charles Hirt. I believe
you are some of the most fortunate students to have lived. My life has been immeasurably
enriched by this project. My choral philosophy, my view of my students, and my purpose as a
musician have changed because of what I have learned through studying Dr. Hirt. Though the
scope of this paper is limited, I hope in a small way this document can bring him the honor and
recognition he is long overdue. May we continue to live his legacy!
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dr. Scheibe, Dr. Strimple, and Dr. Grases, thank you for your valuable insight and
guidance in this process. I am also full of gratitude for the extra time I was granted to complete
the paper so I could be with my children in their younger years.
Dr. Scheibe, I am profoundly grateful for the countless hours you dedicated to my paper
as the chair and the genuine interest you showed in this project. I will be forever indebted to you
for bringing to my attention the research opportunity in the Charles C. Hirt Collection at the
American Choral Directors Association Archives. I am immensely thankful to have had this
occasion to learn from you.
I would like to thank Dr. William Dehning for first accepting me into the Choral Music
program at the University of California. I will always be grateful for your teaching, the
opportunities you afforded me and the love of Bach you imparted.
I would like to acknowledge the interviewees for this paper. I walked away from each
interview feeling as if you had imparted to me a precious gift. I was often moved to tears by your
stories and the beauty and knowledge of Dr. Hirt’s mind and heart that you shared with me.
Aside from my parents, my sister, and my husband, there has been no one that has
contributed more to this process than Scott Dorsey. Thank you for being my sounding board, my
ears, my editor, my English teacher, my research assistant, my encourager, and my friend. You
are a real light in this world. Thank you for all you do for this profession and for getting me to the
finish line.
Thank you to Paul Smith, my college choral conductor at John Brown University, who
taught me to turn a musical phrase and love choral musi. When being the first to see conducting
talent in me, he encouraged me to make choral music education and conducting my career. And
to my other important professor at John Brown University who has now been my colleague at
Biola for sixteen years, Jeanne Robison, I am deeply grateful for your friendship and years of
prayerful support.
iv
I gratefully acknowledge Rich Starcher from Biola University who sacrificially helped
me craft the ideas for my proposal and “get me on my way.” Also, thank you to my department
chair George Boespflug and my colleagues at Biola who have made working there, being a mom,
and completing a doctoral degree possible.
Thank you to Ann Bare who prayed for me and served as my proofreader and final editor.
There are many circles of friends who have also supported me on this long path for which I will
be forever grateful. I would like to specifically mention Lynette Harper Cortez and Kerry Rigsby
who often gave me a “song in the night.”
Ed and Carol Stewart belong in both the Dedication and the Acknowledgments. Living in
Pittsburgh, PA, in the spring of 2008, one of them was here in California every week for six
weeks to care for our young son and the household while I studied intensively for my Qualifying
Examinations. In December 2012, they came again for almost a month while my husband was
traveling and took care of every detail including both of our children, so I could spend
concentrated time writing. It is without question that this paper would not have been completed
without the many ways they have helped our family. Thank you.
To my brother, Gary Tocci, and sister-in-law, Destini Tocci, thank you for your support
and genuine interest in me all these years. Gary, I’m also glad I beat you to “it.”
To my sister, Amber Strickler, every phone call, card, gift, text, hug, loving word reveals
the glorious way you were created. I love you and am thankful for the thirty-six years you have
been my sister.
To my great Father in heaven who created Charles Hirt to so magnificently reveal Your
purposes for music that could then be shared with the generations, thank You for Your gift of
music to us. Soli Deo Gloria.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication ............................................................................................................................ ii

Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. iii

List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... vii

List of Figures ................................................................................................................... viii

Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ix

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1

Need for the Study ............................................................................................................... 1

Purpose Statement ............................................................................................................... 1

Methodology ....................................................................................................................... 2

Chapter 1: Life and Work Outside of the University of Southern California .......................... 3

Early Years and Education .................................................................................................. 3

Dr. and Mrs. Hirt ............................................................................................................... 11

Employment Outside of the University of Southern California ........................................ 16

Chapter 2: Significant Contributions to the University of Southern California .................... 23

The Departments of Church Music and Choral Music ...................................................... 23

National Reputation ........................................................................................................... 42

Chapter 3: Charles Hirt and His Philosophies, Methods, and Techniques ............................ 68

A Personal Look ................................................................................................................ 68

A Subjective View ............................................................................................................. 78

Chapter 4: An Unfinished Work ............................................................................................ 99

Chapter 5: An Enduring Tradition ....................................................................................... 108

Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 122

Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 126

Appendices

Appendix A: The University of Southern California Madrigal Singers/Chamber
Singers Repertoire Performed, 1949-1975 ............................................ 131

Appendix B: “Dona Nobis Pacem” Score .................................................................. 137

Appendix C: Selected Course Materials by Charles C. Hirt ....................................... 141

Appendix D: The Choral Conductor: A Compendium of His Art, Book Outline ....... 144

Appendix E: Biographical Sketch and Supplementary Materials .............................. 163

Appendix F: Interview with Donald Brinegar ............................................................ 171

Appendix G: Interview with Frank Brownstead ......................................................... 188

Appendix H: Interview with Terry Danne .................................................................. 193

Appendix I: Interview with Dr. William Dehning .................................................... 204

Appendix J: Interview with Dr. Sally Etcheto ........................................................... 221

Appendix K: Interview with Dr. William Hall ........................................................... 234

Appendix L: Interview with Dr. Robert G. Hasty, Sr. ................................................ 245

Appendix M: Interview with Darlene Hatcher ............................................................ 270

Appendix N: Interview with Douglas Lawrence ........................................................ 285

vi
Appendix O: Emailed Interview Responses, Dr. John Lilley ..................................... 305

Appendix P: Interview with Dr. Doyle Preheim ........................................................ 306

Appendix Q: Interview with Joel Pressman ................................................................ 321

Appendix R: Interview with Dr. H. Royce Saltzman ................................................. 340

Appendix S: Interview with James Shepard ............................................................... 346

Appendix T: Interview with Delton Shilling .............................................................. 367

Appendix U: Interview with Dr. Ronald Staheli ......................................................... 389

Appendix V: Interview with Dr. Nick Strimple .......................................................... 397

Appendix W: Interview with Dr. James H. Vail .......................................................... 416

Appendix X: Interview with Dale Warland ................................................................ 442

vii
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1:
Choral ensembles offered from 1946-1976. ......................................................... 40

Table 2:
Notable USC Department of Church and Choral Music graduates under
Charles Hirt. ......................................................................................................... 44

Table 3:
1964 Chamber Singers' tour itinerary. .................................................................. 58

Table 4:
Sample repertoire list from the 1964 Chamber Singers' tour. .............................. 61

viii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1:
Charles Hirt as The Valiant in a one-act play, The Valiant, 1928. ......................... 5

Figure 2:
The Smallman A Cappella Choir program. ............................................................ 6

Figure 3:
John Smallman. ...................................................................................................... 7

Figure 4:
Charles Hirt as Orpheus in Orpheus in the Underworld, 1933. ............................. 8

Figure 5:
An expressive Charles Hirt as Orpheus and the cast of Orpheus in the
Underworld, 1933. . ............................................................................................... 9

Figure 6:
Charles Hirt’s Occidental College Senior Recital program. ................................ 10

Figure 7:
Charles Hirt, c. 1937. The photo was also used in numerous press releases. . .... 16

Figure 8:
Charles Hirt and the Glendale High School A Cappella Choir, 1941. ................. 18

Figure 9:
Charles and Lucy Hirt with their Hollywood Presbyterian choristers. ................ 20

Figure 10:
Special University published brochure to announce the new curricula in
Sacred Music, cover. ............................................................................................ 25

Figure 11:
Special University published brochure to announce the new curricula in
Sacred Music, page two. ...................................................................................... 26

Figure 12:
Widney Hall, c. 1880. ........................................................................................... 28

Figure 13:
The Chamber Singers in rehearsal in Widney Hall, 1968. ................................... 29

Figure 14:
New degree curricula for BM in Sacred Music and MM in Sacred
Music, 1945. ......................................................................................................... 30

Figure 15:
D.Mus. in Church Music curriculum, 1953. ........................................................ 35

Figure 16:
Master of Music with Major in Choral Music curriculum, 1970. ........................ 38

Figure 17:
The Doctorate of Musical Arts in Choral Music curriculum, 1970. .................... 39

Figure 18:
Photo of the 1964 Chamber Singers receiving applause on tour. Unidentified
performance venue. “1964 Tour of Europe and Israel.” ...................................... 56

Figure 19:
Choral Journal review of the 1964 USC Chamber Singers' tour to Israel. ......... 63

Figure 20:
Hirt’s theory of the Pendulum Swing. .................................................................. 80

Figure 21:
Outline of Style Characteristics Related to the Repertoire Used in Choral
Demonstration. ..................................................................................................... 81

Figure 22:
Chapter outline, The Choral Conductor: A Compendium of His Art. ................ 103

Figure 23:
Retirement concert announcement from the USC Daily Trojan. ....................... 123

ix
ABSTRACT
Dr. Charles Hirt and the Department of Church and Choral Music at the University of
Southern California (USC) produced some of America’s most successful choral conductors and
administrators. Many of those students are conducting at the finest colleges and universities,
secondary schools, churches, and community choral organizations, with their ensembles having
received the prestige of singing at notable educational and choral conferences. From the earliest
moments of his career, Charles Hirt himself received a seemingly endless string of accolades.
Always focused on the betterment and future of the choral arts, he was a “founding father” of
significant choral organizations such as the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA),
Choral Conductors Guild of California, and the International Federation of Choral Music. It was
also this visionary mindset that served as a hallmark of his tenure at USC and arguably earned
him the right to stand as an equal alongside the greatest of American choral conductors.
It is the aim of this study to examine Hirt’s significant contributions to the University of
Southern California and his legacy as it continues on in his students and the subsequent
generation of choral leaders they generated.
1
INTRODUCTION
Need for the Study
As early as 1968, Lois Wells wrote in The Journal, a publication of the Choral
Conductors Guild, that the “choral program at USC has become a prototype for many schools and
colleges across the nation.”
1
1968 was still four years before the Department of Sacred Music
under Hirt’s leadership would become the Department of Choral and Sacred Music, a shift that
continued the program’s visionary leadership in choral music education. Charles Hirt was also the
long-time music director at Hollywood Presbyterian Church in Hollywood, California, where he
developed a choral program that also became a model for churches around the nation. His impact
stretched from all fifty states in the United States, across the seas to Europe and the Middle East.
Yet, this man, who among many notable achievements left an indelible imprint on the lives of
thousands of choral musicians, influenced the direction of prestigious choral organizations, and
changed the standards and sound ideal for the performance of choral music, has not been the
source of any considerable extended research. Four known dissertations
2
in existence include Dr.
Hirt as a subject of study in one chapter or less. There is no major publication dedicated solely to
illuminating the life and work of Charles Hirt.
Purpose Statement
The scope of this paper is limited to Charles Hirt’s work at the University of Southern
California. The intent of this study is to answer the following questions:
1. What are the key professional contributions of Charles Hirt to the University of California?

1
Lois Wells, “May We Introduce... CONVENTION HEADLINES Dr. Charles C. Hirt.” The
Journal, Choral Conductors Guild XX, No. 9 (May 1968): 1.
2
Jennifer M. Garrett, “Elements of Leading Collegiate Choral Programs in the United States”
(DMA diss., Arizona State University, May 2010), ProQuest (3410690); Lesley Gayle Leighton, “Howard
Swan, Charles Hirt, Roger Wagner: Their Influences and the Building of Choral Culture in Southern
California” (DMA diss., University of Southern California, May 2012), ProQuest (3513798); Douglas
Reeve McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts, and Choral Techniques Employed by Selected
Choral Conductors in Southern California Four-Year Colleges and Universities” (EdD diss., Colorado State
College, 1961), ProQuest (302055330); William Kenneth Decker, “A Study of Vocal Pedagogy for the
Choral Rehearsal Based on Theories Presented in Published Literature from 1960-1970 and on Interviews
and Observations of Selected Choral Conductors” (DMA diss., Temple University, June 1975), ProQuest
(302830499).
2
2. What are the psychological underpinnings of Charles Hirt with regard to the development
of choral conductors?
3. What methodologies did Charles Hirt use to teach his students?
4. What qualities did Charles Hirt possess that made him a great leader?
5. How have Charles Hirt’s teaching methods, choral concepts, and/or philosophies been
propagated through the generations since his retirement from the University of Southern
California?
Methodology
There is no significant body of published writings by Charles Hirt whereby one could
acquaint oneself with Dr. Hirt’s life and work. That knowledge lies in those with whom Dr. Hirt
worked, who knew him best, particularly in professional matters. The two significant bodies of
research for this document came from the materials that presently reside in the archives at the
headquarters of the American Choral Directors Association and nineteen individual interviews
with Hirt’s former colleagues and students. The criteria for interviewee selection were as follows:
(1) completed or put significant work towards a DMA or MM degree in choral or sacred music
under Charles Hirt and has a reputation for excellence in choral music and/or (2) sang in the 1964
Chamber Singers’ State Department Tour of Europe and Israel and/or (3) held a significant
professional association with him at the University of Southern California. Each interview was
conducted via email, by phone, or in-person. Phone and in-person interviews were digitally
recorded and hand-transcribed to ensure accuracy. All participants were asked pre-selected
questions and further prompts as needed.

3
CHAPTER 1: LIFE AND WORK OUTSIDE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Early Years and Education
“The master teacher when he comes will be keenly musical, a technician, a psychologist,
a[n] acoustician, a physician, a pedagogue, but he will have an abiding faith and love for music,
for people and for God. He will be an artist.”
3
Speaking to inspire a zealous crowd of music
educators at a Missouri Music Educators Association (MMEA) convention in 1957, Charles C.
Hirt actually described himself.
Born November 4, 1911, in Glendale, California, his father Adolph, and mother, Della
Belle (Mills) Hirt,
4
supported his pursuit of music at a young age. In a 1973 interview with Ray
Moreman,
5
Hirt recollected, “I would have to say that they were always supportive, if somewhat
bewildered. Dad could never understand why I preferred playing piano to football, but that didn’t
keep him from providing music lessons, instruments, or whatever I seemed to require.”
6
There are
few known existing recorded documents of Hirt’s childhood; however, it is clear that as a boy
Hirt had multiple interests including violin, an instrument on which he was first chair in junior
high, and trumpet, as well as a unique nonmusical interest in kites. Arguably never an under-
achiever, in 1923 (at age twelve), Hirt received five Certificate of Achievement awards at
Glendale’s Annual Kite Tournament: (1) Strongest Puller, special mention; (2) Best Decorated

3
Charles C. Hirt, “Music Education, a Process or a Product?” typed manuscript of address to
Midwestern Conference MMEA, 1957, p. 7, Charles C. Hirt Collection, American Choral Directors
Association Archives, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Box 1, Series 5.
4
“Who’s Who Biographical Data,” typed responses for entry submission, Charles C. Hirt
Collection, Box 1, Series 4.
5
“University of California: In Memoriam, March 1976 | Raymond Moreman, Music: Los
Angeles,” California Digital Library, 2011, accessed December 29, 2012, http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId
=hb9k4009c7&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00036&toc.depth=1&toc.id. Ray Moreman was a faculty
member in choral music at the University of California Los Angeles from 1937-1966, during which time he
also chaired the Department of Music from 1952-1956. He served the field of choral music from 1968-1971
as the editor for The Journal of the Southern California Choral Conductors Guild and as chairman of the
editorial board for The Choral Journal, the major monthly publication of the American Choral Directors
Association. Hirt spoke at Moreman’s memorial service.
6
Typed transcript of an interview with Charles C. Hirt conducted by Ray Moreman, 1973, p. 1,
Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 4, Series 9.
4
Kite, special mention; (3) Best Bow Kite, special mention; (4) Most Artistic Kite, special
mention; and (5) Best Emblem Kite, special mention.
7

Hirt’s primary and secondary education was completed in Glendale. He received a
diploma from the Elementary Schools of Glendale City District in 1925 after completing
Glendale Avenue Intermediate School. In 1929, at the age of seventeen, Hirt graduated from
Glendale Union High School. From a young age he was a leader in the performance of musicals,
being given the principal role numerous times in dramatic productions. His graduating year of
junior high school he was in the operetta The Toreadors by Otis M. Carrington, in which he
played the lead role of Señor Dictorio, a wealthy farmer. At Glendale Union the high school glee
clubs combined to present The Fire Prince, an operetta with music by Henry Hadley, in which
Hirt played the Fire Prince. Figure 1 provides a rare look at a young sixteen-year-old Hirt in the
lead role as The Valiant in The Valiant by Holworthy Hall and Robert Middlemass.
Hirt joined the Smallman A Cappella Choir while he was in his senior year of high
school. The ensemble was a professional choir founded in 1926 by John Smallman, at that time
the conductor of the Los Angeles Oratorio Society.
8
That concert season was particularly notable
for Smallman’s group because they engaged in their “First Transcontinental Tour.”
9
Out of
character for a very honest Hirt, in an interview with Douglas McEwen, Hirt recalled that he had
to lie about his age to go on the tour.
10
From October through December the choir traversed the
United States performing in venues from California to Massachusetts (figure 2).
Even in Smallman’s choir, Hirt was involved in some sort of drama. One of the
Smallman A Cappella Choir programs boasts that they were “the only costumed choir in the West
singing unaccompanied and from memory.”
11
(See figure 2.)

7
Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 10, Series 22.
8
Concert program, “First Transcontinental Tour: The Smallman A Cappella Choir. Jordan Hall,
Boston, November 17, 1929,” Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 3, Series 6.
9
Ibid.
10
Douglas Reeve McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts,” 221.
11
Program for The Smallman A Cappella Choir, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 3, Series 6.
5

Figure 1. Charles Hirt as The Valiant in a one-act play, The Valiant, 1928. Hirt is center. (Reproduced by
permission from the American Choral Directors Association. Original photo. Charles C. Hirt Collection,
American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 3, Series 6.)
In an interview with Douglas McEwen, Hirt revealed that his year in Smallman’s choir was
pivotal. Speaking of his return from the tour, Hirt commented, “When I came back, I had had
such wonderful experiences in music and in personal relationships with music and in literature
through this man and his colleagues, that it left an indelible influence.”
12
Although there were
many choral giants who contributed to Hirt’s views on music,
13
it was Smallman who “more than

12
McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts,” 221.
13
Ibid., 222. In his interview with McEwen, Hirt noted that John Finley Williamson, Robert
Shaw, Olaf and Paul Christiansen, and Father Finn all affected his view of choral music.
6

Figure 2. The Smallman A Cappella Choir program. (Charles C. Hirt Collection, American Choral
Directors Association Archives, Box 3, Series 6.)
any other single person or single fact was instrumental in directing my creative outlets into choral
music.”
14

Hirt continued his relationship with Smallman during his years at Occidental College
when, on his own time, he studied voice and conducting with him (figure 3).
15

14
Ibid., 220.
15
Ibid., 221.
7

Figure 3. John Smallman. (The Smallman A Cappella Choir program. Charles C. Hirt Collection,
American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 3, Series 6.)
Hirt told Douglas McEwen that he learned techniques for music at Occidental, but it was
with Smallman that he had an “organic” experience, a term that would come to define Hirt’s
philosophy of teaching choral music.
16
Interestingly, Smallman would be hired in 1936 to start an
a cappella choir at the University of Southern California.
17
Yet tragically, Smallman’s tenure at
USC would be short-lived, as he died in 1937 in the chancel of First Congregational Church of
Los Angeles where he was the music director, while conducting a performance of Handel’s
Messiah.
18

From 1930-34, Hirt was enrolled at Occidental College where he participated in several
glee clubs
19
under the direction of Walter E. Hartley and continued to nurture his leadership
abilities. Hirt was president of the Men’s Glee Club and a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon

16
Ibid., 224.
17
Pauline Alderman, We Build a School of Music: The Commissioned History of Music at the
University of Southern California (Los Angeles: The Alderman Book Committee, 1989), 135.
18
“In Memoriam: John Smallman 1886-1937,” First Congregational memorial program, Charles
C. Hirt Collection, Box 3, Series 6.
19
“Hirt in Recital: Last Undergraduate Appearance,” The Epsi-Lion, A Publication of California
Epsilon Fraternity 1, No. 2. (May 1934).
8

Figure 4. Charles Hirt as Orpheus in Orpheus in the Underworld, 1933. (Reprinted by permission from
Occidental College Special Collections Library. Orpheus in the Underworld program, cover, Charles C.
Hirt Collection, American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 3, Series 6.)
House, the DO
20
club and the Occidental Players.
21
Another activity that would assist him in
graduate work was the exchange of language lessons with a peer exchange student, Rolantin
Kovasov, who was also studying at Occidental. Hirt, already having an interest in the French
language, gave Kovasov English and French lessons in exchange for Russian lessons.
22
Hirt
continued to develop his dramatic skills with the Occidental Players, again frequently playing the
principal role in such productions as Everyman (1932) and, as a freshman, in an operetta by

20
Jim Tranqua, email to author, February 25, 2013. The D.O. club was speculated to stand for
“Develop Occidental.” Formed in 1925, it was a senior men’s honorary society. The society was disbanded
around 1972.
21
McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts,” 221.
22
Ibid., 222.
9

Figure 5. An expressive Charles Hirt as Orpheus and the cast of Orpheus in the Underworld, 1933.
(Reprinted by permission from the American Choral Directors Association. Original photo. Charles C. Hirt
Collection, American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 3, Series 6.)
Robert Planquette called The Chimes of Normandy (1931).
23
Arguably his most noteworthy lead
role was in the spring of his junior year (1933) as Orpheus in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the
Underworld (figure 4 and figure 5). His burgeoning musical performance skills were also put to
good use outside of Occidental. During his collegiate years, he was part of a group called the
Black Cat Syncopators that performed jazz music from the ’20s and ’30s in which he played the
trumpet.
24
Of the group, in an interview with Ray Moreman,
25
he said that it was a “popular
combo which played covers of the music of the ’20s, etc., for dances and radio.”
26
At the end of

23
Newspaper clipping from unidentified newspaper, “Head Players,” Charles C. Hirt Collection,
Box 3, Series 6.
24
Brinegar interview. Brinegar recalled that the group’s title may have also been “Charles Hirt
and the Black Cat Syncopators.”
25
Moreman, Hirt interview. Ray Moreman and Charles Hirt first met as singers in the Smallman
A Cappella Choir.
26
Ibid.
10
his undergraduate career, Hirt presented one final performance at Occidental on May 9, 1935,
when he gave his senior recital singing tenor (figure 6).

Figure 6. Charles Hirt’s Occidental College Senior Recital program. (Reprinted by permission from
Occidental College Special Collections Library. Charles C. Hirt Collection, American Choral Directors
Association Archives, Box 3, Series 6.)
11
Reportedly possessing “a tenor voice of unusual excellence,”
27
Hirt’s fraternity
publication noted that “Chuck’s splendid singing has carried him much fame, not only on the
Occidental campus, but throughout the entire community.”
28

In 1934, Hirt received degrees in education and music,
29
completing his undergraduate
training. His graduate education was subsequently taken up at the University of Southern
California. In 1940, he earned a Master of Science degree, having written a thesis on the
Comparative Pupil Interest in Elective Music Courses in Junior and Senior High School.

Working his way to the top of the academic ranks, he started his PhD program the following year.
In line with examples discussed in later chapters of this document, Hirt led the charge and was
only the second person in the history of music at USC to take doctoral qualifying examinations.
“I took mine first, and then I assisted in giving Charles Hirt’s,” said Pauline Alderman.
30
By
1946, he had completed his formal education after earning his PhD in Musicology. His
dissertation
31
on Russian choral music would eventually earn him the international reputation of
being a leading scholar in this area.
Dr. and Mrs. Hirt
At Occidental College, Charles Carleton Hirt met Lucy Alice Thompson; they married on
June 3, 1928. In 1946, they bought a house at 1318 Cordova Avenue in Glendale where they
would reside until their deaths in 2001 and 2008. They adopted two children, Janice Lynne (born
in 1940) and Ron Allan (born in 1946).
32
Tragically, Lucy saw both of her children pass before

27
Unidentified, untitled newspaper clipping. 1928, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 3, Series 6.
28
“Hirt in Recital: Last Undergraduate Appearance,” The Epsi-Lion, A Publication of California
Epsilon Fraternity 1, No. 2. (May 1934).
29
Lesley Gayle Leighton, “Building of Choral Culture,” 50.
30
Alderman, We Build a School, 211.
31
Charles Hirt, “Graeco-Slavonic Chant Traditions Evident in the Part-Writing of the Russian
Orthodox Church” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1946), ProQuest (301826247).
32
Charles Hirt, handwritten submission for “Who’s Who” entry, Charles C. Hirt Collection,
Box 1, Series 4.
12
she herself did. In a phone interview, Nancy Mancini, a singer in the Hollywood Presbyterian
Cathedral Choir, said that Ron struggled with severe depression after returning from the Vietnam
War and committed suicide. About five years ago, shortly before Lucy’s passing, Janice died as a
result of contracting lung cancer. Lucy was survived by her son-in-law, Terry Alan Young;
grandchildren, Carrie and Penelope; and great-grandchildren.
Dr. Hirt and Lucy were a well-matched pair, sharing musical, spiritual, and cultural
interests their whole lives. Though Hirt was more in the limelight than his wife, former student
and close friend Delton Shilling stated his memories of Lucy:
She was a star in her own right with the choral music, children’s music [sic]. But, Lucy
kind of stood next to Charles through all of the years…he had a very unique
personality…He was charismatic…perfectionistic…very driven and he would react that
way too sometimes. But, Lucy took it all in stride…she was a wonderful hostess and
singer.
33

Dorothy Haskin of Hollywood Presbyterian Church provided an even more personal
picture of Lucy in describing her as “a slight, dark-haired woman…[whose] intensely serious
attitude toward the choir gives the impression that she is a smaller edition of her husband.”
34

Darlene Hatcher,
35
a former student and long-time friend of the Hirts, thought Lucy was an
“incredibly intelligent, sophisticated, competent woman” who willingly chose to subvert her
career goals to partner with Hirt in his.
36
It appeared that Lucy did all that she could to support
her husband and further his career.
37

33
Delton Shilling (sang in the 1964 Chamber Singers), interview by the author at the home of the
interviewee, Long Beach, California, October 18, 2012.
34
Dorothy Haskin, “Cathedral Choir of Hollywood,” article from unidentified magazine, Charles
C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 3.
35
Hatcher interview. At that time Darlene Hatcher was Darlene Lawrence. She was married to
baritone and former USC student under Hirt, Douglas Lawrence. Presently she is married to famed
American conductor and educator, William Hatcher. She will be referred to throughout the paper as
Darlene Hatcher.
36
Darlene Hatcher (sang in the 1964 Chamber Singers), interview by the author at the home of the
interviewee, San Diego, California, October 18, 2012.
37
Ibid.
13
Of the 1964 four-month Chamber Singers tour to Europe and Israel, Doyle Preheim
recalled the following of Mrs. Hirt:
She was more interested [in engaging the students on a personal level] than he. She was a
sweetheart. She put up with a whole lot. She was a walking medicine chest. He had a lot
of ailments that he was taking care of already at that time. She was a great support and a
lifelong musical companion, of course. My wife and I stopped to see her in 2006, just
about two years before she died, and she was just sharp as a tack. We reminisced about
that ’64 tour and she knew the names of every person on the tour and it was just
wonderful.
38

Several interviewees recalled that Lucy was often the mediator between Charles and his
perfectionism. Donald Brinegar recalled seeing Lucy trying to calm Hirt down at intermission
after a poor first-half concert performance in Hawaii. Apparently, her magic worked because at
the start of the second half, the end of Samuel Barber’s Twelfth Night was met with five to six
seconds of silence followed by an explosion of audience applause.
39
Of course, Hirt’s tireless
optimism and dedication to the music undoubtedly also contributed to the turnaround in the
performance. Robert Hasty recalled a similar example of Lucy’s role as arbitrator during the 1964
Chamber Singers’ tour to Europe and Israel.
40
Hasty spoke of the intense pressure Dr. Hirt and
the singers were under. Sometimes the pressure Hirt imposed on the singers adversely affected
them, to the point that the singers were angry with him in concert. Hasty recalled that the second
half of a performance they gave in Caen, France, was the worst concert they had ever given; the
singers were resentful of biting comments Hirt had made at intermission. At one point, now
famed mezzo-soprano Nina Hinson had called her mother and purchased a plane ticket to return
home before the end of the tour.

38
Doyle Preheim (received a DMA degree under Charles Hirt, sang in the 1964 Chamber
Singers), telephone interview by the author, October 17, 2012.
39
Donald Brinegar (sang in the Chamber Singers and served as his Teaching Assistant), telephone
interview by the author, October 30, 2012.
40
The 1964 tour will be discussed at length at the end of Chapter Two.
14
Mrs. Hirt knew what was going on and she pulled her aside and said [Hasty’s paraphrase], “You
have to understand the pressure he’s under, and I want to assure you that he loves you and it
would hurt him very badly for you to leave.”
41

Former Hirt student James Shepard shared an account akin to those of Brinegar and
Hasty of a concert the Chamber Singers gave while on tour in Phoenix.
We’d done the first half of the concert and it was okay, but it wasn’t great, and he was
just livid at intermission. It was one of the few times he was just chewing us out. He was
like a football coach just letting us have it, and Lucy came in. This is the first time and
the only time I’d ever seen this happen, and she’s like, “Charles, come here” (with a firm
voice). And he stopped mid-sentence and went over there…She knew we were going to
blow the second half if he didn’t cool it,…because he was just berating us. I never
remember him doing that before that…or after that, but they had a really interesting
relationship, he and Lucy…She was really the woman behind the man.
42

Yet, sometimes she was not the mediator but rather a part of the battle in a rather light-
hearted sense. Douglas Lawrence and Darlene Hatcher (then Darlene Lawrence) used to sit for
hours at the Hirts’ home listening to countless stories of Charles and Lucy’s quaint and often
romantic adventures in their travels abroad. Douglas Lawrence remembered Lucy as being very
capable in those social situations of “doing combat with him [Hirt] on those stories. If he didn’t
get it quite right she would say, ‘Charles, that is not what happened,’ and she would give her
version of the story.”
43

Yet, mostly, the Hirts were an admirable model of marital partnership. The couple made
annual summer trips to France in the summer where they would rent a home or trade homes with
someone. William Dehning commented, “He was a Francophile from his soul,”
44
and Lucy
seemed to follow suit, having been a French major in college. They loved French wine and

41
Robert Hasty (sang in the 1964 Chamber Singers), interview by the author at the home of the
interviewee, Garden Grove, California, November 27, 2012.
42
Jim Shepard (sang in the Chamber Singers and served as his Teaching Assistant), interview by
the author at the home of the interviewee, San Diego, California, October 18, 2012.
43
Douglas Lawrence (sang in the 1964 Chamber Singers), telephone interview by the author,
October 19, 2012.
44
William Dehning (completed an MM and DMA in Church Music under Charles Hirt),
telephone interview by the author, October 25, 2012.
15
French food. “Lucy would serve up these incredible French meals that she had slaved over all day
and they were beautiful, exquisite,”
45
Lawrence reminisced. To Darlene Hatcher, in those social
situations Lucy was the star. They also regularly enjoyed French movies without subtitles
46
and
French television shows on their cable channel. “Everything in their house was reminiscent of
one or another of their famous trips to France,” remarked Lawrence.
47
They most certainly loved
the French language and even took French lessons together at a local community college.
Douglas Lawrence remembers them as regularly practicing the language in front of him when he
would visit them at their home.
One of Hirt’s favorite French items was his beloved Citroën. In the mid-1950s Citroën
manufactured a car with a hydraulic system that created a smoother ride through the ability to
raise and lower itself. Known for its “aerodynamic futuristic body design and innovative
technology,”
48
the car was a well-suited complement to Hirt’s handsome physique, pioneering
mind, and love of France. Brinegar said he was a “high speed guy,” which seemed to extend even
into his driving. “I had a chance to be on one of the scariest car rides of my life with Charles. We
were going eighty miles per hour down Figueroa boulevard to catch a ride from Glendale to USC,
and I was grabbing onto everything I could hold on to,” recalled Brinegar.
49

Lucy was, however, his ultimate complement. To honor her and their teamwork, for some
time leading up to each anniversary, Hirt would send Lucy one rose a day, and on the day of their
anniversary she would receive a bouquet. At Hirt’s death, she would have earned sixty-five long-
stemmed roses.

45
Lawrence interview.
46
Pressman interview.
47
Ibid.
48
“Citroën DS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Wikipedia. Last modified on February 22,
2013, accessed December 20, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroën_DS.
49
Brinegar interview.
16
Employment Outside of the University of Southern California
In the fall of 1934, Hirt (figure 7) received his first post-college position in music at
Corona Junior High. From 1934-1935, he directed the choirs, which included several glee clubs.
Stretching his wings as a dramatic director, Hirt directed a performance of the operetta The
Toreadors in which he had previously held the lead role (almost ten years to the month).
50
In the
fall of 1935, he went back to the Glendale School District as director of the choirs at Woodrow
Wilson Junior High where he worked for three years. Earning a beginning salary of just $1,587,
he conducted the Girls’ and Boys’ Glee Clubs, both of which attained a remarkable level of skill.
Having performed a concert at First Baptist Church of Glendale after its inception just one year
prior, the boys’ choir received high praise in a concert review. “This is an unusual group and have

Figure 7. Charles Hirt, C. 1937. The photo was also used in numerous press releases. (Reprinted by
permission from the American Choral Directors Association. Original photo. Charles C. Hirt Collection,
American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 1, Series 1.)

50
Toreadors program, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 1.
17
attained a perfection seldom reached of boys and girls at their age.”
51
Noting something that
would later become a hallmark of Hirt’s programming, the review stated, “Their director Charles
Hirt is most successful in blending young voices and is using for his choir music from all schools
of composition and periods of writing,”
52

After May 1937, Hirt would work another three years for the Glendale District at
Glendale High School. In addition to his ensemble work, he taught Music Theory, Music History,
and Music Appreciation. His ensembles came together for dramatic performances which included
annual Christmas shows written and performed by the junior and senior high schools,
53

Schubert’s cantata Rosamunde (using 160 voices and a thirty-five-piece orchestra), Gilbert and
Sullivan’s The Gondoliers and Victor Herbert’s comic opera Sweethearts. It was Hirt’s A
Cappella Choir that received special renown after they frequently received top ratings at area
festivals; in his last year the choir won the Tri-State
54
Regional Southwest Vocal Festival
Competition (figure 8).
55

During his final year at the high school, in 1940-41, he was employed half-time at the
high school and half-time at Glendale Junior College. In his short tenure at Glendale Community
College Hirt’s teaching duties included Choral Conducting, unspecified instrumental ensembles,
56

and directing the Men’s and Women’s Glee Clubs and the thirty-six-member A Cappella Choir.
In addition to Christmas concerts and campus and community performances, Hirt and the choirs
produced Victor Herbert’s The Fortune Tellers. Though he would continue to work part-time

51
“Woodrow Wilson Junior High School A Cappella Choir” The Herald, First Baptist Church of
Glendale (May 9, 1937), Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series. 1.
52
Ibid.
53
Lucy’s note on folder cover, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 1.
54
“Victory at Fresno Climaxes Successful Singing Season,” Glendale News-Press (May 13,
1941): Section B, Page 1. Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 1. The festival included choirs from
California, Arizona, and Nevada.
55
“Victory at Fresno Climaxes Successful Singing Season,” Glendale News-Press (May 13,
1941): Section B, Page 1. Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 1.
56
Charles Hirt, “Faculty Profile,” May 26, 1976, p. 2A, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5,
Series 10.
18

Figure 8. Charles Hirt and the Glendale High School A Cappella Choir, 1941. (Reprinted by permission
from the American Choral Directors Association. Original photo. Charles C. Hirt Collection, American
Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 1, Series 1.)
at the college through 1943, officially resigning in April 1946,
57
the choral clinics held at USC in
the summer of 1941 would open the door to university-level teaching and what would be his
longest academic position.
Donald Brinegar, a student-turned-friend who knew Hirt very well, stated in an interview
that Hirt’s childhood years in church were formative to his familiarity with large church
programs.
58
At age twenty-four, while working for the Glendale School District, Hirt became
director of choirs at the Christian Church of Glendale. In 1938, he continued his music ministry at
First Methodist Church of Glendale. A newspaper article noted that “Mr. Hirt, with the assistance
of Mrs. Hirt, has done a phenomenal piece of work in building the several choirs of this church

57
N. C. Hayhurst, Deputy Superintendent, acceptance of resignation letter from Charles Hirt,
April 23, 1946, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 1.
58
Brinegar interview.
19
and producing high type of music from the beginning of his ministry here.”
59
That partnership
would eventually become legendary. Dr. and Mrs. Hirt worked at First Methodist Church for
three years, developing a program that was marked with excellence as displayed in their five
choirs and at least one dramatic production.
60
Upon Hirt’s resignation from First United
Methodist the pastor there remarked, “Few directors have left a church with as many people
regretting his going as does Mr. Hirt.”
61
Charles Hirt had left an indelible impression, as he
seemed to do wherever he went.
The 1940s would bring change that would forever affect the world of church and
collegiate choral music. Sometime earlier, First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood (which will
from this time forth be referred to by its commonly used name, Hollywood Presbyterian Church)
lost its senior pastor. During the interim period, there was no choir. When head pastor Dr. Louis
Evans was hired, he was utterly dismayed at the situation. As a result the church music committee
visited local churches where they found Charles Hirt and invited him to join their church and
develop a music program.
The remarkable partnership in church ministry between Dr. and Mrs. Hirt would continue
for another twenty-nine years at Hollywood Presbyterian Church. An ordained elder at the
church, Hirt started the Cathedral Choir, which became the flagship program of the ministry. At
its height, the program under Dr. Hirt included seven choirs: two senior choirs directed by Dr.
Hirt (Cathedral Choir, Chancel Choir) and five youth choirs (Carol Choir, Boys’ Choir, Girls’
Choir, Chapel Choir, Wiley Chapel Choir) directed by Mrs. Hirt,
62
and regularly held choral
music festivals and workshops. In the 400-voice program, the “daring, dauntless duo of

59
“Charles C. Hirt,” WM. C. Hodgson, The First United Methodist Outlook, October 24, 1941,
Vol. II, No. 30. Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 3.
60
The production was Trial by Jury by W. S. Gilbert. Source: Photograph with title Trial By Jury
- First United Methodist Glendale, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 3.
61
“Charles C. Hirt,” WM. C. Hodgson, The First United Methodist Outlook, October 24, 1941,
Vol. II, No. 310. Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 3.
62
Dorothy C. Haskin, “Cathedral Choir of Hollywood,” article clipped from unidentified
magazine, Hollywood Presbyterian folder, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 3.
20
direction”
63
also had a volunteer summer chorus, a volunteer men’s chorus, a handbell choir,
chamber ensembles, and instrumental groups. This model program that influenced church music
programs around the nation grew in reputation largely because of the Cathedral Choir. Figure 9
shows the stunning mass display of the Hirts stationed among their church choristers.

Figure 9. Charles and Lucy Hirt with their Hollywood Presbyterian choristers. (Reprinted by permission
from the American Choral Directors Association. Original photo. Charles C. Hirt Collection, American
Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 1, Series 3.)
By current standards, the program was run more like an ensemble at an academic
institution than at a church. Each year new and potential members submitted applications for the

63
“Downbeat,” publication of the Cathedral Choir, Hollywood Presbyterian folder, Charles C.
Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 3.
21
choir, which were carefully reviewed by Dr. Hirt.
64
Qualified by a good voice, above-average
musicianship, Christian character, and consecration, each new or returning member was given a
small, blue printed booklet stating the objectives, rules, and requirements of the choir.
65
Good
attendance was expected, and to this day it is rumored that there is a small handful of people who
have never missed a rehearsal in over fifty years. In Hirt’s days, good attendance was motivated
by the fact that there was a long waiting list of prospective members.
66
The choir gave numerous
noteworthy performances. They repeatedly performed in the Easter Sunrise services at Forest
Lawn and the Hollywood Bowl for crowds as large as an estimated 56,000. They sang on the
radio and for national television, toured in California and Arizona, and recorded several albums
for Capitol Records. Other professional appearances included performances of the Brahms
Requiem and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under
the direction of Alfred Wallenstein. Charles Hirt and his remarkable program at Hollywood
Presbyterian drew singers and actors of note such as Harve Presnell,
67
Brian Sullivan,
68
Ned
Romero,
69
Dennis Morgan,
70
and Douglas Lawrence.
71

64
Haskin, “Cathedral Choir of Hollywood,” 2.
65
Ibid., 3.
66
Ibid., 4.
67
“Harve Presnell – Biography.” IMDb. Accessed February 22, 2013,
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0696193/bio. Harve Presnell was (d. 2009) a singer-actor with both a
Broadway and a Hollywood film and television career. Some of his notable roles are Daddy Warbucks in
Broadway’s Annie and the father-in-law in William H. Macy’s Fargo. He also held substantial parts in
films such as Saving Private Ryan, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and Evan Almighty, with reoccurring
television appearances in The Pretender, Monk, and ER.
68
“Tenor Brian Sullivan to Open Lodi Concert Season,” Lodi News-Sentinel (October 5, 1964),
12, accessed February 22, 2013, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2245&dat=19641005&id
=at4zAAAAIBAJ&sjid=JjIHAAAAIBAJ&pg=7016,376277. Brian Sullivan was hailed as “on of the most
versatile singing actors of the American Stage.” He frequently appeared with the Chicago Lyric Opera,
New Orleans Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and at the
Hollywood Bowl. In television he was heard in the programs of the Ford Foundation, The Voice of
Firestone, and The Bell Telephone Hour. The Christmas album he recorded with Rise Stevens sold over a
remarkable million copies.
69
“Ned Romero - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Wikipedia. Last modified October 10, 2012,
accessed February 22, 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Romero. Ned Romero’s early actor-singing
career included roles in musicals such as Kiss Me Kate, and Oklahoma and appearances with the San
Francisco and Los Angeles Opera companies. Moving into television and film in his early twenties,
22
Even though Hirt’s successes at Hollywood Presbyterian Church brought him much
acclaim, it was through his activities at the University of Southern California that his name would
be disseminated around the world. Yet, more importantly, it was through Charles Hirt that the
University of Southern California’s name would become famous. The following chapter will look
at Hirt’s remarkable academic activities at USC and the profound impact they had on the
University at home and beyond.

Romero played in Walker: Texas Ranger, Star Trek: Voyager and The Next Generation, and Land of the
Lost among several others. As a crowning achievement in his career, he received an Emmy nomination for
his role as Chief Joseph in I Will Fight No More Forever.
70
“Dennis Morgan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Wikipedia. Last modified February 28,
2013, accessed on February 22, 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Morgan. Dennis Morgan was
Warner Brothers’ top leading man in the 1940’s with his peak years being 1943-1949. He appeared in over
a half-dozen films for Warner Brothers. His screen credits include God Is My Co-Pilot, Kitty Foyle,
Captain of the Clouds, Christmas in Connecticut, Perfect Strangers, and The Desert Song. His television
credits include 21 Beacon Street, Petticoat Junction, The Dick Powell Theater, and The Love Boat.
71
Oron, Aryeh, “Douglas Lawrence (Bass-Baritone, Choral Conductor) - Short Biography,” Bach
Cantatas website, contributed April 2010, May 2011, accessed February 22, 2013, http://www.bach-
cantatas.com/Bio/Lawrence-Douglas.htm. Douglas Lawrence has sung in nearly every major orchestra in
the United States and throughout the world. He has also held roles in many of the Nation’s most reputable
opera companies. The famous conductors under which he has sung include Leonard Bernstein, Aaron
Copland, Lukas Foss, Sir Colin Davis, James Levine, Sir Neville Mariner, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta,
Robert Shaw, Helmuth Rilling, and numerous others. In addition to his singing career, he was also active in
film, performing in dozens of movies and over two hundred television network programs. Lawrence has
also served in five institutions of high education, and in church music, most recently as the minister of
music at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. On the community scene he was formerly the artistic director
and conductor of San Francisco’s famed Schola Cantorum.
23
CHAPTER 2: SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTIONS
TO THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
The Departments of Church Music and Choral Music
In 1941, Charles Hirt embarked on a journey that would change the course of choral
music at the University of Southern California and, as a result, choral music in schools, churches,
communities, and concert halls around the world. By 1940, his reputation in Los Angeles
preceded him in various circles of music, not the least of which was academia. Max T. Krone,
1

then dean of the Institute for the Arts and the director of the new Madrigal Singers
2
at USC,
attended the 1940 Music Educators National Conference (MENC) convention in Los Angeles. At
that time MENC hosted a national high school choir competition, and in the spring of 1940
Charles Hirt’s Glendale High School A Cappella Choir received national acclaim when they won
first place at the competition.
3
In her book We Build a School of Music, former USC professor
Pauline Alderman
4
noted that the choir’s national achievement under the direction of Hirt did not
go unnoticed by Krone.
5
Undoubtedly impressed by Hirt’s talent, Krone invited Hirt to manage
USC’S new summer choral clinics beginning in 1941, sponsored by the Music Education
Department. At those clinics, high school students assembled in Bovard Auditorium to receive
training and direction from Hirt.
6
Hirt would continue directing the summer clinics through

1
James Vail, “The Department of Choral and Sacred Music and the Chamber Singers at the USC
Thornton School of Music: A Retrospective,” in accompanying booklet, Legacy, 60 Years of the University
of Southern California Chamber Singers performed by the USC Chamber Singers, University of Southern
California Thornton School of Music, 2009, compact disc, 7. Max Krone came to USC in 1939 to teach
music education, conducting, and choral music and later served as the dean of the Institute of the Arts.
2
Alderman, We Build a School, 165.
3
Ibid., 165.
4
Alderman, We Build a School, 192; Typed speech. “A Tribute to Dr. Pauline Alderman” by
Charles C. Hirt. Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 5. Hirt was a student of Alderman. She also
served as a musical mentor to Hirt throughout her tenure there, guided his dissertation studies, and
eventually became his colleague and friend.
5
Alderman, We Build a School, 166.
6
Ibid., 175.
24
1968,
7
missing just a handful of summers. With a meager but era-appropriate starting pay of
approximately $80 per unit, Hirt would teach a variety of courses in conducting and church music
and conduct the clinic choirs.
8
Providing an early perspective on the significance of that invitation
for USC, Alderman remarked that it was the “first official relationship with the man who was to
make our choirs famous throughout the world and who would create and maintain our
Department of Church Music throughout thirty-five years of magnificent service.”
9
It is in
Alderman’s statement that Hirt’s most considerable contributions to USC are made clear.
Hirt’s former USC students and colleagues interviewed for this document shared
Alderman’s perspective on Hirt’s contributions to the University. James H. Vail stated that Hirt
had a “very high vision of church music…[and] of what church music can be.”
10
With that
passion at the forefront, Hirt took a leave of absence
11
from his permanent, full-time position
12
at
Glendale Junior College, and in 1942 joined the faculty at USC as lecturer in music education,
simultaneously assuming the title Director of Choral Organizations. Also busy pursuing his PhD
studies in musicology, between 1942 and 1945, at the lecturer level, Hirt taught music education.
He placed the cadet teachers at area high schools and junior high schools and observed their
teaching.
13

7
Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10. In the Charles C. Hirt Collection at ACDA, there
are no summer contracts past 1968. It is therefore assumed that Hirt’s work with summer clinics did not
take place in subsequent years.
8
USC contracts, Contracts folder, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
9
Alderman, We Build A School, 175-76.
10
James Vail (received a DMA under Charles Hirt, colleague of Charles Hirt), interview by the
author at the home of the interviewee, Los Angeles, California, November 1, 2012.
11
Letter from the District accepting his resignation, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 1.
Hirt would officially resign from Glendale College in 1946.
12
Glendale contract, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 1, Series 1.
13
McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts,” 225.
25
As a church musician, Hirt would have been aware of Dr. Clarence Dickinson who was
regarded in the United States as the “dean of church music in America.”
14
In the summer of 1945,
Hirt invited Mr. Dickinson and his wife, Helen, to the University’s campus. Together, they would
forge a new curriculum based on the church music program at Union Seminary in New York.
15

USC’s program would place an emphasis on choral music whereas Union’s program focused on
organ music. Arguably, USC’s new program would set a new standard for colleges and
universities in the country because of its special emphasis on choral music. In a special University
published announcement (figure 10, figure 11) the BM and MM curricula were introduced and
subsequently implemented in the fall semester of 1945 with the core classes being Church Music

Figure 10. Special University published brochure to announce the new curricula in Sacred Music, cover.
(Reprinted by permission from the USC Thornton School of Music. Charles C. Hirt Collection, American
Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 5, Series 10.)

14
Vail, “A Retrospective,” 13. Dickinson was also the founder and head of the School of Music at
Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
15
Brownstead interview. Union Theological Seminary is now a part of the Yale Institute.
26

Figure 11. Special University published brochure to announce the new curricula in Sacred Music, page
two. (Reprinted by permission from the USC Thornton School of Music. Charles C. Hirt Collection,
American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 5, Series 10.)
27
Administration, Music and Worship, Hymnology, and Music of the Great Liturgies.
16
Seven
students came to study with Dr. Hirt that inaugural year. In the fall of 1946, the Department of
Sacred Music
17
was formally established. The Department of Church Music’s Tenth Anniversary
celebration program
18
stated that USC was the “first major university in the country to have a
Department of Church Music.” This historical academic event was also the beginning of what
many of Hirt’s former students and colleagues said was to be his greatest contribution to USC –
the “establishment of the USC Choral and Sacred Music program as one of the, if not the,
marquee program of the country.”
19

The burgeoning program was housed for twenty-eight years on the first floor of Widney
Hall (figure 12). Dr. Hirt had “a tiny little office under the stairs in Widney Hall and a little tiny
piano jammed in the back of the office.”
20
For over fifteen years Dr. Hirt would work in that
office alone, until additional faculty members were hired. For a number of years, multiple
professors would share that small space. Dr. Nick Strimple, former student and current professor
of Choral Music at USC, said it was like “everybody was on a camping trip living in the same
tent,”
21
giving the entire atmosphere an informal feel.
22

16
Vail, “A Retrospective,” 14.
17
With the curricula being first offered in 1945, it should be noted that the Department of Church
Music and its associated degrees was called the Department of Sacred Music, offering a Bachelor of Music
in Sacred Music and a Master of Music in Sacred Music from its inception in 1946 to 1953. The 1953 USC
Bulletin is the first University catalogue to use the name Church Music. It is possible within the University
that the name Church Music was used in 1952, but there is no published 1952-53 Bulletin in the
University’s archives to verify such information. In the subsequent pages of this document, the department
will be referred to by its more commonly held title during Hirt’s tenure at USC, the Department of Church
Music.
18
Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
19
Strimple interview.
20
Ibid.
21
Ibid.
22
Joel Pressman (received a BM and MM under Dr. Hirt, sang in the Chamber Singers), interview
by the author at the home of the interviewee, Los Angeles, California, October 17, 2012.
28

Figure 12. Widney Hall, c. 1880. (Reproduced by permission from Mona Cravens, Director of Student
Publications, University of Southern California. “Campus Monument,” Daily Trojan, Vol. 55, No. 10,
October 4, 1963, front page.)
Of the second floor rehearsal room, James Shepard, a former Chamber Singer said, “All it was,
was a room with desks with arms on the desks…It was just horrible and the acoustics were
bad…and here was one of the great choral groups of the world rehearsing in this office space.”
23

Figure 13 provides a look at the 1968 Chamber Singers rehearsing in their modest surroundings.
With the advent of the new curriculum, both Bachelor of Music and Master of Music
degrees could be earned in Sacred Music. At its inception, the BM required 124 total units. In
addition to the standard music courses, each student was required to complete twelve units of a
notably Christocentric religious focus, and four elective units; students could choose from Church
Music Workshop,
24
Instrumental Conducting, or Counterpoint I
25
(figure 14).

23
Shepard interview.
24
Throughout this paper, all titles are capitalized as they were shown in the USC Bulletins.
25
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: College of Letters, Arts and Sciences 44,
no. 7 (July 15, 1949): 50.
29

Figure 13. The Chamber Singers in rehearsal in Widney Hall, 1968. (Reprinted by permission from USC
Thornton School of Music. 1967-68 USC Chamber Singers program. Charles C. Hirt Collection, American
Choral Directors Association, Box 5, Series 10.)
The pre-requisites for the MM were a “B.M. with Sacred Music Major or equivalent.”
The master’s degree required twenty-eight units with courses in applied music, History of Sacred
Music, Seminar in Sacred Music, Seminar in Musicology, Electives in Music History and
Literature, electives in Music or Religion, and Thesis work (figure 14).
The earliest of Hirt’s contracts housed in the American Choral Directors Association
(ACDA) Archives do not indicate his ensemble responsibilities. However, it is known that he
assumed responsibility for conducting the Madrigal Singers and the A Cappella Choir in 1946
(which John Smallman started in the 1930s). In the ACDA Archives, Hirt’s earliest recorded full-
time contract is from the fall of 1945. In addition to the ensemble work, the 1945 contract states
that he taught a graduate class, History of Sacred Music. The courses Hirt taught from 1947
26

26
There is no 1946 contract in the ACDA Archives. USC was also unable to locate any of those
records.
30

Figure 14. New degree curricula for BM in Sacred Music and MM in Sacred Music, 1945. (Reprinted by
permission from USC Thornton School of Music. Special University brochure publication, page three.
Charles C. Hirt Collection, American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 5, Series 10.)
31
through 1976 included Music of the Great Liturgies, Hymnology, Church Music Administration,
Music in Religious Education, History of Sacred Music, Seminar in Sacred Music, Choral
Development, Music and Worship, and Choral Conducting II and III.
27
Hirt’s teaching load
generally consisted of one academic class and, up until 1956, two ensembles, the eighty-five-
voice A Cappella Choir and the twelve- to fifteen-voice Madrigal Singers. The early Bulletins at
USC indicate that at various times Hirt also conducted the Women’s Glee Club, the University
Choir, and the University Concert Choir. “Personal health concerns”
28
caused Hirt to forego
direction of the A Cappella Choir in 1956;
29
it was subsequently directed by student assistants
until the arrival of Dr. James Vail in 1961.
30
In 1956, the A Cappella Choir became the Concert
Choir and the Madrigal Singers became the Chamber Singers, “reflecting the broader repertoire
of each.”
31

The School of Music was first under the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and then
the Institute of the Arts, and was sometimes also referred to as the College of Music.
32
In 1951,
the School of Music became an independent school with its “own budget and the power to confer
degrees.”
33
This would open the door for a defining moment in church music at USC that would
begin the following year. In 1952, under Hirt’s visionary leadership, the School of Music became
one of the first universities in the United States to grant a doctoral degree to performers who
studied to become church musicians, as well as those going into music education and

27
Appendix C contains selected USC course materials by Charles C. Hirt.
28
Garrett, “Leading Collegiate Choral Programs,” 23.
29
A discrepancy should be noted. The 1959-61 USC Bulletin lists Hirt as the conductor of the A
Cappella Choir, while simultaneously listing the University Concert Choir as directed by Staff. There is no
Bulletin for the School of Performing Arts in the University archives for the years 1961-1966. The 1966-68
Bulletins record Vail as the director of the University Concert Choir with no listing of the A Cappella
Choir.
30
Vail, “A Retrospective,” 8.
31
Ibid.
32
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: Institute of the Arts 42, no. 4 (May 1947):
unpaginated.
33
Ibid., 14.
32
composition. An adverse commentary written by Paul Lang,
34
published in the New York Times,
illuminates one of the then-prevailing thoughts in academia (thoughts that would seem striking
today).
The university is not a place for the training of performers, it is a contradiction of terms.
We have excellent conservatories, which, as you again correctly observe, do not concern
themselves with doctorates; they produce accomplished musicians, and a fine musician
does not require a degree. Now we are to have doctors of playing and singing. I can very
well see what this will mean; an earnest violinist who spends all his time on improving
his art and consequently won’t have time to seek ‘a doctorate,’ will be left behind by
some ersatz fiddler who, by obtaining a questionable degree, will be acceptable to some
august college in preference to the more accomplished artist. Then the conservatories feel
the pinch of competition thus created for their graduates, they too will establish a degree
factory and turn out the doctors of piccolo playing or duo pianism.
35

Up until 1952, the only available doctorate in music was the PhD, and it was granted to
those who received what academia considered to be “scholarly” degrees in areas such as music
history or composition. Lang’s article was in response to an earlier editorial in the New York
Times by Howard Taubman, chief Times music critic, in which he “wrote about the benefit of
such a degree for appointing, promoting, and tenuring university faculty whose specialty was
music performance.”
36
Just shy of twenty years earlier, the famed Howard Hanson
37
saw that
universities were showing an increased partiality to their faculty possessing terminal degrees.
With this increased penchant, he was afraid that “performers who did not possess a doctorate
might be denied appointment or tenure.”
38
Using his power as chair of the Graduate

34
Marvin E. Latimer Jr., “The Nation’s First DMA in Choral Music; History, Structure, and
Pedagogical Implications,” Journal of Historical Research in Music Education (October 2010) XXXII:I,
21. Paul Lang was a musicologist at Columbia University (1933-70), music critic for the New York Herald
Tribune, and editor of the Musical Quarterly (1945-73).
35
Ibid, 21.
36
Howard Taubman, “A Matter of Degree: Eastman School Sets Up Doctorate for Musicians,”
New York Times, New York, N.Y., October 25, 1953.
37
Latimer, “The Nation’s First DMA,” 20. In 1934, composer and educator Howard Hanson was
the Director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.
38
Marvin Latimer, “Harold A. Decker (1914-2003): American Choral Music Educator,” PhD
diss., University of Kansas, c. 2007), 194.
33
Commission
39
Hanson set out to change academia. “In 1951, after years of planning, the Graduate
Commission recommended that a terminal performance doctorate be established to follow the
BM and the MM.”
40

It appears to be unknown as to how long Dr. Hirt had been planning to start a DMA in
Church Music, but when the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) gave permission
for the granting of such degrees in 1952, USC had submitted their request and was one of six
schools
41
to be approved. Through the work of Charles Hirt, USC would create yet another
vehicle for drawing attention to this leading University. In the fall of 1952, the D.Mus. (a
precursor to the DMA)
42
was offered in sacred music, composition, music education, and
performance practice. In the 1951-53 USC Bulletin, a description of the new degree as it related
to sacred music is as follows:
The Doctor of Music degree is offered in such fields of music as are reinforced by
substantial programs at the BM and the MM levels; church music, composition, music
education, and performance practices. The curriculum is similar to that offered by the
Graduate School for the PhD under Option II. It provides a basic minimum of required
courses along with an opportunity for the expansion of the applicant’s knowledge in
important related fields. It recognizes the necessity of advanced work in Letters, Arts, and
Sciences. At the same time, it extracts from the PhD creative work in composition which,
despite its disciplines, is not research in the accepted sense. It likewise diverts from this
Doctor of Education degree program such candidates as are concerned with serious
advanced study in music instead of administrative or supervisory technique.
43

39
Latimer, “The Nation’s First DMA,” 20. This was a special committee formed by NASM and
the Music Teachers National Association.
40
Robert Glidden, “The DMA: An Historical Perspective,” Proceedings of the 57
th
Annual
Meeting of the National Association of Schools of Music 70 (1982), 159.
41
Latimer, “The Nation’s First DMA,” 20-21. USC, Florida, and Indiana received permission to
award DM degrees. Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, and the Eastman School of
Music were granted the right to confer DMA degrees.
42
Glidden, “DMA: An Historical Perspective,” 158. During the 1952-54 period there was
considerable discussion and some controversy about the use of the title DMA versus D.M., and by 1954 it
had been generally agreed that the title Doctor of Musical Arts was preferred for NASM schools, reserving
(once again) the title Doctor of Music for honorary degrees.
43
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Music 46, no. 21 (December 1,
1951): 38.
34
According to USC Bulletins, it was in 1955 that the term DMA first appeared as a degree
title. The description of the degree in 1955 further expounds on its development at USC:
Through the efforts of the National Association of Schools of Music, the Master of Music
degree has become firmly established during the past twenty-five years as a graduate
professional degree in music with accepted and well-understood standards.
More and more music students, particularly those in the field of college music teaching,
have sought to qualify for a doctorate in music, not only to achieve more advanced
faculty status, but to extend their own graduate studies in an orderly and systematic
manner.
Until 1952, this was possible only through PhD degree, built upon the AB and AM or
their equivalents. Beginning in 1952, a number of major universities, including the
University of Southern California, working through the Graduate Commission of the
National Association of Schools of Music, have drafted plans for a practitioner’s degree
in music at the doctoral level. With such institutions as the University of Michigan,
Indiana University, the University of Rochester (The Eastman School of Music),
Northwestern University, Florida State University, and the University of Southern
California prepared to uphold its standards, the Doctor of Musical Arts is coming to be
known as the accepted graduate professional doctorate for musical practitioners, as the
PhD in Musicology is for the research scholars in music. The DMA bears approximately
the same relationship to the PhD in music as the MD does to the PhD in Medicine.
44

The basic nineteen-unit curriculum included courses in Conducting II and III (four units),

Music
History and Literature (eight units), one ensemble elective and electives in Letters, Arts and
Sciences (six units).
45
In addition to the basic curriculum, the Church Music
46
degree-specific
requirements included two courses in Church Music, Conducting,
47
Individual instruction,
48
and
Electives in History and Literature for a total of fifty-six to sixty units (figure 15).
It would be in 1972 that Hirt would again effect change in the Department of Church
Music and would expand the University’s exponentially. He would do this with the support of his

44
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Music 50, no. 17 (June 1, 1955): 42.
45
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Music 48, no. 6 (April 15, 1953):
44.
46
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Music 48, no. 6 (unpaginated). In
1953 the University Bulletin referred to Sacred Music as Church Music.
47
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Music 48, no. 6: 45.
48
Ibid.
35
colleague and former DMA student, Dr. James H. Vail. Vail graduated with a Bachelor of Music
in Organ from the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Post graduation he went to Union Seminary
(the same seminary Clarence and Helen Dickinson hailed from) for one semester before being
drafted into the Army where he served as an assistant chaplain in Germany during the Korean
War.
49
During his service, he also conducted a choir. When he returned to the United States after

Figure 15. D.Mus. in Church Music curriculum, 1953. (Reprinted by permission from Claude Zachary,
University Archivist and Manuscripts Librarian, University of Southern California. Bulletin of the
University of Southern California, School of Music 48, no. 6 [April 15, 1953]: 44-45.)
finishing his military duties, he intended to return to Union Seminary. It was too late to enroll for
the spring semester at Union Seminary, so he set out to the West Coast to take courses at USC.

49
Vail, “A Retrospective,” 2.
36
When he arrived on campus, they sent him to Hirt’s office. Upon meeting Vail, Hirt said,
“Oh, good. I want you to take this course, this course, this course.”
50
Not knowing anything about
the degree, Vail assumed he would take the courses Hirt suggested and transfer them to Union
Seminary. Undoubtedly sensing greatness in Vail, Hirt persuaded him to stay and get his master’s
degree. Vail received his MM in Church Music in the spring of 1956 and went straight into his
DMA program at USC. While working at St. John’s Episcopal Church and later La Jolla
Presbyterian Church, Vail completed his coursework and dissertation, receiving his DMA in
Choral Music in 1960.
Having made an unforgettable impression, Hirt called Vail a year later and asked him to
join the faculty at USC and partner with him in leading the Department of Church Music. Starting
as an assistant professor, Dr. Vail taught the Concert Choir as well as courses in Church Music,
most notably Music of the Great Liturgies. Vail would serve USC for thirty-eight years, retiring
in 1999. From firsthand experience, Vail thought Charles Hirt’s vision of what Church Music
could be was one of the most significant things Hirt brought to USC.
51
However, Nick Strimple
realized Vail’s importance to the program also, stating, “I think a real tip of the hat [goes] to Hirt
and Vail too, because they built a program that at its foundation was really solid and with a very
solid curriculum.”
52

Certainly credit must be given to James Vail for his work in the development of such an
influential program. To provide an anecdotal perspective on the working relationship between
Hirt and Vail, Vail noted,
We were very close, very close…kind of a father-son relationship….When Dr. Tom
Somerville was on our faculty, Charles Hirt, I, and Tom would often go to lunch together.
Occasionally some of our students would laughingly remark as we passed by (referring to
the three of us): “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!”
53

50
Ibid.
51
Vail, “A Retrospective,” 3.
52
Strimple interview.
53
Vail, “A Retrospective,” 27.
37
This mutually respectful relationship was a wonderful combination because each man had
strengths that complemented the other.
54

Over the next ten years, Hirt and Vail would develop a degree that would suit the unmet
needs of many of the Church Music majors. They had to work upstream as Dean Raymond
Kendall felt that a “major in Choral Conducting or Choral Music was not an appropriate one.”
55

Kendall’s viewpoint was reminiscent of the editorial Paul Lang wrote in 1953. However, former
student William Hall said that many of the students, like him, came for the Church Music degree
because it was the degree closest to what their careers demanded.
56
Yet, many of the students
would not become church musicians but rather become conductors in schools and community
organizations and music administrators in those same institutions. In 1970, the Department of
Church Music launched two new degrees, the Master of Music (figure 16) in Choral Music and
the Doctor of Musical Arts in Choral Music, and gained the new title of Department of Church
and Choral Music. It is important to note that Vail and Hirt intentionally chose the term “Choral
Music” over “Conducting” because “it reflected our emphasis in choral literature, choral
development and choral research in addition to choral conducting.”
57

The basic DMA curriculum required courses in Conducting, prescribed and elected
courses in History and Literature, Electives in Letters, Arts and Sciences, and Ensemble work.
58

With a prerequisite of a Master of Music in Choral Music, the Doctorate in Musical Arts with a
major in Choral Music included courses in Choral Music, Conducting, Music History and
Literature, Performance (voice, piano, organ or conducting), Electives in Music, and the

54
Frank Brownstead (put significant work towards a DMA under Charles Hirt), interview by the
author at the office of the interviewee, Los Angeles, California, October 30, 2012.
55
Vail, “A Retrospective,” 14.
56
William Hall (completed a DMA under Charles Hirt), interview by the author at the office of
the interviewee, Orange, California, October 18, 2012.
57
Vail, “A Retrospective,” 16.
58
Bulletin of the University of Southern California, School of Performing Arts 65 (November 14,
1970): 71.
38

Figure 16. Master of Music with Major in Choral Music curriculum, 1970. (Reprinted by permission from
Claude Zachary, University Archivist and Manuscripts Librarian, University of Southern California. USC
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Performing Arts 65, no. 14 [June 1, 1970]: 71.)
Conducting of two principal choral concerts and two other appropriate appearances as a
conductor; or as a soloist, vocal or instrumental (figure 17).
59
As a result of Hirt’s vision of what
church music and choral music could be, as previously mentioned, the establishment of the
Department of Church and Choral Music became one of Hirt’s chief contributions to the
University of Southern California.
Always a part of the well-designed curricula was an offering of a variety of choral
ensembles. From 1946, the inaugural year of the Department of Church Music with Hirt at the
helm, to 1976, the year Hirt resigned, eight separate choral groups made an appearance in the

59
Ibid.
39
curriculum, each with a varying degree of tenure. As remarked earlier, Hirt made famous the A
Cappella Choir and particularly the Madrigal Singers/Chamber Singers. Table 1 shows the
ensembles offered during Hirt’s years at USC and their descriptions. Mention should be made
that the course descriptions remained unchanged in the University Bulletins throughout Hirt’s
headship of the Church and Choral Music Departments.
Through the founding of the department and its associated degrees, Hirt was successful in
yet another principal contribution to USC as noted by numerous interviewees: attracting students
who went on to hold prestigious positions in the musical world. Before talking further about his

Figure 17. The Doctorate of Musical Arts in Choral Music curriculum, 1970. (Reprinted by permission
from Claude Zachary, University Archivist and Manuscripts Librarian, University of Southern California.
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Performing Arts 65, no. 14 [June 1, 1970]: 71.)
40
Table 1. Choral ensembles offered from 1946-1976.

Ensemble Name Course Description

Men’s Glee Club Two hours of rehearsal a week and participation in public programs.
Open to nonmusic majors by audition.
1

Women’s Glee Club Two hours of rehearsal a week and participation in public programs.
Open to nonmusic majors by audition.
1

A Cappella Choir Representative works from the great choral schools since the
sixteenth century; preparation for the use of singing voice in choral
ensemble; rehearsals and concert. A solo voice not essential.
2

Madrigal Singers/ Performance of vocal chamber music from the sixteenth century to
Chamber Singers the present. Open to all University students by audition.
2

University Concert Choir Performance of choral works of all styles and periods. Open to all
students by audition.
3

University Chapel Choir Rehearsal participation in University Worship Services; study of
sacred choral literature. Open to all students by audition.
4

Trojan Chorale
5
Rehearsal and performance of choral works from several stylistic
periods. Open to all students by audition.
6
University Chorus Performance of major works; reading of choral literature from all
periods of history; exploration of contemporary and experimental
choral compositions.
7

1
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: College of Letters, Arts and Sciences 44 (November 7, July 15,
1949): 85.
2
Ibid, 87.
3
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Performing Arts 62, no. 7 (October 15, 1966): 81.
4
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Music 52 (November 17, May 1957): 55.
5
Vail interview. William Dehning was the founder of the Trojan Chorale, an ensemble that grew out of the Concert
Choir, which had grown to over ninety and had become somewhat unwieldy.
6
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Performing Arts 66, no. 14 (June 1, 1970): 112-113.
7
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Performing Arts 68, no. 7 (December 15, 1972): 121.

41
Before talking further of Hirt’s influence, it should be mentioned first the prestigious colleagues
with whom he worked. Doyle Preheim said it was the Golden Age of choral music.
60
Now
legendary to present-day choral musicians, Robert Shaw, Howard Swan, Harold Decker, Roger
Wagner, Theron Kirk and others were a part of Hirt’s choral circle.
Hirt was also surrounded by some of the most notable people in their fields of music at
the University of Southern California. Ingolf Dahl (conducting) was a long-time collaborator with
Stravinsky and had professional associations with the likes of Tommy Dorsey, Victor Borge, and
Benny Goodman. At USC, Dahl taught composition, conducting, and music history, directed the
University’s symphony orchestra 1953-1968,
61
and was someone whose “rare character and
ability” helped establish the importance of the School of Music.
62

Gwendolyn Koldofsky (piano) taught at USC from 1945-1990 and was a renowned
pianist and vocal accompanist. Throughout her career, she accompanied many distinguished
performers including famed opera singer Marilyn Horne, who was formerly her student.
63
“She
founded the school’s Department of Keyboard Collaborative Arts and both designed and
established the world’s first degree-granting program in accompanying.”
64
“Professor Koldofsky
was a pioneer in the field of accompanying, and the status that field has attained is directly
attributable to her efforts.”
65

Walter Ducloux (opera) was director of USC’s Opera Theater from 1953-1968. He was
an “international conductor, pianist, translator, writer, and educator whose career spanned over 50

60
Preheim interview.
61
“USC Faculty Portal - Especially for: All Faculty: Looking Back at the Faculty,” USC
University of Southern California, accessed on January 3, 2013. http://www.usc.edu/academe/faculty/
especially_for/faculty/looking_back_at_the_faculty.html.
62
Alderman, We Build a School, 213.
63
“USC Faculty Portal.”
64
James Lytle, “Gwendolyn Koldofsky, Accompanist, Dies at 92,” USC University of Southern
California. December 7, 1998, http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/4096.html.
65
Ibid.
42
years from Czechoslovakia to California.”
66
He was committed to bringing opera to the American
public and did so via USC “showcasing 25 operas in Los Angeles when few such performances
could be heard.”
67

Ralph Rush was a prominent name in music education and held a long-time faculty
position in the Education Department at USC. Of note, he became one of the outstanding
instrumental directors in the nation, served as a guest conductor for many all-state groups, and
was the president of several prominent music education organizations including the Music
Educators National Conference (1952-1954).
68

There could hardly be a more prominent name than William Vennard in the field of vocal
pedagogy. Frequently not the case between the choral and voice faculty on the collegiate level,
Hirt and Vennard were said to have been very good colleagues.
69
William Vennard, professor of
voice at USC from 1950-1971, “introduced contemporary scientific research in the areas of
human anatomy and physiology into the study of singing.”
70
Also of note are Lillian Steuber and
John Crown in piano, Bill Schaefer in band, Baroque specialist and Professor of Harpsichord
Alice Ehlers, Halsey Stevens in composition, violinist Jascha Heifetz, and cellist Gregor
Piatigorsky.
National Reputation
Such minds and talents as those listed above contributed to the atmosphere of greatness at
USC during Hirt’s time. It was in this environment that Hirt would attract students from around

66
“Office of the General Faculty,” The University of Texas at Austin. March 14, 2000, revised
April 27, 2000, updated: August 21, 2012, http://www.utexas.edu/faculty/council/1999-2000/memorials/
Ducloux/ducloux.html.
67
“USC Faculty Portal - Especially for: All Faculty: Looking Back at the Faculty,” USC
University of Southern California, accessed on January 3, 2013, http://www.usc.edu/academe/faculty/
especially_for/faculty/looking_back_at_the_faculty.html.
68
“In Memoriam,” SAGE Journals|Music Educators Journal, September/October, 1965 52: 47.
http://mej.sagepub.com/content/52/1/47.extract#.
69
Strimple interview.
70
“William Vennard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Wikipedia. Last modified on November
17, 2012, accessed on January 3, 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Vennard.
43
the nation to the Department of Church and Choral Music; generations of the department’s
students would rise to the top of their fields.
When asked what attracted students to the choral programs James Vail replied, “I would
say it’s Hirt’s personality more or less.” In a revealing anecdote, Vail recalled:
I remember going to choral workshops that he did or choral festivals where he conducted,
and there would be 500 high school students sitting out there…He could have said,
“Black is really white. Did you know that?” [Vail indicated the students’ reply with a
head nod.] “Oh yes!” He could make them believe anything.
71

William Dehning humorously commented, “Hirt was conducting the all-universe and all-Mars
chorus and all-intergalactic chorus and he was everywhere. He brought a lot of renown to the
school because he was so successful in those events,”
72
Former student Frank Brownstead
commented that “Charles Hirt did more conducting around the world than almost anybody
else.”
73

Humbly capitalizing on his renown, Hirt attracted many students through festivals and
workshops. Delton Shilling said he met Dr. Hirt in 1963 when Hirt was leading a directors
seminar in Oklahoma. Shilling’s director recommended he attend the workshop. After the
workshop, Shilling, then a student at Oklahoma, thought, “I’ve got to study with this man,” and
transferred to USC.
74

If a student didn’t have first-hand knowledge of Hirt’s work through singing under him at
a festival, there was often a teacher who did. Ronald Staheli
75
came to USC because of his choral
director. “If you’re going to do a degree in choral music, you get yourself to Los Angeles

71
Vail, “A Retrospective,” 8.
72
Dehning interview.
73
Brownstead interview.
74
Shilling interview.
75
Ronald Staheli (received a DMA degree under Charles Hirt), telephone interview by the author,
October 26, 2012. Staheli was a DMA student at USC from 1972-1976. He said he was the last person to
take his exams under Hirt. The following week, Hirt retired from USC.
44
studying with Charles Hirt [sic].”
76
In a further testament to Hirt’s recruitment success, Douglas
Lawrence said, “They’d never had a Church Music Department before and he was suddenly
drawing graduate students from all over the country.”
77
The students of the Department of Church
and Choral Music who went on to be leaders in their field are found in Table 2.
Table 2. Notable USC Department of Church and Choral Music graduates under Charles Hirt.

Graduate Degree/Career Highlights

William Bausano MM in Choral Music, 1975
1
Coordinator of the Choral and Vocal Faculties at the University of
Miami of Ohio. Founding member and president of the National
Collegiate Choral Organization. Published editor and arranger with Colla
Voce, Shawnee, Mark Foster, et al.
2

William Dehning MM in Church Music, 1968; DMA in Church Music, 1971
3

Department Chair of USC’s Department of Choral Music. Founding
member of the National Collegiate Choral Organization. Published
author of two choral books with Pavane Publishing.
4
Founder-conductor
of California Choral Company, ’86-95. Frequent guest conductor with
professional choruses in Korea.
5

Don Fontana BM in Church Music, 1953; MM in Church Music, 1963
6

Minister of Music at the Crystal Cathedral and five others. President of
Choral Conductors Guild. Visiting lecturer at multiple universities and
conferences. Published composer of sacred music.
7

William Hall MM in Church Music, 1958; DMA in Church Music, 1970
6

Presently founding dean and artistic director for the Center of the Arts at
Chapman University. Professor of music for forty-eight years at
Chapman University. Founder and director of the William Hall Master
Chorale. Published choral series with National Music Publishers.
8

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

76
Staheli interview.
77
Lawrence interview.
45
Table 2. (Continued)

Graduate Degree/Career Highlights

Jane Hardester DMA in Choral Music, 1976
9

Director of Choral Music at El Camino College for thirty-six years.
Founding member of the American Choral Directors Association.
Western Division ACDA president. Honorary life member of the
Southern California Vocal Association. Founder of South Bay Children’s
Choir.
10

John M. Lilley DMA in Church Music, 1971
11
President of Baylor University. Assistant dean of the College of Arts and
Sciences at Kansas State University.
12

James McKelvy DMA in Church Music, 1957
6
Published arranger and composer of choral music with Mark Foster,
13

G. Schirmer, et al.
14

Marvin McKissick MM in Church Music, 1957; DMA in Church Music (degree completion
date unavailable)
6

Director of Church Music, Azusa Pacific University.
15

Albert J. McNeil MM in Church Music, 1952
6

Founder and director of the Albert McNeil singers. Professor Emeritus of
the University of Southern California, Davis. Director of the Sacramento
Chorale. Co-founder of the Sacramento Symphony chorus. Author and
editor of a series of music education textbooks published by Silver-
Burdett-Gin Publishing.
16

Brandon Mehrle DMA in Church Music (degree completion date unavailable)
6

Assistant dean of the School of Music at the University of Southern
California. Co-chairman of the Metropolitan Opera Western Regional
Auditions.
17

Leo Nestor MM in Choral Music, 1975; DMA in Choral Music, 1980
18
Director of Choral Activities and director of the Institute of Sacred
Music at The Catholic University of America. Founder and director of
the American Singers. Famed composer of choral music published with
ECS Publishing, Oxford University Press, Morningstar Music, et al.
19

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

46
Table 2. (Continued)

Graduate Degree/Career Highlights

Doyle Preheim MM in Church Music, 1966; DMA in Church Music, 1973
20

Music Department chair and Professor of Music at Goshen College.
Musical director of the Sangre de Cristo Chorale.
21

Milburn Price DMA in Church Music, 1967
6

Dean and chair of the School of Music at Samford University. Chair of
the Music Department at Furman University. ACDA president. Published
composer and arranger with Hinshaw Music, Oxford University Press,
Carl Fischer, Mark Foster, et al.
22

Cecil J. Rhiney DMA in Church Music, 1963
6

Director of the School of Music at Friends University. Chairman of the
ACDA Committee of Choral Standards and Repertoire. President of
Kansas Choral Directors Association.
23

H. Royce Saltzman DMA in Church Music, 1964
6

Professor or Church and Choral Music at the University of Oregon.
Director and co-founder of the Oregon Bach Festival. ACDA president.
24

Thomas Somerville DMA in Church Music, 1973
25
Occidental College, Professor Emeritus. Music faculty for the
Department of Choral and Church Music at USC. Artistic director and
conductor of the Los Angeles Bach Festival. Director and associate
teacher of Oregon Bach Festival conducting master class. Minister of
Music Emeritus, First Congregational Church of Los Angeles.
26

Ronald Staheli MM in Choral Music, 1973; DMA in Choral Music, 1976
27

Director of Graduate Studies in Choral Activities at Brigham Young
University. National and international guest conductor and lecturer.
28

Nick Strimple MM in Church Music, 1973; DMA in Choral Music, 1976
29

Associate professor of Practice of Choral Music at USC. Holocaust
music expert. Author of two books on choral music.
30

Myron Tweed DMA in Church Music, 1970
6

Professor of Music at Point Loma Nazarene University. President of the
Choral Conductors Guild.
31

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47
Table 2. (Continued)

Graduate Degree/Career Highlights

James H. Vail DMA in Church Music, 1960
6

Department Chair and Professor of Music in the Department of Church
and Choral Music at the University of Southern California from 1961-
1999. Choirmaster at St. Alban’s Church for forty years.
32

Dale Warland DMA in Church Music, 1965
6

Founder and music director of the Dale Warland Singers which recorded
twenty-nine albums and received one Grammy Award nomination for
Best Choral Performance. Won numerous prestigious awards the:
ASCAP Victor Herbert Award and ACDA’s Robert Shaw Award.
Inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. Received four
honorary doctorates.
33

Lynn Whitten DMA in Church Music, 1966
6

Professor and head of the Choral Music Department at the University of
Colorado. Assistant dean at the University’s College of Music. ACDA
President. Colorado Music Educators Association president. Colorado
Music Educators Hall of Fame.
34

Paul Wohlgemuth DMA in Church Music, 1956
6

First recipient of the DMA in Church Music at the University of
Southern California. Chairman of the Department of Fine Arts and
Professor of Music at Oral Roberts University. Conductor of the Kansas
Mennonite Men’s Chorus. Head of the church music programs at Tabor
College and Biola College.
35

Robert H.Young DMA in Church Music, 1959
6

Professor of Music, chairman of Church Music, chairman of Vocal
Studies, director of Graduate Studies and Interim dean of the School of
Music, founder of Chamber Singers at Baylor University. Published
composer with Gentry Publications, Alliance Music Publications, Carl
Fisher, et al. Vice president of the Church/Community Division of the
Texas Choral Directors Association.
36

Sources:
1
“Ninety-Second Annual Commencement,” School of Performing Arts, program (June 1975): 54.
2
“Dr. William Bausano, Voice,” http://arts.muohio.edu/music/people/faculty-listing-bios/william-bausano, accessed
March 10, 2013.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
48
Table 2. (Continued)
3
Dehning interview.
4
“William Dehning, Conductor,” http://www.williamdehning.com, accessed February 2, 2013.
5
William Dehning, email to author, March 26, 2013.
6
“Department of Church Music Silver Anniversary,” program, Directory, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
Unpaginated.
7
“Don Fontanta,” http://www.fredbock.com/Promo.asp?page=244, accessed February 12, 2013.
8
“Dr. William D. Hall,” http://www.chapman.edu/our-faculty/william-hall, accessed February 12, 2013.
9
“Ninety-Third Annual Commencement,” School of Music, program, June 1976, 53.
10
“In Memoriam: Jane Skinner Hardester, October 3, 1922 - October 23, 2006,”
http://www.scvachoral.org/news/news1206.html, accessed February 2, 2013.
11
“Eighty-Eighth Annual Commencement,” School of Music, program, June 1971, 49.
12
“John M. Lilley,” http://www.baylor.edu/about/index.php?id=89267, accessed February 2, 2013.
13
“James McKelvey: Mark Foster Music,” http://www.compumusic.com/james-mckelvy-mark-foster-music-deck-the-
halls-in-7-8-35005214-747510039983-i4498790.htm.

14
“James McKelvy: Work List”
http://www.schirmer.com/default.aspx?TabId=2419&State_2872=2&composerId_2872=2533, accessed February 2,
2013.
15
“Biography via lead411 wiki,” http://www.lead411.com/Marvin_McKissick_11792876.html, accessed February 2,
2013.
16
“Albert McNeil,” http://www.fredbock.com/Promo.asp?page=236, accessed February 2, 2013.
17
In memoriam: Brandon Mehrle, 89, http://news.usc.edu/#!/article/46285/in-memoriam-brandon-mehrle-89/, accessed
February 2, 2013.
18
Leo Nestor, email to author, February 25, 2013.
19
“Dr. Leo Nestor,” http://music.cua.edu/faculty/leo-nestor.cfm, accessed February 24, 2013.
20
Preheim interview.
21
Doyle Preheim, letter to author, February 25, 2013.
22
“Milburn Price Senior Lecturer,” http://www.samford.edu/arts/facultyStaff.aspx?id=45097160223, accessed
February 25, 2013.
23
“Dr. Cecil J. Rhiney, Director of Celebration Choir,” http://chfumc.org/?page_id=3488, accessed February 25, 2013.
24
“H. Royce Saltzman, Director Emeritus Oregon Bach Festival,”
http://music.uoregon.edu/people/emeriti/saltzman.htm, accessed February 24, 2013.
25
“Midyear Commencement 1972-1973,” School of Music, program, February 1973, 39.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
49
Table 2. (Continued)
26
“Masterclass in Conducting: Faculty,” http://www.zoominfo.com/CachedPage/?archive_id=0&page_id
=5141950575&page_url=//oregonbachfestival.com/masterclass/faculty/&page_last_updated=2012-10-
02T01:03:55&firstName=Thomas&lastName=Somerville, accessed March 14, 2013.
27
Staheli interview.
28
“Dr. Ronald Staheli,” http://www.singers.com/choral/director/Ronald-Staheli/, accessed February 24, 2013.
29
Strimple interview.
30
“Nick Strimple: Biography,” http://www.usc.edu/schools/music/private/faculty/strimple.php, accessed February 2,
2013.
31
“Myron Tweed, Background,” http://www.pointloma.edu/experience/academics/schools-departments/department-
music/faculty/myron-tweed,” accessed February 24, 2013.
32
Luisa. Del Giudice, “Dr. James H. Vail (Organist and Choirmaster, St. Alban’s): An Oral History,”
www.stalbanswestwood.com, accessed February 22, 2013, http://www.stalbanswestwood.com/work/ohp_vail.pdf.
33
“Dale Warland Conductor, Composer: Biography,” http://dalewarland.com/biography/, accessed February 24, 2013.

34
“Dr. R. Lynn Whitten,” http://www.coloradodaily.com/ci_12965023#axzz2Oj7gEZ7A, accessed March 10, 2013.
35
“Arise and Sing,” http://www.wcmmc.org/8Concert0.htm, accessed February 2, 2013.
36
“Robert H. Young: Obituary,” http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/wacotrib/obituary.aspx?n=robert-h-
young&pid=152838510#fbLoggedOut, accessed March 10, 2013.
From 1945 to 1976, under Charles Hirt more than two hundred students would complete
a master’s or doctoral degree in Church and/or Choral Music. In addition, before the degree’s
discontinuance after Hirt left USC, the Bachelor of Music program in Church Music would
graduate hundreds
78
of students, many who would also bring fame to USC.
Not only did the success of Hirt’s students bring fame to USC, Hirt’s vast involvement
outside of USC also raised the University’s profile throughout the country. While a detailed
discussion of Hirt’s body of work outside of USC is beyond the scope of this paper, mention
should be made of the highlights of those efforts. As already indicated, Hirt was exceedingly
active as an adjudicator and clinician. He conducted in all fifty states and led lengthy workshops
from coast to coast. Representative of his activity level, in the 1975-1976 school year (his final
year at USC), including the summer, he made twenty-seven appearances as a guest conductor,

78
A Bachelor of Music degree in Choral Music was never created.
50
lecturer, and adjudicator.
79
As noted on that year’s Faculty Profile, his guest appearances were in
addition to his load at USC which included teaching four courses in church music and choral
music, the supervision of eight student recitals, an average of four hours per week of advising to
the nearly sixty enrolled students in the Church Music and Choral Music programs,
corresponding with prospective students, communicating with additional graduate students
regarding their dissertations or theses, contacting alumni of departments, assistance with job
placement for alumni, and the chairing of weekly departmental meetings.
80

Hirt’s association with professional organizations also brought renown to the University.
He was a founder, member, president and honorary life member of the Choral Conductors Guild.
He was also an honorary life member and president of the Southern California Vocal Association;
a life member of Musicians Union Local 47; a member of La Federation Franco-Californienne,
National Church Music Fellowship and American Association of University Professors; and last
but not least founder, life member, member of the board of directors and president of the
American Choral Directors Association.
81
Although not all of the following occurred during his
time at USC, Hirt was involved internationally with the founding of the International Federation
of Choral Music, presented at numerous workshops and conferences sponsored by Europa Cantat
and À Coeur Joie, and was the first American conductor asked to join the conducting staff of
Europa Cantat. In the summer of 1976, during the ten-day festival of Europa Cantat VI, Hirt led
the 3,000 singers in “Dona Nobis Pacem” (Appendix B), an aleatoric experience that was
composed by Hirt specifically for the occasion. Never seeming to shy away from new ideas and
always connected to the human element (no matter how experimental the idea), in his own words
Hirt explained the purpose of the piece.
This work is intended to create an environment for expression of petition and cries of
despair and frustration, reacting to a world in turmoil, and finally changing into

79
Charles Hirt, “Faculty Profile,” 1. Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 11.
80
Ibid., “Part II. Current Activities,” (not fully paginated).
81
“Biographical Sketch Charles C. Hirt,” typed document, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5,
Series 11.
51
expression of hope, tenderness and love, with the realization that peace is not won
through force and coercion, but it is learned and earned through faith and love for
another.
82

His work with ACDA was of particular note with many of the interviewees for this
document. Of no small consequence was Hirt’s involvement with the founding of the world’s
largest choral organization. ACDA was formed in 1959 through the efforts of thirty-five visionary
choral musicians, of which Hirt was one. The year Hirt retired from USC, 1976, ACDA boasted
almost 10,000 members. Through this organization the renown of Hirt and USC was greatly
increased both nationally and internationally. There were two events in Hirt’s history with ACDA
that seemed to be of particular consequence to those interviewed for this project.
The first was Hirt’s achievement in establishing an independent ACDA convention in
1971. Though Hirt had been on the choral scene in the United States and abroad for several
decades and was awarded two honorary degrees (1970-1971),
83
it was at this convention where
Hirt was recognized as a true leader by his profession.
84
Originally an adjunct organization to
MTNA (Music Teachers National Association), ACDA eventually became associated with
MENC (Music Educators National Conference). The ACDA convention was held several days
before the National MENC convention and in the same location. Nick Strimple indicated that the
constituents of ACDA were unhappy because of missing a week’s worth of school to attend both
conventions,
85
and “there were more church musicians and collegiate musicians whose interests
were not primarily the interests of the Music Educators Conference.
86
So they [ACDA] decided to

82
Typed notes accompanying the score, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 11, Series 25.
83
Faculty Profile. Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10. Hirt received an honorary MuD
from Occidental (1970), honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Westminster Choir College (1971) and an
honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Pacific University in Oregon (1976).
84
Hasty interview. Personal letter to the Chamber Singers, received at the interview with the
author.
85
Strimple interview.
86
Tim Sharp and Christina Prucha, American Choral Directors Association: Images of America,
Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, SC, 2009. According to records at ACDA, the Association’s original
affiliation was with the Music Teachers National Association.
52
go on their own.”
87
The significance of that move under Hirt’s direction for the growth and
identity of ACDA is immeasurable.
The second key ACDA event for Hirt was the performance of the Chamber Singers at the
1973 National ACDA Convention, also in Kansas City, Missouri. Strimple said, “It changed
everything in choral music in the United States, because the people in the audience thought, ‘It is
possible to do more than we’ve been doing.’”
88
In that Chamber Singers’ performance himself,
Joel Pressman spoke of there being around 3,000 people in the audience, including Robert Shaw,
Roger Wagner, and other choral giants in the front row. Hirt, Pressman said, had been “talking
the talk, and he felt a great need to prove that it [Hirt’s choral philosophy]
89
worked.”
90
About the
performance itself, Nick Strimple said:
It was a lecture concert where he talked about programming and new repertoire of
various kinds. This was…a great paradigm shift in choral music in the United
States….The level of artistry reached by the ’73 Chamber Singers was…just something
that nobody in the country had.
91

From the singers’ perspective, too, “it was perfect music making, perfect musicianship…it was a
professional, a really professional level…they nailed the style of every piece.”
92
Brinegar, also a
member of the 1973 group, said it “established a whole new image and standard of
performance.”
93
In short, the 1973 performance was of the caliber of a professional group, a level
that had not been achieved by other collegiate groups.

87
Strimple interview.
88
Ibid.
89
Specifically, Pressman noted that Hirt needed to prove his philosophy of the “Pendulum Swing”
worked. The “Pendulum Swing” will be discussed in a subsequent chapter.
90
Pressman interview.
91
Strimple interview.
92
Pressman interview
93
Brinegar interview.
53
One final mention should be made regarding ACDA. On March 10, 1991, at the National
Convention in Phoenix, Arizona, William Hatcher presented Charles Hirt with ACDA’s first
Robert Lawson Shaw award honoring a “choral leader who has made unusual contributions to the
art of choral music.”
94
As a result of poor health from a progressive neural spinal disease, Hirt
was in a wheelchair when he was presented with this particular honor. In an email to the author,
Darlene Hatcher reminisced about the moment he received the award.
Lucy wheeled him on stage and Bill [Hatcher] announced the award. The applause (a
standing ovation) began and he suddenly started to stand. There was an audible gasp from
the whole audience and Lucy quickly put the brake on the wheelchair. He actually
managed to stand and the whole crowd went crazy, but Bill and Lucy were scared to
death. A showman to the end.
95

“Knowing Charles, how proud a man he was, he stood up from his wheelchair to accept the
award, and he was like a Teddy Roosevelt standing up. Incredible moment,”
96
said Delton
Shilling. The sight of his standing was a fitting visual commentary on the many superlatives that
could be used to describe the unflagging character of Charles Hirt.
Hirt’s involvement with two other U.S. associations should be given special attention: the
Candlelight choirs at Disneyland and the Olympics Games. His Disney association started with a
personal call from Walt Disney asking Hirt to bring a few choirs out to Disneyland for
Christmas.
97
At its inception, the Disney Candlelight tradition was “just some volunteer choirs
singing around in front of the castle.”
98
This became a tradition, and the original twelve Dickens
Carolers and their accompanying choir grew to over 2,000 singers in 1959, just four years after its
beginning. Further expansion through the years included transplanting the Candlelight design to
Disneyworld in 1971. Over his twenty-five years with Disney, Hirt “for two nights every

94
“Awards and Prizes,” American Choral Directors Association, accessed February 28, 2013,
http://acda.org/page.asp?page=awardsandprizes.
95
Darlene Hatcher, email to author, January 7, 2013.
96
Shilling interview.
97
Ibid.
98
Ibid.
54
December…directed the high school choir combined with a symphony orchestra and a narrator,
recalling the story of the first Christmas.”
99

The other association that requires special mention is his involvement with the Olympics.
Having been in association with Walt Disney since 1955, Disney invited Hirt to provide the
choral music for the Winter Olympic ceremonies in Squaw Valley, California. Then again, in
1984, Hirt was given the honor of conducting a one-thousand voice choir for both the opening
and closing Olympic ceremonies held in Los Angeles, California. Notably, that same year he was
the director of international choral participation at the World’s Fair in New Orleans, Louisiana,
and was also asked to conduct at the first Asian Cantat under the Choral Conductors Association
of Japan.
As mentioned above, however, the founding and development of the Church and Choral
Music Department was Hirt’s foremost contribution to USC; it became the vehicle through which
the University’s name would be known. A by-product of that program, the Chamber Singers
would be another major vehicle whereby USC’s renown would proliferate. “The Chamber
Singers were the personification of the quality at USC...The Chamber Singers and Charles Hirt
brought that excellence way out front.”
100
Hirt’s choral philosophy and techniques as recalled
through the eyes of former Chamber Singers will be discussed in Chapter 3. Mention is made in
the present chapter because of the attention the group brought to the University. The Chamber
Singers are specifically mentioned with regards to the monumental, effectual tour on which they
embarked in January of 1964. Figure 18 provides a rare look at the Chamber Singers receiving
applause during a tour concert.
The Chamber Singers of 1961-62 were actively raising money for a tour to Mexico,
101

when Dean Raymond Kendall, knowing about the potential State Department opportunity, told

99
Sampson Wade, “The History of Two Disney Christmas Traditions,” February 25, 2009,
accessed January 6, 2013,
http://www.mouseplanet.com/8691/The_History_of_Two_Disney_Christmas_Traditions.
100
Lawrence interview.
101
Robert Hasty, email to the author, January 13, 2013. The 1960-61 Chamber Singers had
previously toured Guadalajara, Mexico, in February of 1961.
55
them to stop because they would no longer be going to Mexico. “The State Department’s People
to People program was sending professional and college groups to various parts of the world as a
cultural exchange.”
102
Then president of the Chamber Singers, Robert Hasty spent the summer
before his senior year in 1962 drafting a proposal to the State Department on behalf of the
ensemble. Dean Kendall had strongly encouraged the proposal because he was on the selection
committee.
103
Upon their initial acceptance, they were to go on a five-week concert tour to the
Orient.
104
However, perhaps due to the ensemble’s national reputation, the Chamber Singers
received “Priority One” which meant they would tour eight European countries.

Figure 18. Photo of the 1964 Chamber Singers receiving applause on tour. Unidentified performance
venue. “1964 Tour of Europe and Israel.” (Reprinted by permission from USC Thornton School of Music.
United States Department of State and Cultural Presentations Program. Front cover. Charles C. Hirt
Collection, American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 5, Series 10.)

102
Robert Hasty, email to author, January 5, 2013.
103
Ibid.
104
In 1962, Asia was still commonly referred to as the Orient.
56
Though they were to officially tour as a cultural exchange offering goodwill, the Chamber
Singers had a more philosophical purpose as said by Charles Hirt himself:
Choral Music is an incomparable medium for communication among men, conveying
along its power-lines both the persuasion of the word and the feelings of the heart. It is a
prism which refracts the white light of Truth into a spectrum of meanings and emotions.
It creates an environment of understanding wherein the mind of Man is quickened into an
awareness of the needs and dreams of all peoples of the earth. May our tour realize a
portion of this potential resident in so great an Art.
105

As will be discussed in the following chapter, Hirt had a unique philosophy of choral
tone, selection of singers, repertoire, and programming. His philosophy, as manifested in the
performances of the Chamber Singers in addition to the performance excellence they achieved, is
what brought attention to USC, thereby becoming one of his significant contributions. The
statement in the State Department brochure said:
The USC Chamber Singers have emerged as a direct manifestation of this philosophy.
They achieve with equal authority the fragile flowing lines of the sixteenth-century
polyphony, the disciplined clarity of Baroque and Classical song, and the rich sonority
and strong dissonance of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The wide acclaim
accorded the USC Chamber Singers today is convincing evidence of the validity of this
philosophy and of Dr. Hirt’s ability to see it realized in practice.
106

The January 1964 issue of the Choral Journal also remarked on their vocal versatility, a hallmark
of Hirt’s concept of tone.
The University of Southern California Chamber Singers, under the direction of Charles
C. Hirt, have received wide acclaim both for their choral excellence and for the authentic
manner in which they present a wide variety of chamber literature. An ensemble of
sixteen highly-trained singers, who are also students of the choral art, they perform music
from all periods and styles [sic]. Most unusual is their ability to adapt vocally and
interpretively to the varying demands of their repertoire ranging from the fragile
Elizabethan madrigal to the contemporary song, and from the disciplined Baroque cantata
to the informal folk song of many lands. They sing each song in its original language,
either unaccompanied or with lute, recorder or other instruments according to the
accompaniment originally prescribed.
107

105
“For State Department Brochure”, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
106
Ibid.
107
“USC Chamber Choir Sings in Nachmani Hall, Tel Aviv,” The Choral Journal (January
1964): 28. http://acda.org/files/choral_journals/Jan_1964_USC_Chamber.pdf.
57
It is this distinctive philosophy that Hirt and the Chamber Singers would use to convey the
“persuasion of the word and the feelings of the heart.”
108

On January 21, 1964, seventeen
109
singers,
110
State Department officer Frederick B.
Lyon
111
and his wife, and Dr. and Mrs. Hirt departed on a life-changing four-month tour that
included seven European countries and Israel. In addition to Dr. and Mrs. Hirt and Mr. and Mrs.
Lyon, the personnel included two married couples (Robert and Barbara Hasty and Douglas and
Darlene Hatcher, then Darlene Lawrence), six freshmen, and seven other students already in
degree programs.
112
Foreign to the present era of packaged tours, the itinerary was always
fluctuating.
The exact venues and concert dates materialized over the course of the tour. For instance,
the Cultural Attaché in Vienna was skeptical because of some bad experiences he had
with previous college groups. So our itinerary changed as he received reports and
newspaper reviews of our concerts in Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France. He
decided we must be something. So we were scheduled in the top venues, including the
Brahms Saal at the Musikverein in Vienna.
113

The last known recorded itinerary, as stated in a 1964 USC University memo can be seen in
Table 3.

108
“For State Department Brochure,” Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
109
Hasty interview. Hasty recalled that it was the largest group in the Chamber Singers’ history,
with the group having been eleven members his first year and fourteen his second. He mentioned that at
some point it had also been as small as nine. On the 1964 tour, the seventeenth member was actually an
instrumentalist. He was, however, a strong enough singer and musician that, as he sat at the table (their
standard performance set-up), he would sing along.
110
Robert Hasty, email to the author, January 5, 2013. The group included Robert Hasty’s
(president of the Chamber Singers) new wife, Barbara, and Paul Mayo, graduated alumni who were asked
to return to school to participate in the tour. They had to enroll for a degree or certificate program to
qualify.
111
Lawrence interview. Mr. Lyon had previously been the Consul General in Paris.
112
Robert Hasty, email to author, January 5, 2013. Katie Michels, Glenellen Cooper, Audry
Fickus, Nina Hinson, Doyle Preheim, and Delton Shilling.
113
Robert Hasty, email to the author, December 27, 2012.
58
After a harrowing arrival from Los Angeles in Gatwick, England,
114
followed by a bus
crash,
115
the singers returned to the London airport from which they later departed for Düsseldorf,
Germany. Upon missing the landing strip in Düsseldorf, the pilot remarked, “Shall we have
another go at it?”
116
However, the dramatic events were not finished. The Chamber Singers
Table 3. 1964 Chamber Singers’ tour itinerary.

Dates Country Visited

January 23-February 11 Germany
February 12-26 Netherlands
February 27-March 3 Belgium
March 4-25 France
March 26-30 Monaco
April 1-10 Austria
April 11-20 Italy
April 24-May 4 Israel

Source: University Memo, University of Southern California, News Bureau Richmond 8-2311, September 9, 1963, 2,
Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
travelled twenty miles from Düsseldorf airport to the Stadthalle in Wuppertal, unloaded, and
performed their first tour concert, their costumes arriving just ten minutes before the downbeat.
The review of the concert written by Mr. Lyon indicates their level of professionalism and
excellence, a reputation that would follow them for the next four months.

114
Glenellen Cooper’s letter to Dean Kendall, February 5, 1964, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box
5, Series 10. The Chamber Singers were supposed to land in London, but due to severe and unusual
weather, had to divert to Gatwick, which was not much better with its impenetrable fog.
115
Personal letter from Rose Fickas, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10. After arriving
at Gatwick the singers loaded their luggage onto a bus to return to their original destination of the London
airport where they were to catch a plane to Germany. On a narrow road, their bus driver became confused
by a road block and stalled cars. To avoid hitting another bus, he ran the bus, with Chamber Singers inside,
into a tree just ten feet shy of colliding with a brick house.
116
Letter to Dean Raymond Kendall from Robert Hasty, January 26, 1964, Charles C. Hirt
Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
59
Our choral group opened its concert tour in Europe last night with a phenomenal success.
You would have been so very proud could you have been in attendance. I really am so
very, very proud of them. I consider myself privileged to be with them. They are already
a tremendous hit over here. They seem able to communicate their love and knowledge of
music to their audiences without effort. This was apparent last night and I am confident
that it will continue throughout the tour. It is an exceedingly hard-working group.
117

The singers had costumes for both day and night concerts. At daytime concerts, the ladies
wore blue skirts, white blouses, blue jackets, and if in a Catholic church, blue pillbox hats; the
men wore blue blazers, gray pants, and vests. At evening concerts, the ladies donned red mid-calf
dresses with minimal sleeves and a flared bottom complimented by dyed shoes to match; the men
wore tuxedos.
118
In a humorous personal account, Lawrence said:
Those costumes were carried in two enormous trunks of steel [that the singers had to
carry themselves] along with our scores and hundreds of rolls of toilet paper because in
Europe at this time, a nice fine sandpaper would have worked just as well…We had to
haul those trunks around, to get them on and off busses…out of airports and on trains…it
was a big deal.
119

Over the next four months, they would unload those steel trunks well over a hundred
times as they concertized in some of the finest halls in Europe and Israel. Having prestigious
connections because it was a State Department-sponsored trip and they were traveling with the
State Department liaison and his wife, the Chamber Singers sang for city councils, mayoral
receptions, on Palm Sunday for a private service with Princess Grace and Prince Rainier, on
Easter morning aboard the USS Enterprise, and privately even for Pope Pius X.
120

Concert repertoire fluctuated just as much as their itinerary. They prepared over one
hundred pieces of music, some they would use but once. William Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices

117
Letter to Dean Raymond Kendall from Frederik B. Lyon, January 24, 1964. Charles C. Hirt
Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
118
Douglas Lawrence, email to author, February 28, 2013.
119
Lawrence interview.
120
Hatcher interview.
60
was prepared for the Royal Family of Monaco, never to be sung again on that tour. Darlene
Hatcher’s anecdotal account provides insight into the “organic”
121
way in which the tour evolved.
We took with us about…[a] half-dozen encores or something like that, and it was in
Belgium I think at a music college…[where there were] tiers and tiers of students in the
audience…By the end of the concert, they were on their feet waving their white
handkerchiefs and we went through literally every encore that we had…they wouldn’t sit
down, and they wouldn’t stop waving. So we went back stage [and asked], “What are we
going to do now?” Paul Mayo said, “I know this tune. It’s called Witness. This is the way
it goes.” Somebody said, “Okay, we can go…[Darlene vocally demonstrated…],” and
somebody else said, “Yeah, we can snap…and there’s a break. Dar, why don’t you do
one of those things?” We honestly manufactured this thing. I walked out there and he’s
[Paul] singing, “Who’ll be a witness for my Lord?” We made it up.
122

Hirt’s goal was to “present the finest choral music from the sixteenth century to the
present…with heavy emphasis on American music. We also want to include some of the best
music from each country we will visit.”
123
There is no known complete list of repertoire, yet the
pieces from the State Department brochure and a program from Austria provide works
representative of those they took on tour (table 4).
124

In addition to the formal concerts, they gave many workshops and informal concerts as
well. Robert Hasty recalled the purpose and effect of such workshops:
When we went to Europe, one of the things that we were doing was putting on lecture
demonstrations about the American choral art. The choral art in Europe, at that time, in
1964…I think it had opera choruses, made up of opera singers, highly trained…the rest of
choruses were just adult extensions of the boy choir tradition, kind of thin voices, not
trained and not a great deal demanded of them in terms of interpretation or color. One of
the things that was unique was to articulate what the American choral art was, at least as
interpreted by Charles Hirt. We prepared the music that we were going to do. We also
took multiple copies of certain compositions to distribute among the students or whatever

121
“Organic” was a term frequently used by Hirt and was an intrinsic part of his choral
philosophy. It is mentioned in-depth in Chapter 3.
122
Hatcher interview.
123
University of Southern California, News Bureau Richmond 8-2311, 1, Charles C. Hirt
Collection, Box 5. Series 10.
124
A list of all Madrigal Singers/Chamber Singers repertoire based on the programs contained in
the Charles C. Hirt Collection at the ACDA Headquarters can be found in Appendix A.
61
the audience was for that [workshop]. It included Randall Thompson’s “Glory to God in
the Highest” [and] “Anthony O’Daly” by Samuel Barber.
125

Table 4. Sample repertoire list from the 1964 Chamber Singers’ tour.

Composition Composer

*O Rex Glorias Luca Marenzio
*Vedrassi Prima senza luco il sole Palestrina
*Rest, Sweet Nymphs Francis Pilkington
Though Philomela Lost Her Love Thomas Morley
Sie ist mir lieb’ Michael Praetorious
Ich weis mir ein Meidlein Orlando di Lasso
*Music, Spread Thy Voice Around from Solomon Georg Friedrich Händel
Cantate Domino Hans Leo Hassler
*Let Them Neglect Thy Glory Samuel Holyoke
Jaegerlied Robert Schumann
My True-Love Hath My Heart from Six Madrigals Jean Berger
Follow Your Saint Hugh Mullins
Three Madrigals Emma Lou Diemer
O Mistress Mine, Where Are You Roaming?
Take, O Take Those Lips Away
Sigh No More, Ladies, Sigh No More!
*Serenity Charles E. Ives
Agnus Dei Vincent Persichetti
If Luck and I Should Meet Madrigal Halsey Stevens
*Like as a Culver on the Bared Bough Halsey Stevens
Anthony O’Daly Samuel Barber
*Sure on This Shining Night Samuel Barber
Song of the Rainchant from Indianisches Regenlied Ellis Kohs
*Three Hungarian Folk Songs Bela Bartok
Ching-a-Ring Chaw Aaron Copland
Choose Something Like a Star Randall Thompson

Sources: “For State Department Brochure” and “Konzert der University of Southern California Chamber Singers”
program, Charles C. Hirt Collection, American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 5, Series 10.
* Indicates repertoire included in the materials prepared for the State Department brochure.

125
Hasty interview.
62
Even though there was a wealth of prepared repertoire, the Chamber Singers performed
the repertoire countless times. Hirt’s philosophy of “re-creation”
126
kept each performance fresh.
Lawrence said:
I don’t think we ever got bored with the repertoire because Charles insisted on recreating
it every night. It could be exactly the same as it was the night before, but you never felt
that way…it felt like it was just happening. It was in the ether, and every night, we would
take the lid off the ether and there would be this concert, and it would permeate the
room.
127

As related by State Representative Lyon in his letter to Dean Kendall, the singers were a
huge success nearly everywhere they went. The 1964 June edition of the Choral Journal contains
an extensive and enlightening article (figure 19).
Audiences were impressed by their professionalism, choral tone, inclusion of new
composers in the repertoire, and stage effect. Several complimentary letters noted the quality of
the solo voices. “Some singers proved that they are ready for the concert stage as soloists,”
128

remarked one concert-goer. Others were impressed by the programming, a compliment Hirt
would have undoubtedly seen as validating his choral philosophy.
Each new number offered some surprises and demonstrated a new side of the
comprehensive skill of the group. These numbers were especially attractive; the flower
girl who wandered through the hall, a splendid soprano who was interestingly supported
by the choir, a cultivated trio, a delicately tuned octet, the echo choir, wherein the hidden
echo group answered with surprisingly pure intonation, the skillful imitation of cackling
chickens and the group’s command of several languages…In addition to deeply serious
liturgical hymns, humorous songs were presented, and in all presentation the intonation
was exemplary and the discipline of the choir outstanding.
129

Their sound was impressive and often reported similar to the following:

126
Re-creation will be further discussed in Chapter 3.
127
Lawrence 13.
128
Unclassified document, USIS Vienna, page 6, field message no. 103, 1964 tour folder, ACDA,
Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
129
Unclassified document, USIS Vienna, page 4, field message no. 103, 1964 tour folder, ACDA,
Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
63

Figure 19. Choral Journal review of the 1964 USC Chamber Singers’ tour to Israel. (Reprinted by
permission from the American Choral Directors Association. “USC Chamber Choir Sings in Nachmani
Hall, Tel Aviv,” The Choral Journal [January 1964]: 28,
http://acda.org/files/choral_journals/Jan_1964_USC_Chamber.pdf.)

64
[The singers] were undergirded by musical understanding and learning on a basis of
sound culture…Whether he [Hirt] make them sing polyphony of the Baroque period, or
the dissonant music of the contemporaries, everything is sound, without spot, pure,
transparent in voice leading, perfect in balance of sound, with flawless nuances. Radiant
forti, undescribable [sic] pianissimi, in short, it is very impressive.”
130

One could include many more examples of their impression, influence, and impact, all of
which in one form or another allude to their unprecedented, unparalleled, outstanding
professional merit. Reviews reveal that Dr. Hirt and the Chamber Singers accomplished their
personal and professional goals leaving audiences forever touched by “a new sound from a New
World.”
131
The audiences of seven European countries and Israel would never forget the
University of Southern California Chamber Singers.
Perhaps more importantly, the musical and global horizons of seventeen singers grew in
immeasurable breadth and depth. Delton Shilling, a tenor on the tour, said, “We helped Europe to
have a better understanding of our ways, but we opened a whole new field of understanding to
ourselves. Instead of seeing a campus, we began to see a world.”
132
Sometimes it was on the stage
where the singers experienced transformative moments, but other times it was in the intimate
setting of the host home or informally on a street corner. The “first contact through our music
acted as a tool rather than as an end in itself. It became a paved road for more important
individual communication,” said Chamber Singer Barbara Hasty.
133
In a letter to his family
written while on tour in 1964, Doyle Preheim recalled a special nonmusical event.
The Gustav Sartor family of Wuppertal was my first contact as a German host. Mr. Sartor
and his wife spoke no English and their son Berndt only a small amount, so my meager
knowledge of German was most helpful. Mr. Sartor is engaged in the wallpaper industry,
managing several firms located throughout Germany. It didn’t take long to establish a
real feeling of friendship with this wonderful family. While staying with them, I was

130
Ibid.
131
Unknown author, typed letter of concert review, Amsterdam, Het Vrije Volk, February 14,
1964, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
132
Delton Shilling, typed letter, “Letters and Statements Written by the University of Southern
California Chamber Singers. Charles C. Hirt, Director.” Charles Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
133
Ibid.
65
made to feel at home and treated as a son. Much to my surprise and delight, the family
presented me with a cuckoo clock as a remembrance of my stay with them.
An incident which will stay with me forever occurred on the day I left the Sartor family.
En route to the appointed place of departure, Mr. Sartor presented me with a beautiful
New Testament, printed in the German language. He told the following story…While
fighting in Hitler’s army during WWII, action took him to France. Here he was
befriended by a French family, and upon his departure they presented him with a small
New Testament. This he carried with him into action. At one point he was captured and
those who captured him began to take all his belongings from him, until they found the
New Testament in his pocket. They then returned his belongings and left him to continue
on his way….So it was that Mr. Sartor presented the New Testament to me, hoping that it
would be a help and an inspiration to me as it had been a help and an inspiration to him in
his life experiences. Among all my souvenirs in Germany, none is more cherished than
this New Testament.
134

A letter also included in the Charles Hirt Collection by the instrumentalist and
seventeenth singer of the group, Emmett Yoshioka, reveals an unusual and particularly
meaningful encounter (particularly in the 1960s), three of the singers had in Innsbruck, Austria.
Some of us in the group were invited to meet with a group of students at a hotel
management school. When we got there we were led upstairs. We could hear a slight
hum as we climbed the stairs coming from the classroom. As we got closer, the hum
turned into a mass of German gobbelty-gook [sic] which at that time was thundering
throughout the hall. Then the door was opened by our guide and the whole class of one
hundred students stood up as if we were Greek Gods. But almost as suddenly, the clamor
turned into a blanket of awed whispers. The reason for this abrupt change of reaction was
slowly to unfold. While we were there we were first welcomed by the class spokesman
who spoke fluent Austrian-German translated by the teacher who was quite young. We
then exchanged ideas on how we liked our tour and how beautiful Innsbruck was and we
were asked about the customs and behaviors of American Students….After our meeting
with them during their class time we all went outside to chat…later we talked to their
instructor. He had told us that most of the students had never seen Americans before and
were awed to see the Americans walk in, one a Caucasian, another a negro, and me, a
Japanese. He said that he himself was rather surprised to see three different races
represented as Americans. We were surprised also because we didn’t plan on
it…Lorraine, Katy, and I were taken on a tour of the campus and treated royally. Yes we
were treated like kings and queens and were accepted with equal respect and love by the
students irrespective of our different colors.
135

134
Ibid.
135
Ibid.
66
Lorraine Doggett was one of those three singers in that Innsbruck classroom.
Recognizing that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would be enacted in July of that summer following
the tour, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was just a year away, provides an important
perspective on the following words Doggett wrote to her mother and father:
In Germany, during our first concert in Wuppertal, I’ll always remember the thunderous
applause, foot stomping, and the last standing ovation I received after I had sung
“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” and “In That Great Getting Up Morning.” I
and the group were so overwhelmed that Dr. Hirt asked me to sing the last spiritual again.
This was only an example of the warmth and appreciation the Europeans had toward our
American Folk songs and Negro Spirituals…I was told time and time again that not only
do the Europeans love Negro Spirituals, but they sing them as their own folk songs. It is
with these wonderful and warm experiences that I remember Europe and its people for
their love of music, especially folk music [that] brings two continents together as one.
136

A letter to unspecified persons by tour singer Charlie Parker is also included in the
ACDA Charles Hirt Collection. Parker’s letter discussed the friendships they made on the tour.
To describe the interesting and valuable experiences of our tour would be too extensive
for one letter, however I will attempt to recount...that of the sacrifices which people made
to see our concerts once, twice, or even three times. Probably the prime example would
be found in our bus driver of Germany about whom several letters could be written. Mr.
Krazig gave up many hours which he could have had free in order to attend every concert
that we sang in his country. This in itself seemed like an impressive record, but when this
excellent chauffeur surprised us with his presence at a concert in Holland, we realized we
had made a lifetime friendship.
137

Parker closed the letter with “Incidents like those [he relayed several stories] made us feel like we
had gained friends for ourselves, friends for the University of Southern California, and most
important friends for the United States of America.”
138

Darlene Hatcher’s letter in the same collection adds a moving perspective on the bus
driver’s relationship with the ensemble.
Our bus driver during our three weeks in Germany was a shy, sensitive little man who
was at the crossroads when we met him. His home was behind the Iron Curtain in East

136
Ibid.
137
Ibid.
138
Ibid.
67
Germany, and he had lost most of his family in the war. His wife deserted him, and for a
year, his life had held little hope. He became very attached, even devoted, to the group
and his bitterness gradually gave way. He would sit back and sigh, “Never have I been so
happy, all the days with the ‘Chomber Singers’.” He worked tirelessly for us, and showed
his affection in many ways, decorating the bus with flags of the tour countries, always
helping with and attending the concerts and meeting us with flowers at the airport. He
drove three hundred miles to see us in Holland, after which he had to drive back to be at
work at 5:00 A.M. the next morning. On our last night in Germany at a farewell dinner,
we collected $150.00 as a token of affection and gratitude. He is using it to start a fund
which will someday bring him and his daughter to the USA where he hopes to make a
new life. How can we measure the value of our tour to him? Who could have planned
it?
139

Hatcher closed her letter by saying:
I wonder how many of us realize what far-reaching affects our tour may have had, or
what can be accomplished for our country’s image by any group of unofficial
ambassadors who travel among other peoples, sincerely bearing a message of peace and
good will.”
140

The 1964 Chamber Singers’ tour is simply an unmatched experience, but also a
concentrated example of the kind of influence Charles Hirt had throughout the world. Because of
Hirt’s commitment to using music to communicate the mysteries of the soul (and to the music
itself), countless lives were changed. From audiences in Austria to Main Street Disney to the
conductors still living his legacy, Charles Hirt brought the name of the University of Southern
California with him wherever he went. The University would be forever indebted to this great
leader, conductor, and teacher for the many ways he dispersed its name throughout the United
States and across the seas.

139
Ibid.
140
Ibid.
68
CHAPTER 3: CHARLES HIRT AND HIS PHILOSOPHIES,
METHODS, AND TECHNIQUES
A Personal Look
“He just had a way of…inciting a riot in our mind of investigation.”
1
Charles Hirt was a man
of superior intellectual ability, a complex individual, a passionate soul, who had deep convictions. To
Hirt, “music was a necessary component of the soul.”
2
“It could take us to places that we can’t
experience in any other realm.”
3
In an interview with Douglas McEwen, Hirt said:
We’ve lost the concept that Greeks had of music, that it had powers far transcending any of
these. To refer to “ethos” that the Greeks used – attributing to music the power to moralize or
demoralize, acknowledging music as an art so exalted that it could not be given to the
populous without control for fear that this lethal weapon could be used diabolically…it could
drive them to their knees or drive them into battle. It has this kind of efficacy.
4

In such a profound and eloquent way, Hirt continued, saying:
We are trying to find ways, not only of reaching people, but of conveying through that
channel something important. We become not conductors in the musical sense only, but
conductors as a conductor of electricity transmits power – except that we are in the esoteric
field and therefore we are more than passive channels through which this power flows. We
become booster stations of this creative power. Music to me is the force that makes this
communication possible and not just the communication but it makes the experiential part of
our being more vivid; it is the catalyst in a sense that brings to life these things which we feel
are true but lack form.”
5

Hirt’s entire professional career resulted from these deeply embedded, philosophical ideas.
Yet, before taking a more in-depth look at Hirt’s philosophy as related to choral music and
his teaching methods, a more personal look at Hirt “the man” is in order. No one interviewed for this
document would disagree that Charles Hirt was a big personality, dramatic, and larger than life.
6
At

1
Brinegar interview.
2
Staheli interview.
3
Brinegar interview.
4
McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts,” 227-28.
5
Ibid., 231.
6
Staheli interview.
69
an estimated 6' 4",
7
and always well-dressed, he was well-suited for Hollywood.
8
Delton Shilling
recalled, “He was a striking individual. When you looked at Charles, you thought you were looking at
Rex Harrison.”
9
“He was kind of a god to everybody. He would stride down Widney Hall, making it
from the back door to his office in five big strides.”
10
Douglas Lawrence, who knew Hirt on a very
personal level, shared an interesting perspective on Hirt’s cultivation of his own image and how it
related to his art.
The common definition of drama is “the temporary suspension of belief,” and I believe
Charles was a master of lifting people out of the ordinary into some sort of fantasy. The only
way to do that, of course, is to create an experience that is not part of people’s day-to-day
existence…Charles [had] an ability to keep people at arm’s length in order to allow him the
privilege of taking them to places they did not expect to go. He was like a movie star you
might think you know all about, but the reality is you know very little…His extraordinary
ability to use words quite often separated him from ordinary mortals and this was his way of
creating an illusion that he was going to offer you something you couldn’t possibly
completely understand. The [more] mysterious, the greater the pleasure of the experience.
11

In the same vein, Lawrence thought that Hirt’s “theatrical sense, the way he related to
audiences in performance, the way he came on stage, the way he programmed…was extremely
cinematic.”
12
Hirt genuinely liked his Hollywood associations, reflected Lawrence. He had very close
ties with both the actor-singer Dennis Morgan and Ralph Blain who wrote Meet Me in St. Louis, and
he conducted several choirs for films, such as the Merry Wives of Windsor, 1952.
13
In Hollywood
fashion, he was a true showman and came alive on stage. Nick Strimple said it was “impossible to

7
Hatcher interview.
8
Brinegar interview.
9
Shilling interview.
10
Hatcher interview.
11
Douglas Lawrence, email to the author, January 1, 2013.
12
Lawrence interview.
13
Untitled newspaper clipping. Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 10, Series 22.
70
watch him really rehearse, because if there was a guest in the room, it was no longer a rehearsal – it
turned into a performance.”
14

Further emphasizing Hirt’s charismatic manner, Frank Brownstead, currently the Director of
Music at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (the biggest cathedral in the country),
15
recalled a
behind-the-scenes story about Dr. Hirt conducting a junior high choral festival.
I was backstage and just wanted to watch and see how he did with these junior high kids.
They were mesmerized; they had been so noisy earlier, and suddenly it was quiet…we got
there and he was kind of slumped over – oh, he was tired, exhausted. All of a sudden it came
time for him to go out on the stage and suddenly you saw this barrel-chested guy with all the
energy in the world, and he bounded out onto that stage and started working with these kids.
16

Brownstead went on to say, “He had an instant rapport with them that said to them, ‘We’re
connected. We’re in this together.’”
17
Nick Strimple tells an equally engaging story of Hirt’s “stage
persona.”
He would kind of psych himself up and, one or two minutes before 2:00, the door would open
and he came out and was in a good mood. He went upstairs, the doors closed and the
rehearsal started.…When it was over, he came down and went in to his office, the door closed
for five or ten minutes. And then, he’d open the door and Joel [Pressman] would go in and
they’d do whatever follow-up business they had to do, but he sort of psyched himself up and
then let himself down, because he gave it all. In performances backstage in Bovard
[Auditorium], it was the same thing. The choir will go out and he liked to perform with them
sitting at tables and he was sort of in the middle. They would go out and he would sort of take
on this…It was like he just changed on the stage. When he came off the stage, he was
completely deflated, and as soon as he got about ten feet from where he knew nobody in the
audience could see him, he went down.
18

Hirt used his persona to its full, persuasive advantage; it was one facet of the prism light that
radiated from Hirt. Of his “instant rapport” and persuasive nature, Preheim told of the time he had
Hirt come to Goshen College, where Preheim was serving as the Music Department chair. Hirt was

14
Strimple interview.
15
Brownstead interview.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid.
18
Strimple interview.
71
there to conduct a performance of Mozart’s Requiem, and after “one week he had them eating out of
his hands, and [singing] way better than they were capable of.”
19
Along with his grand persona, Hirt
had an “indomitable spirit, unflagging well of energy,” said Ronald Staheli.
20

I just marveled at his energy to be gone all weekend
21
doing probably dawn to dark rehearsals
and then come back and meet us Monday or Tuesday…and still be full of excitement and
energy and ready for our next class, or our project, our next lesson together.
22

Hirt’s love of all-things-French, including his French car with hydraulics intensified the
energy, drama, and charm that surrounded him. From his world travels to his car to his fame to his
drinking martinis by the pool every night with his beautiful wife Lucy, Charles Hirt seemed to live a
Hollywood-style life. Yet, “he really was a down-home guy that lived a world-class existence.”
23
He
had a teenage spirit that was full of humor and spontaneity.
24

We were doing a piece by a Santa Barbara composer, [John] Biggs, and it was called “On the
Brink”; it was an examination of how in our nuclear age we are on a brink of destruction. So
we’re in Hawaii and we’re visiting the volcano and we get out there and he rips off his shirt
and stands up in the middle of the lava and flexes his muscles and he shouts, “Sur le bord!
Sur le bord!” which means “on the brink” in French. [Laughs] We were all just falling down
and laughing. He just had that teenage spirit inside of him of “I can find something really fun
to do with this.”
25

His humor was both playful and witty, and sometimes used just to amuse himself. Pressman,
whose humor he believes may have endeared him to Hirt early on, recalled being the only one in class
who laughed at Hirt’s dry wit, to which Hirt replied, “You know, I say these things to amuse myself
and you haven’t missed one of them.”
26
At school, Shilling remembers rehearsals where Hirt’s humor

19
Preheim interview.
20
Staheli interview.
21
Hasty interview. Hirt was often out multiple weekends in a row. He did not teach on Fridays. He
would be gone Friday and Saturday, but always back for church on Sunday.
22
Staheli interview.
23
Brinegar interview.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
26
Pressman interview.
72
would get the singers laughing for no less than fifteen minutes. He was the same way at church and
home. Shilling has fond memories of a very funny and informal Hirt.

I remember him jumping in the swimming pool in their backyard, showing off his ‘candle
stroke’ where he would hold up his two fingers and paddle like crazy to stay afloat; he was
always joking around When you’re in a casual environment having hamburgers and hotdogs,
he was a funny, funny man.
27

Robert Hasty also reflected on that playful and sometimes competitive spirit.
And he played as hard as everything else. I’ve got pictures of him – some of the guys would
…do foot races. All of a sudden, somebody would say, “I will race you down to the corner,”
you know, when we’re standing around on a touring trip or something and they would
challenge him. He would run in and do the foot race with them. He would never want to be
shown up. He always was in competition with us and with anybody else.
28

According to Hatcher, he was always aware of the image he cultivated. At the wedding of
former student and now famed singer and voice teacher Nina Hinson, Hirt gave Hinson away.
Standing in the reception line for a very long time, poking fun at his own image consciousness, he
leaned over to Hatcher and said, “I hope they stop coming through…I can’t stand up this straight. I
can’t keep this [his chest] up higher any longer.”
29

Hatcher said it would always come as a surprise when he would show his human side,
30

which was extremely rare. From the stories recalled in the interviews, Hirt seemed to exude a
positive, optimistic energy nearly all the time. Only on rare occasions would he reveal his displeasure.
“If he was unhappy, you’d know it,” stated long-time colleague James Vail. Few former students
could recall ever seeing him angry. However, a story that both reveals both Hirt’s human foibles and
contributes to the history of USC is as follows:
I remember when I was a freshman, there was a tenor in the choir and he was in a country-
western trio that performed on certain nights at Knott’s Berry Farm in the Wagon Train Fire
Ring. It was a professional gig and there was this performance that Dr. Hirt was conducting

27
Shilling interview.
28
Hasty interview.
29
Hatcher interview.
30
Ibid.
73
and he [the tenor] didn’t come to it because he had this conflict. Dr. Hirt was so angry at him
but not in front of anybody else, but he was so angry at him, he went to the registrar’s office
and asked to see the guy’s transcript. They brought it out and showed him the transcript, and
in red ink, he wrote on the transcript “Totally irresponsible person. I’ll never recommend
him.” And he is the reason why you can never look at a transcript without it being under
glass.
31

Though highly unusual, when Hirt was anything less than enthusiastic and positive, it is
possible that he was not feeling well, suggested James Shepard.
32
In 1958, while serving as the guest
conductor at the MENC convention, Hirt had emergency surgery on ulcers that were causing a bowel
obstruction, a procedure that was very dangerous at that time. Hirt ended up losing two-thirds of his
colon.
33
Shepard indicated that sometimes he just felt bad; he was often in terrible pain from stomach
problems that continued to plague him through the rest of his life. He ate stomach pills frequently
through rehearsals, as if they were candy. “But he never said anything about it or you weren’t
aware…that he was feeling bad because he worked like crazy, and he was always covered in
sweat…working really hard physically.”
34
Ronald Staheli’s previous comment regarding his
indefatigable spirit is even more remarkable in light of the knowledge of his constant physical
discomfort.
The term “perfectionist” was used more than once by the interviewees, referring to Hirt.
Revealing both the outstanding vocal achievement by the singers and perhaps the less desirable side
of perfectionism, both Darlene Hatcher and Robert Hasty told a somewhat heart-rending story about
the fate of the original recording of the 1964 Chamber Singers.
Steve Guy, of Location Recording Service, agreed to tape our Home Concert and recording
session for a very limited double-album release. If only you could have heard the tape from
the concert and recording session. Jack Hunt, engineer, could take the live performance of
“Mon Coeur…,” and replace a section that contained audience noise, with the same section
from the recording session, seamlessly. When he and I played the final mastered recording
for Dr. Hirt, we were surprised that he was worried that the recording was too clear. “It had

31
Hasty interview.
32
Shepard interview.
33
Lawrence interview.
34
Shepard interview.
74
too much presence,” he said. Why was he worried about the wonderful clarity of this fantastic
ensemble? So our dear director took possession of the tape…He took the tape to a friend, and
did some re-mastering of his own. Not only did he add reverberation to obscure the
“presence,” but he narrowed the frequency range of the recorded sound in order to eliminate
the high-frequency sounds of our consonants. Each member of the ensemble should easily
remember our consonants on “Cantate Domino,” “Gute Nacht,” or “To All, To Each.” I can
remember, viscerally, the energy we put into those consonants. At our concert in Hanover,
Germany, I had so much trouble phonating without coughing. But I was on that stage, giving
full power to every voiced [sonant] and unvoiced [surd] consonant in the performance.
Articulation was such an important aspect of Dr. Hirt’s choral art…when the record was cut,
Steve Guy could not believe the resulting poor recording quality…So he drove out to his
home in the desert, and burned the only master in an oil can.
35

Doyle Preheim said, “In a way I think Dr. Hirt was insecure. That’s a strange thing to say, but
he would always question. I mean he was so good, but then he would step back and ask, ‘Was that the
right thing? Was that good enough?’”
36
Similarly, William Dehning mentioned Hirt had a brilliant
mind, a tremendous sense of humor along with a “deep-seated insecurity, which a lot of people don’t
know.”
37
Some wondered if insecurity was the reason Hirt never wanted his rehearsals to be recorded;
however, Robert Hasty perceived Hirt simply as guarded, jealously protective, and proprietary about
his art.
38
But as history has proven, many a great artist has been plagued with intense self-doubt. It is
what often propels them to excellence. Whether Charles Hirt actually had any self-doubt will most
likely never be known.
Hirt was particular about being recorded regardless of the situation. Whatever the reason, Hirt
was not comfortable with allowing his work, finished or unfinished, to be recorded. Robert Hasty was
a seventeen-year-old freshman when he was first accepted into the group. Eager to give his parents a
glimpse of the group he was in, he recorded an entire two-hour-and-fifteen-minute rehearsal.
At the conclusion of the two hours and fifteen minutes, he [Hirt] asked me [Hasty] to stay
afterwards, which I did. He said, “No, wait just a minute.” We went downstairs. We were in

35
Robert Hasty, “Notes on listening to the 1964 recording of the USC Chamber Singers,” personal
letter written for the 1964 Chamber Singers Reunion, July 14-15, 2012, received by author at the Hasty
interview.
36
Preheim interview.
37
Dehning interview.
38
Robert Hasty, “Notes on listening,” personal letter.
75
room thirteen of Widney Hall. He brought back some papers for him to work on and he said,
“I’m going to sit here and I’m going to watch you erase that entire tape.” He explained, “My
rehearsals are very private. I don’t want anybody misconstruing because it may not be perfect
that day,” or something like that…We sat there for two hours and fifteen minutes, and he did
his paperwork…while the whole thing got erased.
39

In light of his rare fits of anger, his fussiness, and perceived insecurity, Douglas Lawrence
expressed the following about another side of Hirt’s personality.
I will always believe Charles was just a big “moosh” hiding behind a mask of extreme
competence. You couldn’t make music as he did without having a tender heart. There was
just too much color and variation in his music to come from a man who didn’t have a
tremendous amount of raw feelings.
40

Of experiencing Hirt’s tender side, Lawrence communicated two very intimate moments with Hirt.
There were two specific times that I actually experienced him with tears in his eyes and an
abundance of human tenderness (perhaps “grief” or vulnerability is the better expression).
The first was a year after he left Hollywood Presbyterian Church. I asked him how it felt to
watch somebody else conducting his choir after thirty years. His first response was quite
blustery and unsentimental. When I pressed the question a little further, he teared up and said,
“How do you think it feels?!” He was almost angry that I had brought it up, and in retrospect,
it was probably way too personal…but it certainly showed his more vulnerable and human
side.
The second time I saw him tear up was when he talked about the loss of his adopted son, Ron.
It was a tragic end and Charles didn’t seem to be able to talk with any clarity about what he
was feeling. For me, however, the tears told me everything I needed to know.
41

Among many of the interviewees, there was a consensus that Hirt was a complex man of
great character, much of that stemming from his deep, abiding faith in God. Yet, he rarely talked
about it at the University. Shepard relayed an insightful account of the effect his spirituality had on
him.
I think that his spirituality…he had a lot of integrity. I think that showed in terms of the way
he treated people. He never said bad things about people, negative things about people,
even…when I was working close with him as a TA. I remember…I overheard somebody
coming in along with the singers complaining about another professor or something…and

39
Hasty interview.
40
Douglas Lawrence, email to author, January 1, 2013.
41
Ibid.
76
Charles looked at him and said, “Gee, John, he always says good things about you.” He had a
way of being very positive and putting out fires….He rose above the politics. If there were
problems with a singer in the group, nobody ever knew about it.
42

When asked about the spiritual element of Hirt, Donald Brinegar said, “I immediately think
of the cathedrals in Europe and the devotion that was expressed in those cathedrals that took hundreds
of years to build. I think he [Hirt] felt the same devotion to creating music…that was as perfect as he
could possibly achieve or accomplish.”
43
Shepard went on to say, “It was a profound faith that
transcended. He didn’t talk about it. He didn’t have to talk about it.”
44
Doyle Preheim remarked:
He did not at the university usually talk much about spiritual things even if we were doing the
sacred songs, but I thought it was very interesting that on our tour, on our 1964 tour, he
would ask one of the choir members to offer a word of prayer before every concert. So that
was a very open, obvious, gesture of his feeling that invoking the blessing of God on a
concert was a very positive thing. But he himself never prayed. He would always ask one of
the students…He had a way of living his faith that was pretty much on his sleeve, not
verbally but in other ways…in other subtle ways.
45

At the same time, Preheim indicated that Hirt was very aware of who would be comfortable
with that and who would not. Highlighting Hirt’s sensitivity to others, Joel Pressman (of the Jewish
faith) relayed a humorous account of standing next to Dr. Hirt while singing the protestant Doxology
hymn before a meal at Hirt’s home.
He had a church and choral music party at his house…and somebody said, “We should just
sing grace.” What does everybody know? The Doxology. So I’m standing right next to Hirt
and I sing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below.
Praise Him above the heavenly hosts. Praise Father. Amen.”
46
And he looked at me; he got it
instantly. He said, “I apologize. It will never happen again.”
47

42
Shepard interview.
43
Brinegar interview.
44
Ibid.
45
Preheim interview.
46
The Doxology ends with “Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” Being Jewish, Pressman did not sing
“Son and Holy Ghost.”
47
Pressman interview.
77
A Subjective View
Before examining Hirt’s choral philosophies and techniques, credit must be given to Chorus
Confidential written by Hirt’s former student and USC Professor Emeritus, Dr. William Dehning. In
his book, he acknowledges that many of his choral techniques are, at the root, from Hirt’s Choral
Development class. In 2003, the year Chorus Confidential was published, Lucy Hirt wrote a letter to
Dehning commending him for his successful efforts in writing a book on conducting. In the letter
Lucy said, “I read this book with pride and pleasure…In fact, I approve 100% of the entire content of
Chorus Confidential.”
48

The discussion contained within this chapter is limited to the experiential (sometimes quite
personal) knowledge of the interviewees. It will not contain a comprehensive look at all of Hirt’s
techniques, but rather examine his philosophies about choral music and their associated techniques as
articulated by his former students and colleagues. Some methods and philosophies will, in the next
chapter, be noted again from a fresh perspective because of the lasting impact they had on the
interviewees.
James Vail said that all of his life Hirt resisted being interviewed
49
or talking about his
philosophy or technique.
50
“He never wanted to articulate it himself, and he never wanted to talk
about himself that much.”
51
“You can’t talk about a traditional choral technique with him. It was so
organic,”
52
stated Hatcher. That aligns with one of his dominant teaching philosophies which was that

48
Lucy Hirt in a personal letter to William Dehning on May 20, 2003. “The Hirts: Lucy and Charles,”
blog entry by William Dehning of July 15, 2012. Accessed March 10, 2013.
http://williamdehning.blogspot.com/search?q=Lucy+Hirt, accessed March 10, 2013.
49
Three recorded lengthy interviews are known to exist. Carol Glenn interviewed him for the Choral
Journal but as seen in Marvin Latimer’s recent article, Hirt did not allow it to be published because he believed
his views were constantly changing. Hirt was interviewed for two published dissertations, “Music Philosophies,
Choral Concepts, and Choral Techniques Employed by Selected Choral Conductors in Southern California
Four-Year Colleges and Universities” by Douglas McEwen and “A Study of Vocal Pedagogy for the Choral
Rehearsal Based on Theories Presented in Published Literature from 1960-1970 and on Interviews and
Observations of Selected Choral Conductors” by William Decker.
50
Vail interview.
51
Ibid.
52
Hatcher interview.
78
all techniques evolve from the music itself. “Music is our incentive!”
53
“Submit yourself to the music,
don’t try to tell it what it should say,” said Hirt.
54
“Technique comes best in process of bringing a
score to life.”
55
From interpretation and the choral sound of each piece, to teaching methods, to the
organization of rehearsals, each element was derived from the needs of the music.
Choral sound, as mentioned in the prior chapter, along with the utter perfection of the
technical elements, is what distinguished Hirt from his contemporaries. His philosophy of crafting a
sound based on the music was in stark contrast to the schools of choral music Harold Decker
identified, such as F. Melius and Paul Christiansen where the conductor desired one, homogeneous
sound regardless of the work’s musical era. Of the voice in the ensemble and its relationship to the
musical incentive Donald Brinegar remarked:
Hirt’s theory was that, well, we should be eclectic in an ensemble. The human instrument is
incredibly flexible. So when you were asked to sing with a big sound for certain pieces, you
should have a big sound. When you’re asked to have a thin vibrato-less sound, you should
have thin vibratos. He wanted to demonstrate that the colors and the timbres and the ideas
that you create in a choir come from the music. They are not imposed on the music. It’s hard
to believe from this point in time what a radical concept that was, because that was not the
common thinking.
56

On a related note, in his interview Pressman mentioned the importance of Hirt’s philosophy
of Pendulum Swing between musical eras (figure 20). As Dehning stated, “Each era was somewhat of
a reaction against the previous one; in turn, each era then exhibited a new set of musical
characteristics and aesthetics.”
57
Hirt was a strong proponent of finding the essence of the piece as
derived from the characteristics of the musical era; Dehning called it the primary aesthetic.
58
The
primary aesthetic would then determine the basic choral sound as well as other interpretative

53
Ibid.
54
Handwritten note by Charles Hirt on scratch paper. Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
55
Ibid.
56
Brinegar interview.
57
William Dehning, email to author, March 5, 2013.
58
William Dehning, Chorus Confidential, 11.
79
decisions. Figure 21 provides further insight into what selected
59
stylistic traits Hirt associated with
the musical eras of the Renaissance, Baroque, Classic, and Romantic. It was this theory of the
Pendulum Swing as manifested through a unique sound and interpretation that had such a profound
effect on the 1973 ACDA audience, as previously referenced.
In Hirt’s archived material at ACDA, scribbled on what appears to be a cocktail napkin,
60

Hirt wrote, “I hope never to be typed. I hope people never say, ‘That’s Hirt’s choir,’ on any
ground.”
61
He further explained how central that is to his choral philosophy in a remark to Douglas
McEwen during an interview for McEwen’s dissertation.
If they look like me when they conduct, if someone says, ‘I can tell he is your student
because his choir sounded like this or he looked like this, or had these mannerisms,’ I
immediately look to see what I am doing wrong. It is antagonistic to my belief.
62

Also, unique to the choral sound was Hirt’s preference for operatic voices, having had several
very famous voices in the Chamber Singers over the years such Marilyn Horne, Douglas Lawrence,
and Michael Sells. He never took that soloistic sound out of people.
63
Mentioned previously with
regards to the international reviews of the 1964 Chamber Singers, it was as if each voice could have
served well as a soloist. William Dehning recalled that “those sixteen singers were gunners…and
Widney Hall would shake during their rehearsals. He let them sing.”
64
With a huge range of sound
from delicate sopranos to very robust,
65
a very professional sound came from the blending of graduate
and undergraduate voices. “He had essentially, without a paycheck, a professional choir. The fact that

59
Charles Hirt, typed notes, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10. The image pertained to
music that was used in an unspecified choral demonstration.
60
The ACDA archives contains hundreds of personal notes written on the back of what was available
to Hirt at the time: a Sunday bulletin, USC letterhead, a cocktail napkin, the back page of a course handout.
61
Charles Hirt, handwritten note, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
62
McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts,” 223.
63
Shepard interview.
64
Dehning interview.
65
Vail interview.
80

Figure 20. Hirt’s theory of the Pendulum Swing. (Reprinted by permission from the American Choral
Directors Association. Charles C. Hirt Collection, American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 5,
Series 10.)
81

Figure 21. Outline of Style Characteristics Related to the Repertoire Used in Choral Demonstration.
(Reprinted by permission from the American Choral Directors Association. Charles C. Hirt Collection,
American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 5, Series 10.)
82
you had young voices and older voices gave the sound of a very mature sheen…it had a patina that
you wouldn’t have if it was just an all-college ensemble.”
66

Mention should be made of Hirt’s remarkable understanding of the voice due to his work
with otolaryngologist Henry J. Rubin, M.D. Hirt’s collaboration with Rubin eventually led to the
1960 publication of “The Falsetto. A High Speed Cinematographic Study,” a study conducted at
Cedars of Lebanon Hospital under the Department of Otolaryngology and Division of Laboratories.
“Their cutting edge research contributed significantly to the rapidly expanding fields of voice science
and voice pedagogy.”
67

The interviewees had vague recollections of the ensemble selection process. Robert Hasty
said, “It’s not like he had a choice of a lot of singers. Not everyone wanted to be in the USC Chamber
Singers.”
68
With that in mind, it was generally agreed upon that Hirt was looking for a voice that fit
well within the ensemble. Sight-reading was not a major factor in the selection process, although
Hasty recalled having to initially sight-read several pieces of music. After he assessed the quality in
individual auditions, Hirt would bring in the finalists and have them sing in combination with other
singers. Usually there were six to seven singers called back on each part, with the final decision
resting in the hands of the former members who would cast votes to select the new singers. Robert
Hasty recalled Hirt always saying, “That’s what I would have done.”
69
Humorously, Hasty remarked,
“We either felt very proud of ourselves or highly manipulated.”
70
James Shepard’s opinion was that
Hirt was looking for big voices that he could mold the way he wanted.
71
Similarly, Darlene Hatcher
used the image of Hirt being the potter and the singers the clay. Yet, what he prized most, in
Lawrence’s opinion, was a big voice that could balance and listen within the ensemble.
72
His

66
Lawrence interview.
67
Latimer, “The Nation’s First DMA,” 21.
68
Hasty interview.
69
Ibid.
70
Ibid.
71
Shepard interview.
72
Lawrence interview.
83
students’ perception was quite accurate. In the interview with McEwen, Hirt said he looked for
singers who possessed musical sensitivity, a good vocal instrument, an ability to read music, a
specific voice quality, were music majors, mature, had a motivating attitude, a high intelligence level,
and possessed certain physical characteristics.
73

Hirt loved the rehearsal process according to Darlene Hatcher. He was invigorated by
watching his skillfully imagined interpretation take shape. It was evidenced by the way in which he
approached rehearsals. Hirt wanted “everybody to be excited about what they were learning…they
saw how excited he was about what he was saying, and this is the way he met his students every
time.”
74
A typical rehearsal was a four-fold process
75
that, again, was encased with extra-musical
references to accomplish the task. Occasionally a little early, but never late,
76
Hirt commenced his
fast-paced rehearsals typically without the traditional vocalise. He instead used repertoire to wake the
voices and get the muscles going.
77
In 1970, for her thesis at Occidental College,
78
Carol Glenn
interviewed Hirt. In the transcript of his responses to Glenn, Hirt described the four-fold process.
I start with something that would be a good vocalise to warm up the choir and to get the
singers sensitive to me. We move into new material while they’re fresh. We then try to get to
music which will be performed in the very near future. We end with something that gives the
singers a satisfaction of accomplishment and perhaps inspiration. I never keep my rehearsals
immovable, because I can’t predict what will happen. I do like to know my goals, and I like
to have a basic point of departure.
79

There were no sectionals as everyone was expected to learn the music on their own. There
was never a break, and announcements were only made in the middle as rehearsals should always

73
McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts,” 239.
74
Vail interview.
75
Brinegar interview.
76
Dehning interview.
77
In his interview with the author, Brinegar noted that even though Hirt did not begin rehearsals with
typical vocal exercises, the Chamber Singers rarely did a concert without a two-hour warm-up, which could
really exhaust the singers.
78
Latimer interview.
79
Charles Hirt, transcript of responses to Carol Glenn, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 4, Series 9.
84
begin with music. He paid little attention to policies and rules, as good rehearsal behavior was a
byproduct of an inspired and motivating rehearsal. “Rules are not as effective as ‘morale’ but
constitute our recourse when the latter fails to be sufficiently high,”
80
said Hirt.
Sally Etcheto was strongly impressed by Hirt’s ability to lead a balanced rehearsal. He was
able to work both macro- and microscopically. However, Hirt approached teaching music to the
singers the same way he approached learning a piece of music, through the “gestalt” approach. “That
is, I experience the total effect of the music and then move into analyzing the parts,”
81
said Hirt.
Calling it the “umbrella approach,”
82
Preheim said he always worked from the outside in. One had to
get an overview of the piece before the details made sense.
83
Slightly making light of the process,
Preheim quoted Hirt in saying, “We’re going to get this and then, if there’s time, we will refine and
refine and refine.”
84

Even though Darlene Hatcher said, “you can’t talk about a traditional choral technique with
him [Hirt]…it was so organic,”
85
some interviewees briefly mentioned methods in reference to
intonation, diction, and blend. (It should be noted that most interviewees had difficult recalling
specific examples due to the length of time that has passed since they were under Hirt’s direction.)
Hirt never told them they were flat or sharp because to him being flat resulted from lacking in
physical energy and being sharp was due to not having experienced the excitement of performance,
indicated Robert Hasty.
86
Hirt believed that there had to be body support for every part of the sound
that was produced. To connect the singers to that energy he would have them sing the smallest
rhythmic unit in staccato fashion. Good intonation would then naturally result from an energized body

80
McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts,” 240.
81
Ibid., 238.
82
Preheim interview.
83
Ibid.
84
Pressman interview.
85
Hatcher interview.
86
Hasty interview.
85
and tone. Dehning sat in on two semesters of Chamber Singers rehearsals and he too never heard Hirt
mention intonation. Like Hasty’s example, “He got it in other ways. He got it through excitement or
he asked them to listen or he gave them the incentive behind what was going on.”
87
Though the
following phrase is often used in reference to conducting gesture, it also holds true for intonation.
“The body tends to coordinate when it has something to say.”
88
Seating order was one tool Hirt used
to help prevent intonation issues. Hirt created his optimal atmosphere by seating the singers in a
mixed formation, with the highest voices being next to the lowest voices. Also, early in the rehearsal
process Hirt brilliantly and boldly built the singers’ independence from the piano by giving a pitch
and not refreshing it again the rest of the rehearsal.
89

Diction was briefly addressed in relationship to text. Douglas Lawrence said that “he was a
million miles away from the old elocution style where you double consonanted [sic] everything
because you wanted people to understand the [meaning] of the text…He would go for flow of the
text.”
90
William Dehning said that Hirt stole the phrase “sing consonants with impatience” from
Robert Shaw.
91
Of the Chamber Singers, he further remarked, “You could hear impatience in every
measure of Hirt’s recordings. They sound as if they can’t wait to get the sound out…That made the
rhythm so captivating, and yet it had more power than you hear in Shaw’s recordings.”
92

Of blend, Delton Shilling spoke the sentiments of several interviewees, saying Hirt taught the
singers how to listen, which resulted in a good blend.
Meticulous comes to mind, the meticulous way we were taught to sing together…he taught us
to hear everyone else. He would be able to go to a section and say, “Let’s do this again,” or
“Let me hear that again,” and mold it in the rehearsal process….I think the vision of the line
of the music [helped]. If we captured that as an image, then we wouldn’t stick out. I never
remember him trying to manipulate voices and say, “You’re too loud. You’re too soft. “ It

87
Dehning interview.
88
Dehning, Chorus Confidential, 22.
89
Brinegar interview.
90
Lawrence interview.
91
Dehning interview.
92
Ibid.
86
was the image of what the music wanted to be, and if we caught that vision, then I don’t think
there was any problem.
93

Hirt’s philosophy of conducting technique is best seen through a description of his own
gesture. Pressman commented that “he was conducting the music, not the beat.”
94
Dehning and others
remarked that Hirt’s gesture was unique to him. Preheim indicated it wasn’t so much about
conducting patterns as it was choreography of the music.
95
He devised his gestures based on the needs
of the music. As an example, Pressman said, “We did some pieces where the four-four pattern was
conducted with his elbow, and there was this big swoopy kind of nontraditional beat because it was
swoopy music.”
96
Brinegar commented that using a huge palette of physical gestures, Hirt motivated
his voice to unfold the musical ideas.
97
It was impressed upon him that he was not bringing a
technique to the music, but that, from the music, technique developed.
98
After the Chamber Singers’
1973 ACDA performance, Robert Shaw’s assistant at the time, Clayton Krehbiel, asked Brinegar and
several singers, “How could you do that with that guy making that nonsense at the front?” to which
Brinegar replied, “Well, that nonsense is what makes us sing.”
99

His physical gesture was described in a variety of ways. Preheim noted his subtle body
movements, saying they were often “amorphic,” round and smooth. To his recollection, “his gestures
encouraged a lot of line and shape, and much less beat and accent.”
100
However, “his arms were
active and there was a lot of motion and movement.”
101
He conducted often from his elbows.

93
Shilling interview.
94
Pressman interview.
95
Preheim interview.
96
Pressman interview.
97
Brinegar interview.
98
Ibid.
99
Ibid.
100
Preheim interview.
101
Brinegar interview.
87
He used them [his elbows] in syncopation a lot, and he’d use them if there was a dead beat
like at the beginning…and his elbow was always the eighth note. It was spectacular. It was
mocked and mimicked by everyone who ever watched him work. Often his hands would be
down at his belly shaking for a fortissimo.
Hirt used any gesture he could conjure to communicate the essence of the music. “Charles
wasn’t afraid to look like a scarecrow. In fact, if he got really enthused about something, he’d look
like the Headless Horseman.”
102
Pressman described his favorite gesture of Hirt’s:
His conducting was completely not in the books…[he] was in some piece [where] he wasn’t
getting enough arsis and thesis…he’s conducting along and, all of a sudden, he got an…
imaginary…rod and reel…and he throws it out and…reels it back in. It was the perfect
gesture for exactly that moment and maybe nowhere else.
103

Pressman has a plaque on the rehearsal room wall where he teaches that says, “Quidquid
Accipet.” Translated, it means, “Whatever it takes.” That philosophy could be applied to so much of
Hirt’s teaching. As it relates to conducting though, Pressman reminisced about one such memorable
moment at a Disney Christmas Candlelight event where Hirt did “whatever it took.”
Doing the thousand-voice choir at Disneyland with the “Hallelujah Chorus,” where
everybody just wants to sing…and you’ve got a thousand people you just met that day, he did
a cutoff and disappeared behind the podium. It was, “Hallelujah” [pause after the penultimate
bar], and he disappeared. Nobody sang, and then he pops back up [for the last bar], “Ha-le-lu-
jah!” It’s my second favorite conducting gesture.
104

In the classroom, Hirt held his students to the same gestural and musical integrity. To
communicate the essence of the piece and help students connect to the concept of showing that
energy through music, he often asked them to conduct without using their hands.
105
Hasty recalled
that in the final exam for Choral Conducting I, they were asked to conduct all of “Glory to God” from
Messiah with their hands behind their backs. “You just had to do it with your presence.”
106
He taught

102
Lawrence interview.
103
Pressman interview.
104
Ibid.
105
Vail interview.
106
Hasty interview.
88
style and analysis
107
in conducting because the resulting knowledge was what informed the gesture.
“He didn’t try to make his students all conduct the way he conducted,” said Strimple.
108
Instead he
held the students accountable to “how does the music inform what you are doing gesture-wise?”
109

As Darlene Hatcher alluded (and a sentiment shared by other interviewees), students learned
the most from Charles Hirt in the rehearsal room. Though he articulated his choral philosophies and
methods in courses like Choral Development, Hirt was quite different in rehearsal. That had to do
with the fact that Hirt did not want his technique to be shown. For techniques to be hidden, he had to
divert the singer’s attention from it. Dehning said, “He didn’t instruct; he used metaphor.”
110

Including Hirt among those who have a “Golden Tongue,” Dehning recalled Hirt using “persuasive
words, eloquent words, colorful words” to accomplish his musical ideas in rehearsal.
111
Especially
through using extra-musical references and his gift of language, he had a way of making concepts
exceptionally clear for everyone.
112
If he wanted a legato line, Hirt might ask the sopranos to sing it
“like a scarf blowing in the wind.”
113
He might also ask for a flowing stream or, to achieve a sound
that blossomed, have the singers imagine the ripple effect of throwing pebbles in a pond.
114
Pressman
recalled a humorous account of Hirt’s core philosophy of teaching without drawing attention to the
technique.
One day we were doing Brahms and he was talking about the Vienna Woods and the rich
dark grounds and deep greens, and a very young soprano raised her hand and said, “Does that

107
Dehning interview.
108
Strimple interview.
109
Preheim interview.
110
Dehning interview.
111
Dehning, Chorus Confidential, 20.
112
Brinegar interview.
113
Preheim interview.
114
Lawrence interview. Douglas Lawrence has an instructional video entitled 101 Things to Say to
Your Choir to Improve Their Sound 100%. Douglas said many of the ideas and phrases can be directly
attributed to Hirt.
89
mean you want us to use straight tone?” He practically…fell out of his chair. It’s like “We
don’t talk about those things.”
115

To help the student gain an understanding of how to highlight a contrapuntal theme,
Pressman remembers him using his wallet. He would ask the singers to toss the wallet to the next
section with the theme. Through this technique Pressman said the singers had to be the recording
engineer, mixing the sound to highlight the correct musical part. “He had an endless amount of
conceptual things, physical things before people were into doing physical things…it was almost like
theater games for choral music.”
116

To the present-day choral conductor, this approach is not revolutionary. Since Hirt’s time,
heavy emphasis in education has been placed on teaching to learning styles. It is common to use
imagery and kinesthetic tools to accomplish a desired purpose. However, in Hirt’s era, these
techniques were novel.
The manifestation of Hirt’s philosophy on programming delighted audiences everywhere. “A
master of the miniature,
117
he could take these little chansons…and charm you to death.”
118
Like
many interviewees, Dale Warland remarked that Hirt had “impeccable taste for high-quality
repertoire,”
119
and selected the best choral music of each era, each period, each genre.
120
Preheim
said:
He tried to make a point that collegiate choirs were capable of singing in any style, in any
language as well as any professional choir could…so he challenged his choirs to sing in a

115
Ibid.
116
Pressman interview.
117
William Dehning, Nick Strimple, and James Vail all remarked during their interviews that Hirt was
more comfortable with the small choral work. “Conducting great masterworks was not his strong suit, and it
also wasn’t what he wanted to do,” said Strimple during his interview.
118
Hatcher interview. “He played it safe always. He didn’t tackle major works much at all. He felt
very at home with the miniature. He repeated ‘Won’t You Buy My Sweet Blooming Lavender’ every single
year for 20 years on the road. Well, it worked.”
119
Dale Warland (Received DMA under Charles Hirt, sang in the Chamber Singers, and has a national
reputation for excellence in choral music), email to the author, “Charles Hirt Interview Answers,” November
24, 2012.
120
Preheim interview.
90
variety of languages, all historical eras…The programs weren’t always planned
chronologically, but there would be examples of all the historical eras in the program
somewhere.
121

Much of what Hirt programmed was not standard repertoire. Constantly searching out repertoire,
122
he
found unique and unusual works, often championing new composers, through a constant exchange of
literature ideas with his notable colleagues around the nation such as Harold Decker, Thomas Hilbish,
Colleen Kirk, Elaine Brown, Theron Kirk, and of course Roger Wagner and Howard Swan. Speaking
of Hirt’s desire to encourage new composers, Donald Brinegar said, “I know for a fact it was a
cornerstone of his very existence.”
123
Nick Strimple noted that Hirt had a particular advantage in
finding unknown European works at that time because of his international travel. “The only way
people could look at music published in Europe was if they went there.”
124
Even though Hirt was a
romantic at heart, and had a particular affinity for the music of Brahms,
125
variety in programming
was important to Hirt, said Staheli.
He loved variety and moving immediately from, if I’m remembering correctly, from a French
chanson to some new setting of “Five Centuries of Spring” of Kirke Mechem for example.
He loved those pieces [Mechem’s works] and he loved to put them right against Renaissance
counterparts.
126

Making reference to the prism image used by Hirt, Hasty said:
Just like in a prism, when you drive the shaft of light through it, the prism splits the light and
out comes all the colors of the rainbow…He picked music so the various color elements of a
concert would be present.
127

121
Ibid.
122
Strimple interview.
123
Brinegar interview.
124
Strimple interview.
125
Ibid.
126
Staheli interview.
127
Hasty interview.
91
Douglas Lawrence was intimately acquainted with Hirt’s programming skill, having been on the 1964
tour. He felt that Hirt came out of a very “theatrical” and “melodramatic” era of choral music, but
took it “somewhere else.”
128
He spoke of how he crafted the works into one cinematic whole.
He liked his Hollywood ties and as an influence issue I think a lot of his theatrical sense – the
way the audiences reacted to his performances, the way he came on stage, the way he
programmed, it was extremely cinematic – and even to this day I think of all music as being
cinematic. To me, music has to be full of images that are going on in my head and that
absolutely comes from Charles. He saw performance – I don’t think he talked about this but it
was very clear – he saw movies and he made those movies happen and that’s why audiences
just loved everything. The timing – there were no unnecessary pauses. There were no pauses
while he turned his music over. There was no pause while he thought about what to say.
Those programs just went seamlessly from beginning to end, and like a good movie, you
couldn’t stop watching it.
129

Providing a more imaginative and specific look at Hirt’s philosophy, Lawrence said:
He believed that the open structure of early music should be done early because you
shouldn’t build a sonority early in the concert that you then walk away from. It’s like having
the richest cheesecake and going back to a salad. It just didn’t – it was too sparse, the salad
was too… [trying to think of a Charles term] .. It didn’t have the same structure and
consistency of the more romantic things that came later. So you don’t start with cheesecake;
you save cheesecake for the end and then a good meat course with a very nice French sauce,
incidentally, in the middle and you do an appetizer that whets your appetite for what is to
come. So his chronological programming was absolutely in that vein. Lovely, lovely things in
the beginning. When they were singing that early music, you think, “Well this is what choral
music is. It’s lovely, gorgeous, and phenomenal. How beautiful this is.” But then as it kept
going on into other periods where the writing becomes more complex, the sonorities more
complex, then you think, “THIS is what choral music is like.” And then when you’re totally,
completely, sated on good choral music, he’d throw in a spiritual in a concert or an encore
that was fun and people would get a rest from the meal. It was like having a little cup of
sherbet after you ate an over-self-indulgent meal. He programmed it like a foodie and it was
cinematic [sic].
130

Sometimes, to achieve maximum dramatic effect, Hirt took artistic license with the music that
few conductors today would dare exercise. Quidquid accipet – Whatever it takes. “If it doesn’t work,
make it work,”
131
said Hatcher. Of those liberties, Hatcher went on to say, “Some people would say

128
Lawrence interview.
129
Ibid.
130
Ibid.
131
Hatcher interview.
92
that he took too many liberties; maybe he did, I don’t know, but he sure was never boring.”
132
Doyle
Preheim provided a fascinating example of Hirt’s artistic liberties.
Dr. Hirt had an interesting, wonderful sense of drama and he had a way of taking a piece of
music, a particular addition and often improving on it. Sometimes for the sake of flow of the
whole program, he would shorten a piece. He would repeat a section that wasn’t always
called for. He had a sense of what an audience would respond to. I think that was another part
of his genius, technique really, but he had a way of building a program and presenting a piece
that just hooked the audience.
133

When asked what kind of artistic license Hirt took, Nick Strimple said he would rearrange the
sequence of events and sometimes provide “a whole new road map.”
134
To a young singer, those
liberties could be confusing then convincing.
In the middle of rehearsal, he would be very creative. He says, “Okay. Let’s cut from
measure ten and go to measure twenty-three.” And so then we’d wind up with a performance
that was not the published music. And I thought, “No, you can’t do that.”…It took me a while
to become convinced. It was really better to make the piece more effective. And he wouldn’t
do this to Bach, this would be somebody’s edition,
135
but he would always be thinking about
the audience being entertained and not just enlightened.
136

In concert, Hirt used his charming personality to sincerely, without gimmick, lead the listener
from song to song.
He would talk frequently in concerts between numbers and just spin out this silvery wording
even if the product hadn’t been any good. You would have thought it was a magnificent
performance just listening to these words. He knew how to wrap the whole package of it and
make it quite spectacular.
137

“He had a great sense of what was appropriate for any given situation…that’s something that stuck
with me from the 1964 tour – that you should always respect your audience and try to do for them the

132
Ibid.
133
Preheim interview.
134
Strimple interview.
135
Nick Strimple noted during his interview that he would never make cuts to a well-known piece.
136
Hasty interview.
137
Hatcher interview.
93
best that you can,”
138
said Doyle Preheim. For the benefit of the audience then, there was always
some sort of choral staging that usually included a processional and/or a recessional accompanied by
singing. Foreign to most performance situations today, the Chamber Singers and Dr. Hirt would sit
around a long, covered table, with flowers or fruit on top; there were accompanying instruments on
stage. If a singer or group of singers had a solo, they would stand. In some way, Hirt would always
include multiple visual elements in each concert.
From beginning to end, Hirt worked organically, something he learned from John Smallman
as noted earlier. Remarkably, no two performances or two pieces were ever the same, and in every
performance there was an opportunity to improvise in the moment.
139
Considering Hirt’s
perfectionism, it may come as a surprise that he said, “Leave space for impurity in performance.”
140

Brinegar, speaking of Hirt’s philosophy said, “we are re-creators.”
141
Hirt had written in his personal
notes a story about creating and re-creating:
[It is about] re-creation, but creation too, of the conductor! Each time, anew, a discovery. Not
like the teacher who when asked about his teaching experience said, ‘I’ve taught twenty
years’ but the principle [sic] leaned over to me and said, knowing him, he has only taught one
year, twenty times!
142

Hirt’s philosophy was manifested in the Chamber Singers’ performances. He created and re-
created himself every time, allowing each performance to have consistent vitality and freshness. In
the 1960 interview conducted by Douglas McEwen, Hirt said, “The result of excessive performance
demands is likely to be a musical sterility unless the music is recreated (rediscovered), rather than
‘repeated’ each time it is performed.”
143
Lawrence affirmed that Hirt’s philosophy worked in the
following comment:

138
Preheim interview.
139
Brinegar interview.
140
Handwritten note on what appears to be a cocktail napkin, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5,
Series 10.
141
Brinegar interview.
142
Handwritten note by Charles Hirt, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
143
McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts,” 246.
94
There are conductors like Charles who can infuse every evening with something new, some
little surprise, some little nuance that surprises the performers enough to refresh it. I think we
look back on the Chamber Singers tour [1964] as a perfect model of what it means to never
let your repertoire decay and slip away.
144

Through the stories expressed by the interviewees, it is apparent that mentoring students was
also an important part of the conductor’s role. Charles Hirt loved people. “He believed in people and
wanted to bring out the best in his students,” said Vail.
145
To Douglas McEwen, Hirt provided insight
on his own development as a teacher and his role with students.
I first got a teaching credential to teach public school work because I had fallen in love and
teaching was one way I could get a quick job with a contract, not a very exalted goal. So my
motivation there was to get something besides a Bachelor of Arts degree from Occidental, to
wit: a teaching credential, and to get a job quickly. But strangely enough I happened to find,
one and one-half years later, an opportunity to go into a professional musical outlet with
considerably more salary, and I refused it, which would have amazed me had I been told this
would happen a couple of years earlier. My values had changed a little further. I had fallen in
love with the teaching process, and I was very happy with my present position in that I got to
work with youth and that there was a wonderful, vicarious joy out of sharing what you felt
about music with others and seeing it grow in them.
146

The impression Dr. Hirt left on James Shepard was that people were as important as the
music, if not more so.
147
Robert Hasty told a heart-warming story that exemplifies both Hirt’s
persuasive, resolute spirit and the way he cared for his students.
When he got his mind set on something, you couldn’t stop him. He was able to work
wonders. When I lost my scholarship, I went to [Dr.] Rush. He gave me the paperwork to
transfer to Cal State Long Beach. When I went to Dr. Hirt because I decided I couldn’t have
my parents pay for this, he wouldn’t accept that. The first thing he did was call the
scholarship people at USC to try to persuade them that they got my GPA calculated wrong.
“I’m sure he got higher grades than that!”…He tried to go that way first and that didn’t work,
and the next thing I knew, he called a meeting of all the heads of departments, Church
Departments, and got me a scholarship…. He could be very persuasive. There were people
who didn’t want to see him coming.
148

144
Lawrence interview.
145
Vail interview.
146
McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts,” 226.
147
Shepard interview.
148
Hasty interview.
95
Jim Shepard relayed a similar experience.
[I was in] my senior year or my graduate year, in the Music Ed. Department. One of the four
people down in the Music Ed. Department at the time told me that I couldn’t be in Chamber
Singers and student teach my fifth year. He said, “You’re going to have to drop out of
Chamber Singers to student teach.” I said, “Can I student teach in the morning and do
Chamber Singers two afternoons a week?” “No, you can’t do that.” So I went in to Charles
and said, “They’re telling me in Music Ed. that I’m going to have to quit next year.” He said,
“Who told you that?” I told him and he goes, “Just a minute.” He stood up at his desk [stomp,
stomp, stomp] old Widney Hall would just echo when he walked…You could hear him
stomping down the hall because the Music Ed. Department was way in the back and his
office was way in the front…He stomped all the way down there, and I heard the door slam.
A minute and a half later [stomp, stomp, stomp] he walks back up and says, “You’re all set.” I
said, “Thank you.”
149

Doyle Preheim believes that Hirt knew his students very well, at least musically.
He knew their capabilities musically. He knew their personalities. He knew their quirks. He
knew what…comments would elicit a positive response, what encouragement any person
needed to have…He was very tuned in emotionally…[Yet] he kept a professional distance
from his students.
150

Hirt may have kept a professional distance, but he was always looking out for the students’
professional best.
I think he was an educator first and choral director second…I think the whole time he was
prepping people to go and be choral directors, and at least that’s what I felt…I was…there
learning how to structure a program and to make a program work…” I think he was really,
really interested in the singers’ personally, not personally in terms of, “Do you have lunch
money?” But, I mean personally in terms of career placement, and I think it was really
important to him that his students got good positions when they left….People would call him
from Louisiana and say, “Who have you got?”…I think he probably put a lot of people in a
lot of very important positions.
151

Affirming Shepard’s opinion, Terry Danne remembers Hirt telling him, “If you get your doctorate, I
will get you one of the best jobs in the country, in one of the universities.”
152
Strimple provided
additional insight as to how this occurred.

149
Shepard interview.
150
Preheim interview.
151
Shepard interview.
152
Danne interview.
96
When the job opened up, people called him directly before the notice went out and asked him
if he had anybody that could fill the bill…He knew pretty much every school that had a
choral program and what they were like, and what the people there were like and all of that,
and who would fit well in the certain job and who probably wouldn’t from his own students,
not because they weren’t as talented, but you know, the personality stuff. So he would
recommend people, and somebody would get a call for a job. It was a very big deal to have
somebody that you’ve never met on the other end of the line saying, “I'm calling from such
and such university and Dr. Hirt has recommended you for this position we want to talk to
you about.”
153

That practice was later curtailed because of one student who complained that it was unfair; from then
on, the job vacancies were put in a book for general use.
154

Hirt was also supportive of the students developing their careers while they were in school.
On a Wednesday, I got a phone call saying, “Can you report for work at the music center
tomorrow? We rehearse and then we go to San Francisco and then we go here to here and
then we go to Broadway.” And it meant dropping out, cancelling my master’s recital on a
half-day’s notice. I had dinner with Hirt and Koldofsky and Schaffer who were the three
heads of the departments, and I said, “What would you think if I dropped out of school?”
They said, “That’s what we trained you for.”
155

Not only did he support the students’ pursuits, he brought opportunities to them. Dr. Hirt told twenty-
year-old, full-time university student Jim Shepard to go get an internship. The job was open at First
Congregational Church of Glendale. When Shepard expressed his concern over not knowing the first
thing about directing, Hirt replied, “You don’t have to know anything. Just go do it.”
156

Both Nick Strimple and William Dehning told stories of his mentorship during college. Hirt
was demanding, but the impression it left with the students such as Dehning was that he cared about
them and wanted their best.
I wrote a paper for him and I think it was Choral Development and…I turned it in. A couple
of days later, he called me in there and he handed it back to me. He said, “You can do better
than this. Do it again.” That was all he said. He was right. I just tossed it off. I shined it on,

153
Strimple interview. In the same conversation, Strimple acknowledged that because of affirmative
action laws, that practice is no longer allowed.
154
Strimple interview.
155
Pressman interview.
156
Shepard interview.
97
whatever. Seriously, I did it in a big hurry and I thought I would just blow it by him. He just
gave it right back. I learned something in there too. [Laughs] I don't mind telling you that.
157

The following is an account of the remarkably humble, yet direct way in which Hirt mentored
Strimple.
One day he announced to the class that he’d gotten a request from the Methodist
magazine…Music Ministry…They wanted an article about what was going on in the
Hymnology class…he simply didn’t have time to do it and would anybody in the class like to
write it....I was the only person in the class who volunteered as it turned out…I wrote the
article and I gave him the first draft…He talks to me about it before he gives me the paper
back…and he said, “Now, I have edited this as I would a dissertation or thesis, to give you
ideas about how to change it.” So…I think on the advice of Dr. Vail…I took every change he
made. I didn’t try to change his wordings. I typed up a new version and I gave it back to him
and he called me in [and]…he said [to Dr. Vail]. “This is his first rewrite and nothing else has
to be done.” (That’s when I learned about editing dissertations and theses and also the whole
editorial process.) I replied, “Yeah, but these changes are all yours.” And he would not take
credit for it. He put all the credit on – he transferred it all to me. He did this with all his
students. He really lived for his students’ success.
158

Post-graduation, Doyle Preheim found him “intensely loyal to his graduates, his students.,”
159
and still
acted as his mentor. He shared the following:
After I was out of USC and at Goshen College, if I had a dilemma…I would write him a
letter…He always answered in long-hand, a written response, and I always felt that he was
extremely proud…really, really supportive of his graduates.
160

It takes more than a leader passionate about music to sustain the kind of vision and guidance
Hirt generously gave to his students throughout their lives. In closing, Hirt’s own words best
illuminate the deep integrity that was at the core of his relationships.
A choral conductor is, first of all, a musician and a pedagogue, and even then before that he is
a person. He is not a good choral conductor unless he is excellent in these other capacities
and even as a conductor himself…He has to be a pedagogue indeed and their techniques of
teaching he must know well. But he must have proper values, it seems to them, which stem
not only from the educational process but from certain personal qualities that are pretty hard
to measure. As I think back to my best teachers, they are not necessarily the best

157
Dehning interview.
158
Strimple interview.
159
Preheim interview.
160
Ibid.
98
academicians; they are not necessarily the most richly endowed musicians; but they have
other values. I hope this is true of those of us in collegiate fields – that our values become
increasingly more objectified and that this ego, which may have motivated us in the
beginning and motivates us still is objectified so that we are looking to live vicariously
through the students we are working with.
161

161
McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts,” 236.
99
CHAPTER 4: AN UNFINISHED WORK
One might assume that a pedagogical book containing an author’s defining philosophies
and methods would come as a culminating achievement at the end of his or her career. Yet,
Charles Hirt was but forty-eighty years old and still had eighteen years left in his tenure at USC,
followed by two decades of national and international guest conducting when he set out to finish
his comprehensive book on choral conducting. In the spring of 1960, he received a sabbatical to
complete his work, The Choral Conductor: A Compendium of His Art, to be published by Dodd,
Meade and Company. The book received a special dedication from Hirt. It read:
To the memory of him who first revealed to me the transcendent beauty of choral
expression, John Smallman. A pioneer on the unexplored musical fronteer [sic] of the
Southland, whose vision for the betterment of Man and the glorification of God through
the efficacy of the Choral Art became a compelling passion until the moment of his
death.
1

Hirt included a small asterisk at the bottom of the Dedication page to indicate the way in which
Smallman died. The passage further clarifies the mention of Smallman’s death noted earlier in
this document. “John Smallman died as he was conducting a performance of THE MESSIAH
[sic] on a Sunday afternoon in December of 1937 following the invitation to ‘Come unto Him all
ye that labour.’”
2

The typed manuscript of the Preface provides a rare personal look at Hirt’s motivation for
the book.
I was first prompted to write this work by a compelling need to organize and to
reappraise my own beliefs about the Art which has become so much a part of my life.
Harassed by schedules and minutia, as we all are, I find it good sometimes to retire to
such a vantage point of reflection and receptivity to regain my perspective. But also this
writing was encouraged by colleagues and students alike who share my convictions about
the still unrealized and often unacknowledged power resident in choral music, and who
hope with me that this compendium will increase both our awareness of this power and
our ability to channel it constructively.
3

1
Typed manuscript of what appears to be the intended inside cover of the book. Charles C. Hirt
Collection, Box 5, Series 15.
2
Ibid.
3
“Preface,” typed manuscript, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 6, Series 15.
100
The book remains unfinished to this day. The majority of the interviewees were unaware
of the book. Darlene Hatcher did not think it was possible for him to articulate his organic ideas
in such a formalized manner, and James Vail indicated that Hirt never seemed to want to talk
about his ideas. In the same vein Douglas Lawrence commented:
I think it would have been difficult for him. He didn’t like writing assignments, by the
way. I think it would have been hard for him to write the book, and I think that if I read
the book I wouldn’t recognize Charles Hirt in it. He was a brilliant talker so it’s not that
he couldn’t wax eloquent on the subject of choral repertoire [and] choral conducting; I
think he would have been able to write it quite well. But the difference in his writing and
the way he actually did it would be quite different.
4

Expounding on that idea, Lawrence remarked:
I did read an article by him some time back and I thought, “Well, he had to be the
academician, and you have to talk differently if you’re an academician.” I get that. But I
thought, “Goodness, that very thoughtful detailed way of speaking just doesn’t even
begin to match his personality.”
5

In the same letter referenced in Chapter 3 from Lucy Hirt to William Dehning, Lucy
lends credence to Lawrence’s comments. “Whenever Charles took pen in hand, the results were
usually pedantic and preachy. The book that he labored over and eventually left ‘a-borning’ was a
lofty, inspirational discourse more prose-poetry than practical perspective.”
6
Vail surmised that
health problems may have prohibited the completion of the book, saying Hirt often did not feel
well. Other deterrents may have been Hirt’s intense perfectionism – or the thoughts he expressed
in 1987 to Carol Glenn upon her second request to publish his interview responses.
It is painful for me to have to write you this letter, but I must do so without delay, and
with finality. I have been forced to the conclusion that I cannot be represented in your
book, In Quest of Answers. My neural-spinal disease is progressive, and I cannot respond
to the questions for your book with the care and thought they require and merit, and that I
would accept. My answers today would be quite different and more complex than those I
gave you many years ago.
7

4
Lawrence interview.
5
Ibid.
6
Lucy Hirt, personal letter to William Dehning.
7
Latimer, “The Nation’s First DMA,” 24.
101
Even twenty-seven years earlier, Hirt said that none of his views were static and they all
seemed to be changing over the years.
8
Trying to capture and articulate his own ever-changing,
brilliant thoughts might have indeed been a strong contributing factor to the book’s incompletion.
Whatever the reason, that it remains unfinished arguably adds to the mystique of his intellectual
prowess and to him as a choral educator.
In his interview with Douglas McEwen that same year, Hirt spoke about the formation of
his “choral views.”
Well, I believe all of us are eclectic enough to have drawn from many sources. It is hard,
once having accepted an idea, to be able to trace it back to its source. I know there were
many people who influenced this apart from Smallman. I know that John Finley
Williamson and Bob Shaw have affected my views. Many of my students have, the
laboratory experiences in the classroom, the rehearsals…Father Finn whom I have had
occasion to observe, and also the Christiansens, Olaf and Paul. These men all have
somehow converged to affect my life, but how can I possibly say that one viewpoint grew
from them?
9

The book’s contents were to be an amalgamation of the ideas and views Hirt had been amassing
over many years. The materials he collected for the book, that now reside in the Charles C. Hirt
Collection at the ACDA Archives, exist in the form of, but are not limited to, handwritten notes
on Hollywood Presbyterian bulletins, hotel letterhead, the back of course material; handwritten
notes from workshops he attended and speakers he heard; saved notes, bibliographies, and
outlines from courses he taught; multiple typed and corrected drafts of speeches he gave;
materials his students submitted to him as class projects; printed articles and many other source
forms.
The very large body of material is loosely organized into the chapters indicated in the
book’s outline, which will subsequently be discussed in brief.
10
To the author’s knowledge there
is no definitive final copy of the book’s outline as none of the drafts indicate that as such.

8
McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts,” 222.
9
Ibid.
10
A full discussion of Hirt’s philosophies, techniques, and methods as it pertains to his book-in-
process would be well beyond the scope of this document.
102
However, several different editions of the outline do exist. Of the chapter materials, a few have
incomplete typed drafts, but most have a handwritten, also incomplete outline accompanied by
miscellaneous notes and other sources of ideas. Challenges exist in understanding Hirt’s true
intent for the content of each chapter on multiple levels. As an example, Hirt often wrote
“reclassify” and an identifying outline Roman numeral on the typed draft material. However, the
new Roman numeral and its contents often do not sensibly correspond with the Preliminary Draft
Outline to which it appears he was referring.
The ensuing paragraphs, using only Hirt’s typed book materials, will highlight selected
philosophies and methods. Aside from the Introduction, the outline indicates the book was
conceived in two parts: Part I, The Preparation of the Choral Conductor and Part II, The
Program of the Choral Conductor. Figure 22 shows the chapter numbers, titles and the part (I or
II) in which they are included. The entire Preliminary Draft Outline can be viewed in Appendix
D.
With every word being insightful and eloquent, excerpting significant information can
prove challenging. In light of that, the following contains the purpose of the book, which is one of
several items included in the Preface.
In the wake of this phenomenal growth however, comes the consequent need to redefine
the choral conductor’s province; and to consider his preparation and program in the light
of these new relationships.

The primary purpose of this book is to help achieve this reorientation, endeavoring
thereby, 1. to clarify the fundamental principles which operate in the realm of the choral
conductor; 2. to present standard techniques which implement these principles, along
with the presentation of techniques which have proved especially helpful in the writer’s
own experience; and 3. to aid in broadening existing concepts, in an effort to penetrate
the “sound barrier” of preconceived limitations which has heretofore fixed our thresholds
of accomplishment.
May this book serve the student in the classroom and the practicing musician alike. May
it help the neophyte to comprehend the nature of the demensions [sic] of the Art, even as
he seeks to equip himself with the basic tools and with which he must work. May it also
assist the experienced conductor in the never-ending process of re-evaluation and
growth.
11

11
“Preface,” typed manuscript, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 6, Series 15.
103

Figure 22. Chapter outline, The Choral Conductor: A Compendium of His Art. (Reprinted by permission
from the American Choral Directors Association. Preliminary Draft Outline, typed manuscript, Charles C.
Hirt Collection, American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 6, Series 15.)

Towards the end of the Preface Hirt thanked those had personally touched him with their
deeds, dedication, and their wisdom. Among the remarkable group of musicians he thanked were
John Smallman, Julius Hereford, Helen Hosmer, John Finley Williamson, Robert Shaw, Howard
Swan, Max Krone, and Raymond Moreman.
12
In closing Hirt revealed the source of the materials
contained in the book.
Finally, this book reflects very strongly my observations and experiences in the
classroom and in the rehearsal and concert halls, the true laboratories of our profession. I
am therefore very mindful as I write this of the thousands of students and singers whose
voices, loyalty and inquiring minds have enriched these experiences and have activated

12
Ibid.
Part I
The Preparation of the Choral Conductor

Chapter I. Qualifications of the Choral Conductor
Chapter II. Choral Conducting Techniques
Chapter II. Choral Conducting Techniques
Chapter III. Construction of the Choral Instrument
Chapter IV. The Voice in Ensemble
Chapter V. Choral Organization and Administration
Part II
The Program of the Choral Conductor

Chapter VI. Sources and Styles of Choral Literature
Chapter VII. Selecting and Programming Choral Repertoire
Chapter VIII. The Choral Conductor as a Pedagogue
Chapter IX. The Choral Conductor as a Performing Artist
Chapter X. The Choral Conductor as a Person

104
the techniques which I have found right and functional in my own teaching and
conducting.
13

Before going further, mention should be made that the manuscripts (and their revisions)
for each chapter sometimes vastly differ from the outline. In Chapter I, Hirt reflected on the
significant qualities a conductor must possess from the beginning of his or her study of choral
conducting, qualities which were divided into three sections: (1) Inherent Physical Qualifications,
(2) Inherent Psychological Qualifications, and (3) Acquired Knowledge and Skill. Hirt noted that
because conducting is a physical act, just like in a sport, the man or the woman’s physical
qualifications should include:
A vigorous, healthy body capable of intense and sustained activity, with good
biochemical balance. His appearance should be pleasing and his countenance, expressive
and radiant. A reasonably good vocal instrument is certainly an asset….His senses are
keen, especially in hearing…His entire muscularture [sic] is capable of fast and reliable
conditioning…If these qualities are present in an individual, in all likelihood he has the
necessary physical qualifications to enter the field, contingent of course on his potential
for continued growth, maturity and refinement.
14

Hirt listed six qualities related to Inherent Psychological Qualifications: (1) Creativity,
(2) Sensitivity, (3) Devotion, (4) Ambition, (5) Integrity, and (6) Optimism. The subcategory of
Acquired Knowledge and Skill was further divided into Acquired Musical Knowledge and
Acquired General Knowledge. He felt the chief minimum musical skills needed were:
1. Keyboard dexterity adequate for playing simple accompaniments and easy four-part scores,
2. Performance ability in voice and/or an instrument,
3. A comprehension of solfeggio and music theory equivalent to the first year of college.
Along with this should be expected at least one year’s experience in singing with a large and
small ensemble, and considerable experience in listening to music of every genre.
15

13
Ibid.
14
“Chapter III: The Qualifications of the Choral Conductor,” typed manuscript, Charles C. Hirt
Collection, Box 6, Series 15.
15
Ibid.
105
Though the manuscript referenced is incomplete, further study of the lengthy draft would
reveal Hirt’s complex and thorough communication of his perspective on the choral conductor.
A discussion of The Choral Rehearsal, though not clearly indicated, appears to belong in
Chapter VIII. The Choral Conductor as a Pedagogue. In addition to discussing the rehearsal
environment, Hirt reveals his ideas on how to run a successful rehearsal. First, great responsibility
lies with the conductor.
Our very demeanor, our attitude, the planning that is apparent, the way we dress, the way
we acknowledge the importance of it and respect the time of starting and closing, all
these things are perhaps intangible but nonetheless an important ingredient in a successful
rehearsal…
The success of the rehearsal is not contingent upon previous planning alone any more
than the successful rendition of a composition is assured by a well-marked score. The
breath of life must be breathed into the materialization of all this planning. First of all, the
expectancy must be present, and a complete respect not only for all the singers but for all
jobs at hand must be reflected from the conductor [sic]. This is first evidenced by
beginning on time, even if the[re] is not a quarum [sic] present. For not to do so this is to
acknowledge and to condone a lack of respect on the part of the singer, which is carried
over into other ramifications of the rehearsal. Laxity in one aspect of the rehearsal will
likely be the reflection of other lax conditions…it might be said here that it is equally
desirable to show a respect for the closing time of the rehearsal.
16

Hirt’s inspiring musings on the elements of a successful rehearsal bears repeating in their
entirety. The writings address a wide spectrum of pertinent choral issues all at once.
Although no formula can be given for the conducting of a successful rehearsal, the
concepts and principles are unmistakeable [sic] and point the way for each conductor in
the light of his own disposition, temperament to infer his own techniques. We must, for
instance, acknowledge the importance of pacing, changing the modulation [sic] of our
voice, giving the instructions in the spirit of the song, trying to identify as closely as
possible our problems, our corrections with the immediacy of the music. In the successful
rehearsal there often seems to be a feeling of urgency but without losing the expectancy
and joy of it. In our minds we are always anticipation [sic] and apprehending problems
that need to be corrected and that we are yet to meet. However, to make an issue of these
and the anticipated corrections to our singers before they meet the problems of the song,
is to lose this very identity about which I speak. For instance, there would seem to be
many things wrong with giving instructions before the problems of the song are met in
rehearsal. In giving verbal instruction for a score on page five before we start the song,
the instructions are first of all not as meaningful, neither are the singers as interested in

16
Ibid.
106
such preliminary instructions, nor can they remember them as well. Furthermore very
precious time is lost that cannot be recovered, these problems may or may not in every
instance prove realistic. And perhaps more important yet, many of the corrections could
have been conveyed [not] by word but by action. And how much more organically
expressive is the latter method! How much more really expressive is a crescendo,
indicated in all that we do in conducting technique rather than by what we describe
verbally. How much more of the quality of the thing [sic] is communicated. Indeed much
that we are trying to convey, defies verbal definition and can [be communicated] clearly
and economically only through the subtleties of our conducting, and the inspiration
inferred from the song in the act of singing it.
Conscious then, of the planning we have made, we are nonetheless free at any moment to
improvise and tailor our action to the needs of the moment. If we find ennui settling in
during a song, we may change to the next more quickly than expected. If important
progress is being made and there is considerable excitement and tolerance for another
song, it may seem desirable to stay with it longer, even if we don’t complete all the
numbers on the board. Indeed we find ourselves departing from our plan in order to
exploit the possibilities of the moment. Unable to predict our problems exactly, we
become opportunists, never sure of our method of attack until the moment has revealed a
problem. Perhaps intonation is in jeopardy but our methods of correction may be one of
many depending upon the implied cause. If the cause seems to be from laboring a
particular problem long, we may change to another song which has a new spirit and
tonality. OR perhaps if it seems to stem from the oppression of heat or humidity in the
room, we might stand and open the windows, or maybe we haven’t conveyed enough of
the song’s meaning to interest the singer, or maybe the quality of the literature is at fault.
Our minds are moving quickly and analytically, experientially each moment. We’re
trying empathetically to feel the pulse of our singers, to vicariously experience their
reactions to the complex of stimuli reaching them.
Indeed, the success of the rehearsal now is contingent not so much on our planning, not
so much on our acquired knowledge but upon our sensitivity (to our people, to our music,
to our environment). We must be able to feel with our people. Sometimes it is helpful for
us to sit in a performing group as a singer to remind ourselves of their reactions and their
needs, so we can more accurately appraise a given moment. We need to have lived with
our music, to have discovered the treasures it holds [so] we can reveal it to our singers, or
more accurately, to help them discover it anew each time. We must develop close rapport
with our singers and an abiding devotion to them and they to us. We must have gained a
great sensitivity to the expressiveness of our Art as a generic thing and radiate this to our
singers. And out of all of this can evolve another memorable rehearsal experience like the
cherished one in our memory, a total experience, possessing moments filled with the
excitement of discovery, moments of tension and release, moments of solemnity and joy,
a rainbow of experience fulfilling in part not only our long-range plans but our immediate
plans to leave each of us with a euphoric feeling of accomplishment, of expectancy, of
closer fellowship, of greater dedication to our committed task, and our chosen Art.
17

17
“The Choral Rehearsal,” typed manuscript, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 6, Series 15.
107
It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss every typed document in the collection of
items for his book. However, the materials for The Choral Conductor: A Compendium of His Art
provide a rich field of study; the results of such a study would undoubtedly produce a body of
work that could further Hirt’s name in this present day and inspire choral conductors to look anew
at their profession, the ways in which they teach, and, most importantly, music. The following
chapter will look at Hirt’s former students and colleagues who are still bearing his image to the
next generation of choral musicians.
108
CHAPTER 5: AN ENDURING TRADITION
“He’s in my classroom every day,”
1
said former Hirt student Joel Pressman. Whether it
be a technical skill, a philosophy, or a fond memory, the spirit of Charles Hirt continuously
resides with his students and the generations they have influenced.
I am quite aware of the inspiration and positive influence that I gained from Hirt’s
passion for the choral art when I begin each day, and dive into specific aspects of choral
music in my own life’s work: preparing a master class, studying scores, composing
etc….instinctively I embrace, with no forced effort, the significance of this all-consuming
art, and am motivated to do whatever needs to be done as I take on the work at hand.
2

Dale Warland feels that Dr. Hirt respectably and significantly raised the renown of choral music
among all performing arts.
3
He had a “passion for the choral art that is clearly evident in all those
who worked with him and are currently active professionals in every area and aspect of choral
music today.”
4

The interviewees felt that Hirt profoundly influenced them both professionally and
personally – philosophically and/or on a practical level. Each interviewee was asked to articulate
the choral philosophies and methods of Charles Hirt that have remained with them in their careers
post-USC. Each was also asked to comment on Hirt’s lasting nonprofessional influence on their
lives. As noted earlier, most interviewees found it difficult to recall specific philosophies and
methodologies since it had been thirty-seven to fifty-four years since he or she was a student
under Hirt. His methods and techniques were particularly difficult to remember because, as
previously mentioned, Hirt communicated his ideas using extra-musical associations, thereby
hiding the actual technique. Even though recalling specific methods and philosophies proved
challenging, all the interviewees were impressed by a spectrum of his philosophies and
techniques from his modeling of a kind but relentless pursuit of perfection inside and outside the

1
Pressman interview.
2
Warland interview.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
109
rehearsal room, to his countless ways to solve a single problem. Though many of the stories or
methods communicated in previous chapters are a part of Hirt’s living legacy, the interviewees
could pin-point the following philosophies, methods, and life lessons as presently acting as
beacons of truth and wisdom that daily light their path.
As noted in Chapter 1, Charles Hirt was a man of grand stature with a commanding
presence. That presence was always professional. For at least two of the interviewees his
professional manner left their mark.
He was a sharp dresser. He always wore a suit and tie – always. He’d take the coat off for
rehearsal, but he wore the coat too, in rehearsal. He didn’t take it off until he got in the
room, and had the door closed. I don’t remember him sitting at his desk with his suit or
coat off either. He just presented himself…it was very important that you present yourself
as a professional.
5

Dehning remarked that he “dressed like a million bucks.” It was his professional dress that stated,
“You looked like a professor and you acted like one too. He had a tremendous sense of style and
tremendous taste, and he loved good food and good wine, and I got all that from him too.”
6

His great taste undoubtedly contributed to his ability to be a good showman, which so
profoundly affected Sally Etcheto. Recalling performance events that today would not be
considered novel, Etcheto said:
One of the main things that I learned from him was his sense of showmanship whenever
we had a concert. I think he certainly gave equal measure both to the music and
musicality of things, but also, just to the way it was presented and the showmanship...I
remember this particularly with holiday kinds of things. I just think he loved to perform.
He really was a real showman, and I’m sure that was part of what helped to build that
reputation because everybody loved the show. He would just do things that were unique.
One of those things that I remember was that [he had] my friend and fellow student
Michael Sells…do this wonderful sort of signature solo. I guess it must have had some
choral background to it as well, but it would be an entrance that Michael would make by
himself down the aisle, and it was called, something to do with “Lavender” (maybe
somebody else have mentioned it to you)…Michael had a beautiful, beautiful, light, lyric
tenor voice and this song – it was a folk song kind of a thing and he would have him
come in from the back, and he walked all the way through the audience down the center

5
Strimple interview.
6
Dehning interview.
110
aisle or something, to do it. And sometimes, he would have us sing I think from the back
or surrounding the audience.
7

Yet, this huge Hollywood persona was more than a façade. It was simply the exterior of a
very complex and deep individual. Hirt’s passion and commitment to his craft is expressed well
by Ronald Staheli.
I knew him when he was older but still incredibly vital, full of energy, full of passion for
music, always with hunger to understand and perform with great style…He was…
unreserved in his commitment to having music sing and having it dance, having it
become a vital force rather than just something sweet to be studied or…some sort of
museum piece. He wanted it to be vital and immediately applicable to life and living, and
he brought that immediacy into everything he did.
8

Just as Pressman indicated that Hirt was a part of his daily teaching, Douglas Lawrence
said, “There was no part of my professional life that didn’t have Charles Hirt in the middle of it
somewhere.”
9
Delton Shilling attributes his entire career path to Hirt. It was during his time with
the Chamber Singers when they performed as the Disneyland Carolers that Shilling met Walt
Disney, the man and company with whom he would work for thirty-nine years.
10
Shilling did not
have a career as a music educator or administrator, but rather his musical talents were used in his
position as director of entertainment for the Walt Disney Company. He made the following
remarks about how Hirt’s teaching prepared him for his own career path:
I know the difference between good music because of him…It served me well in my
years with Disney because I worked in the entertainment area, and I would know
immediately if it [a voice] was good quality, if it was being produced correctly. I’ve had
thousands of singers audition for me and I can tell you in two measures if they picked the
right music or if…their voices have potential, or maybe it doesn’t and they should have
been an accountant.
11

7
Etcheto interview.
8
Staheli interview.
9
Lawrence interview.
10
Shilling interview.
11
Ibid.
111
As discussed in Chapter 3, Hirt taught his students that technique (be it vocal,
interpretive, gestural, or performing) was organically derived from the music. Applied to his own
teaching, Donald Brinegar said, “That’s been a kind of cornerstone of my philosophy ever
since.”
12
The conductors and singers had to discover the essence of the music before any further
technical decisions could be made. To discover the essence, Hirt would draw them to the text
first. Staheli says, “First the text, always the text. Text, text, text.”
13
He remembers Dr. Hirt
walking into class and asking one leading question, “What about this piece?” The possibilities for
answers revealed to the students how little they understood of the piece. Dialogue ensued, and
after uncovering the essence of the piece came formal analysis. Doyle Preheim provided a
specific recollection of working on “Anthony O’Daly” in Chamber Singers and Dr. Hirt
repeatedly redirecting the singers back to the text by saying, “Read the words. What are they
saying? How could you convey those words in a sung phrase?”
14
With regards to understanding a
work, Strimple noted that Hirt was “really grounded in the idea of everything being based on
something that happened before us.”
15
Hirt was a proponent of “understanding what happened
before us…why the development occurred…and how that applies to us.”
16
With a complete
understanding of the piece, then technique could be developed. As discussed before, it was this
essence that needed to be fully understood and felt by every singer for authentic communication
to be effective. Pressman said that, with Hirt’s approach, the Chamber Singers could even
perform Renaissance music in an elementary school. “He made the music so clear to an audience
that we would do a Renaissance motet and they [elementary students] would get it, because it

12
Brinegar interview.
13
Staheli interview.
14
Preheim interview.
15
Strimple interview.
16
Ibid.
112
would be transparent and they would hear the stereophonic effect of that one part against
another.”
17

Reflecting on his own career, Joel Pressman did not always work from that foundation.
For a period of time his choirs struggled with technical aspects, but intimated that when he started
working on the essence of the piece and communication the technical issues subsided.
Shepard believes that music was a tool to achieve something greater.
18
Developing the
person was as important or perhaps more important than the music. Hirt was like a prism, the
prism being an image he often used when speaking about music.
19
The many facets of this man
included his love of music, cultures, people, and God. He had a holistic approach to experiencing
life and choral singing. Donald Brinegar reflected, “I think he was the one that got me thinking
about the holistic aspect of music as involving all my intellect and my spirit and my
physicality.”
20
It was from this holistic approach that music could live. Within ensemble work,
this perspective had to be understood by each member. This synergy was created by empathy
from the conductor, which many of the interviewees felt was Hirt’s most magnetic tool in
rehearsal. Donald Brinegar said, “His teaching philosophy to me can be summed with one word,
‘empathy.’
21
Hirt’s empathy has been upheld as a central teaching tool by former students like
Nick Strimple. “I always want the singers to…understand what I’m thinking about the music, and
what it is that moves me about it, and I try to get them on board with that.”
22
Once the singers are
holistically aligned with the conductor, the music can take shape.
Of Hirt’s power to communicate his ideas and affect the ensemble, Douglas Lawrence
said, “Charles imposed his will on the Chamber Singers. It was an imposition of his will, and

17
Pressman interview.
18
Shepard interview.
19
Hirt’s personal notes and speeches included multiple mentions of music being like a prism.
20
Brinegar interview.
21
Ibid.
22
Strimple interview.
113
because we admired and respected him and liked him and trusted him, we submitted.”
23
The
following is an even more descriptive look at Hirt’s power to draw the students to the empathetic
process.
Dr. Hirt had expressive eyes, big expressive eyes, and when he would stand up, and he
has this huge wing-span, when he would spread his arms out – he must stand 6'3",
6'4"…he would open it up and then his eyes would dance and his face was alive. It just
simply captures your whole soul and there is no way you couldn’t give over and create
beauty.”
24

Through this empathetic process, he created a very holistic way of relating to music and each
other where everyone was “on the same wavelength and emotionally understanding what
everybody else [was] doing.”
25

Using extra-musical references was the primary tool Hirt used to engender an empathetic
response to him and the music. Speaking of his teaching style, Lawrence said:
He defined my style to this day. I use metaphors all the time to describe things that I want
musically…He had a way of talking about music in such florid [ways]…He had
colleagues that I’m sure were lovingly mocking him...but they would say, “Oh, how are
those purple tones?”
26

Dehning recalled of Hirt’s rehearsals
27
that he would never warm the singers up, and would
quickly move from anything technical so that he could get to the human part of the process.
28
He
got to humanity through his use of metaphor. The singers therefore had an extra-musical image in
their head as they sang, bringing the technical details into living story.
Dr. Hirt affected his students not only professionally, but also personally. As noted in
Chapter 2, an impressive number of his students went on to have significant careers in music as

23
Lawrence interview.
24
Staheli interview.
25
Strimple interview.
26
Lawrence interview.
27
Dehning never sang in the Chamber Singers, but he was granted the rare opportunity by Dr. Hirt
to observe all of their rehearsals.
28
Dehning interview.
114
performers, teachers, and administrators. It is in these positions that the person of Hirt, beyond
music, is also living. Like Delton Shilling, several interviewees indicated that Hirt is the reason
they are in their current career trajectory. Doyle Preheim said, “I owe him my career in music.”
29

The significant roots of their musical careers started under Charles Hirt at USC. But it was
typically before they ever set foot on campus that his lasting impact in their lives began. Preheim
recounts a pivotal moment in his life.
I was a senior in college and I was a kid off a farm in South Dakota. The college invited
Dr. Hirt to come and direct Brahms Requiem, and I was selected to do the baritone solos,
and he came and worked with us for the weekend. We did the performance on a Sunday
afternoon. And after the performance, he asked me, “Doyle, what are your plans for next
year – you’re graduating?” And I said, “Well, I’m going to go back to Freeman, South
Dakota, and…take over the family farm.” There was a moment of silence. He said,
“Well, you know, farming, that’s a really honorable profession. We need people to grow
us some food. But if you’re interested…” and that “but, if you’re interested” changed by
life. Because he said, “If you’re interested I have one scholarship left
30
in my Church
Music Department at the University of Southern California. If you want to come and
study with us, the scholarship could be yours.” And I thought about that for five
seconds.
31

In his emailed interview responses, Dale Warland reflected on Dr. Hirt’s nonmusical
influence, saying it “was his obvious commitment to the ‘nurturing’ of each student in his orbit
and total faithfulness in supporting each one assigned to him or accepted in his circle of
responsibility.”
32
Hirt’s personal interest in each student plus his optimism were evidenced in the
spring of 1965, when one of the Chamber Singers expressed his concern that there would be so
few singers returning in the fall. He asked, “Dr. Hirt, what are we going to do? Everybody’s
leaving,” to which Hirt responded, “Well, I’ll still be here.”
33
Because he saw potential in

29
Preheim interview.
30
It is interesting that with several of the singers, there was only “one scholarship” or “one more
spot.” Shilling remembered that when he went to USC the Chamber Singers was being advertised as having
only one more position to fill.
31
Preheim interview.
32
Warland interview.
33
Brinegar interview.
115
everyone, he could know with confidence that he would make it work. About that situation,
Brinegar remarked, “I think it had a real impact on me…‘just give me some human beings and
I’ll work them into a choir.’”
34
“He was so perceptive…Charles Hirt saw in almost all of his
students potential in one way or the other,” said H. Royce Saltzman.
35
As a mentor, Hirt nurtured
that potential through providing opportunity for self-growth and discovery. Saltzman recognized
that he was “very nurturing to his students”
36
and provided an endearing account of the moment
his formal mentorship with Dr. Hirt began.
The first summer that I was in his conducting class, it was very hot, it was upstairs in
Widney Hall where the School of Music was housed. And I was [a] rather young, naive
student…I would dress in white ducks and a white T-shirt, and I was sort of [in a]
wonderland in terms of being in this conducting class with Charles Hirt. After the class
he said, “I want to see you in my office.” I was scared spitless. I went down to his office
and he said, “I’ve been watching you and I want you to be my assistant.” Well, I got in
the car, driving back to Upland where my family was (Phyllis and I had children), and I
got sick to my stomach. How was it possible that he would choose me to be an assistant?
And being an assistant meant I would direct the women’s choir, I would teach some
classes in church music and, as I said earlier, I was acting head of the department when
he went on sabbatical...My future success, whatever that may have been as an
administrator...teacher or conductor, was largely a result, you might say of his
mentorship.
37

Many of these men and women saw Hirt as a father-figure; Joel Pressman even says he
was like his second father,
38
and Delton Shilling affectionately referred to him as his “California
dad.”
39
Hirt cared for his students by investing time in them even outside of the classroom or the
University. As Preheim indicated, Hirt would always respond to every letter he wrote when he
asked for help,
40
and Royce Saltzman recalled Hirt coming all the way up to University of Oregon

34
Ibid.
35
Saltzman interview.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
38
Pressman interview.
39
Shilling interview.
40
Preheim interview.
116
just to “see what I was doing.”
41
The students close Hirt were treated to a personal friendship with
him as they experienced deeply personal moments with he and Lucy, often at their home. Those
relationships with Hirt lasted far after their degrees were completeted at USC. Hirt himself said so
many times that he loved people. It was evidenced in the way he stayed connected to his students
after college, and that has without question made a lasting impact on those former students.
“Good fathers” teach their children life lessons, and incorporated in those lessons are
values and discipline. It was the discipline Hirt taught him that Delton Shilling remembers. “I
know my life is very different today because Charles was a part of it, and probably helped shape,
in my college years, a discipline in music and a discipline in my life.”
42
Hirt showed Douglas
Lawrence that leaders are human. During the 1964 tour, when seventeen singers, one conductor,
and Lucy lived every moment of four months together, those singers got a very personal look at
Dr. Hirt.
I think all of us going on that tour were slightly disillusioned with the persona of Charles
Hirt but we learned to love the actual person. The actual person actually laughed a lot,
and made mistakes once in a while (not in concert). He wasn’t always perfect. He wasn’t
always charming. His chest wasn’t always up.
43

Of those rare, intimate glimpses of Dr. Hirt, Lawrence went onto say:
Great artists can appear to be great artists, can have the persona of a great artist, but every
artist is real. Every artist has down times. Every artist struggles with something. And,
what that did for me personally and professionally is that I never went into rehearsal with
famous conductors (and I worked with everybody),
44
thinking that I needed to be
nervous, because this person was so famous and they were so perfect and wonderful.
45

Humans feel pain, and by Hirt letting his students into such intimate moments, they learned it was
acceptable for them also to hurt.

41
Saltzman interview.
42
Shilling interview.
43
Lawrence interview.
44
Lawrence worked with such musical greats as Aaron Copland, Sir George Solti, Leonard
Bernstein, Simon Rattle, Michael Tilson, et al.
45
Lawrence interview.
117
I saw him get hurt because people didn’t take him seriously enough in a couple of
situations…and I talked about it with him and he said, “Yes it hurt; what the hell do you
think?” I don’t think there’s any part of my emotional life in music that hasn’t been
influenced by the way I perceived him to be in his professional life.
46

Joel Pressman’s learned life lesson is that you should not expend everything you’ve got
on your career.
We had lunch one day and he said, “What are you doing?” And I told him what I was
doing (and he was very busy), and he said, “You sound like me when I was young.” And
I realized that he was a man who had most of his stomach removed
47
because he was so
intense and I thought, “I don’t want to be that successful.” So he told me to “be a good
choral conductor,” but he also taught me not to kill myself.
48

Integrity seemed to be another of Hirt’s traits that left an indelible impression on those
around him. James Vail said it was his integrity in speech that impacted him.
It was integrity, and a lot of integrity. Just in speech, if I would do something wrong, he’d
correct me. If I would say something wrong, he’d correct me. If I would say something
like “less people”...he said, “You can’t have less people; it’s fewer people. If it’s
countable, it’s fewer.” I would learn things like that every few days from something he
said.
49

It should be re-emphasized that Hirt had a remarkable command of the English language and also
spoke French and Russian fluently. A part of Hirt that still exists with William Hall is his
extensive vocabulary; its impact was greater on him than even some of Hirt’s more well-known
traits.
50
Although Hirt’s language skills positively impressed Hall in the long run, as a student of
Hirt’s Hall said, “I was scared to death almost every time I walked in his office because of his
vocabulary. Compared to anyone else I knew, his vocabulary was stunning. And I learned a lot
from him in that.”
51

46
Ibid. interview.
47
Ibid. Hirt had stomach ulcers.
48
Pressman interview.
49
Vail interview.
50
Hall interview.
51
Ibid.
118
Former Hirt student and most recently past-president of Baylor University John Lilley
relayed a story that, almost humorously, exposes Hirt’s intense commitment to proper grammar.
I was on my way out to Claremont Colleges to interview for a position. After only two
years in L.A., I made the mistake of using colloquial speech. I told Dr. Hirt I was “fixing
to go” to Claremont. He promptly “had a nervous breakdown” and started screaming at
me. He said, “You are not fixing to go to Claremont or any [expletive] place in this
world.” I have never used that expression since that day, and the experience caused me to
consider carefully other regional speech patterns that would not serve me well. That was
a great gift from Dr. Hirt.
52

Hirt also taught his students how to treat people. Ronald Staheli commented that it was
Hirt’s “great sense of humanity” that set him apart from other choral giants of his day.
53
Several
interviewees mentioned that he found the good in everybody and treated them with respect. He
treated his colleagues well and solved problems amicably.
54
It wasn’t just his colleagues who
were treated well; it was also his students. A trait of Hirt’s that Robert Hasty has tried to emulate
is thinking the best of another person.
He always sought the best. It’s one of the things that I try to learn in my own teaching,
rather than getting angry…it was just very rare that he would ever confront a student and
be angry. He would always try to think the best…it’s like if somebody was late…teachers
have the tendency to kind of make everybody feel guilty because of the guy who is not
there...because he’s angry that somebody is not there. But what Hirt would do was, “Oh, I
hope he’s not in an automobile accident.” He would persuade himself to be concerned
about him for being late…He’d never allow himself to think that somebody was so
irresponsible.
55

Nick Strimple’s anecdote told in Chapter 3 was mentioned again by him as an example of
Hirt’s ability to find the good. “Just like the magazine article that I wrote, that he had real issues
with at first…he didn’t rip me to shreds in front of anybody else. And then when it was fixed, it
was like it was all my doing.”
56

52
John Lilley, letter to author, January 2, 2013.
53
Staheli interview.
54
Strimple interview.
55
Hasty interview.
56
Strimple remembers Hirt giving all the credit to him for the revisions when really they were all
Hirt’s ideas.
119
People were more important than music to Dr. Hirt, and his actions proved that over and
over. Hasty stated, “No one was treated as being any lesser than or greater than, and that was very
important to me.”
57
Hasty added that he learned agape love (unconditional love) from Hirt.
Perhaps it was Hirt’s generous and positive spirit that prepared Hasty to immediately forgive
when wronged, even in music. “If somebody made a mistake, in fact, there’s an opportunity to
practice agape. So that if somebody makes a mistake, you are more likely to smile instead of
frown…we are responsible for each other.”
58
And laugh he did. In this humorous anecdote, agape
love and Hirt’s ability to laugh are seen in action:
One Christmas season we were performing for a women's group at L.A.'s First
Congregational Church. As Dr. Hirt introduced the English carol, “I Saw Three Ships
Come Sailing In,” the soprano soloist, who happened to be sitting next to me, got her
pitch from our “perfect pitch-er.” Now the soloist was a good musician, but she was not a
very confident singer. Standing to sing, the soloist looked down at me and softly hummed
the two notes she had been holding in her head, needing assurance that she was still on
pitch. She was, so I responded in the affirmative, “Um-hm.” Lifting her head confidently,
she launched into the carol, not from the correct pitch, but from the pitch of my “um-
hm,” about an interval of a sixth lower than where she was supposed to be. Dr. Hirt tried
to keep going, but he couldn’t. But this time he got tickled, and when Dr. Hirt got tickled,
you could forget about going on!
59

Where other conductors might get angry, Hirt’s gracious and forgiving spirit allowed him to
laugh.
And then one day the father becomes a friend. However, all former students who spoke
of Dr. Hirt as a friend or father figure agreed that they were never Dr. Hirt’s equal. During the
times spent at the Hirts’ house, the students-turned-friends never forgot the great presence in their
midst. For a few to whom he was exceptionally close, they felt as if they were let into the “holy of
holies.”
I think both of us took out of that relationship that we were getting to step inside the holy
of holies. We never left their house without talking about it all the way home…and we

57
Hasty interview.
58
Hasty interview.
59
Hasty interview.
120
never stopped talking about it once we got home. We would talk sometimes until three in
the morning…dissecting every little moment, every little word.
60

As is so often the case when students become colleagues, Hirt’s students saw the following type
of situation as a momentous and uncomfortable occasion.
We were at the swimming pool behind the house one night and the sun was sort of going
down and we’d had a glass of wine and we were laughing and splashing in the pool, and I
think he was hugging a plastic dinosaur, maybe it was a rubber duck (I don’t know) and
he said, “Doug, maybe you should really call me Charles,” and I said, “I’m not absolutely
sure I could do that,” and he said, “Well, you’re going to have to if you want to continue
being my friend…The relationship has to change because I need it and I think it’s
appropriate because you’re a colleague now.” I was like everyone else who was ever
asked to call him Charles; it was difficult. We’re actually not even sure if Lucy called
him Charles. We were pretty sure when she woke him up in the morning she said, “Dr.
Hirt, time to get up!”
61

Ideally, fathers are role models. Charles Hirt seemed to so admirably model good
character and values. He valued professionalism, integrity, honesty, and discipline within the
bounds of the father-friend relationship. It is these personal qualities that are alive today in the
work and spirit of those who walk in his footsteps.
Douglas Lawrence recalled a conversation with a dear friend during which he said, “I
don’t know what my life will be like if I can’t be in our group with you,” to which his friend
replied, “If I am so damn important to you I guess you’re just going to have to go and be me.”
62

That statement made a deep impression on Lawrence. Reflecting on its significance, Lawrence
remarked:
If I were to look at the Charles Hirt legacy, he didn’t say it to me [directly], but that’s
what he said to me, “You’re going to leave me now because that’s what happens to birds
in the nest. You’re going to leave now, and if I’m so damn important to you, you’re just
going to have to go and be me.”
63

60
Lawrence interview.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid.
63
Ibid.
121
Hundreds of birds have left Hirt’s nest. Because of his commitment to raising up
generations of choral musicians who believed, as he did, that music could change humanity for
the good, schools, churches and choral communities everywhere have been forever changed by
the men and women who have been Charles Hirt to them.
122
CONCLUSION
In the opinion of many interviewees Charles Hirt is widely unrecognized in comparison
to his peers such as Howard Swan and Harold Decker. The common thread of speculation was
that because he did not produce numerous recordings or receive air time like Robert Shaw, was
not a self-promoter, and did not publish, and therefore did not receive a broad, lasting
professional reputation. Had his book been published in 1960 as intended, it is possible that his
name would be more widely known. Instead, today his students are famous, which is (if the
colloquialism can be forgiven) perhaps exactly how he would have wanted it. As James Shepard
put it, “I’m not sure that Charles was that interested in that kind of national fame. I think he could
have had it, but I think that he was more interested in what he was doing in the classroom”
1
–
Charles Hirt, the quintessential educator.
In 1975, after a concert at Bovard Auditorium at USC, Hirt came home and took his
blood pressure, which registered around 180/126. To that news, in her typical fashion, Lucy
responded, “You may think that your dream is to die on stage performing, but that leaves me out
of it, and that’s just not fair.” “So I retired,” stated Hirt.
2
In 1976, he said goodbye to his official
responsibilities at USC, though he would lend his expertise in some fashion to the University in
the ensuing years. USC sponsored a tribute concert, Baroque Music for Voices & Chamber
Orchestra, in celebration of Hirt’s retirement. The concert featured 1964 Chamber Singers mezzo-
soprano Nina Hinson, bass-baritone Douglas Lawrence, and accompanist Darlene Hatcher (figure
23). In response to the concert invitation and formal announcement of his retirement, Hirt
received many letters of congratulations.

1
Shepard interview.
2
Hasty interview.
123

Figure 23. Retirement concert announcement from the USC Daily Trojan. (Reprinted by permission from
Mona H. Cravens, Director of Student Publications, University of Southern California. Newspaper clipping,
Daily Trojan, May 12, 1976, p. 9, Charles C. Hirt Collection, American Choral Directors Association
Archives, Box 5, Series 10.)
The following are samples of the more effusive praise many of the authors bestowed upon him. A
delightful letter from then ACDA President Russell Mathis, a music faculty member at the
University of Oklahoma, sheds light on the positive outcome of Hirt’s retirement for America.
Good heavens! Can it really be true that the time has come for you to retire from the
University of Southern California? This is akin to learning that St. Cecilia has abandoned
her post. Generations of yet unborn Trojans will wail from their cribs because they will
never have an opportunity to sing in the USC Chamber Singers under the direction of
Charles Hirt.
Since you have given us no alternative we take some comfort in the fact that you are
retiring from USC but not from music. You are simply enlarging your field of operations.
124
What is the University of Southern California’s loss is undoubtedly national and
international gain.
3

Friend and Disney colleague Robert “Bob” Jani said he looked “forward to many years of
the kind of human excitement that only you can generate in music and emotional spirit.”
4

John Lilley who, while just beginning his successful academic career as the Assistant
Dean of Faculty at Scripps College, offered a most heartfelt expression of thanks and
appreciation.
Although the essence of your special choral magic has often been discussed by grateful
alum at regional or national conventions, we have never been able to really define its all-
encompassing nature. As I have reviewed your influence of the past years, I have often
thought of the sheer poetry of your rehearsal technique, the exciting repertoire chosen for
the Chamber Singers, and on and on. It seems to me, however, that the integrated whole
of your influence is seen best in your impeccable standard of taste and judgment. It is a
standard which has been communicated not only through your musicianship in rehearsals
and other classes, but also through your humanity in conferences or on tour.
One is tempted with Browning “to count the ways” at this special time of transition for
you and dear Lucy, but I shall forego those lines. Be assured, however, that a great
reservoir of love and thanksgiving exists especially for you and your life.
5

Morris D. Hayes, then Director of Choral Organization at the University of Wisconsin-
Eau Claire, beautifully summarized the sentiments of many.
I can think of no other person that has the respect and admiration of the choral profession
as you have attained during your years at USC. Every outstanding honor has been
bestowed upon you for your contributions to our profession. The reputation of the
students trained by Charles C. Hirt is recognized throughout the country and finally, there
is probably no person that has left an imprint upon the musical lives of the young people
of the United States as you have.
6

In Hirt’s final response to Douglas McEwen, concerning a choral educator’s
responsibility for nurturing musical growth in a student, Hirt stated:

3
Letter from Russell Mathis, May 6, 1976, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
4
Letter from Bob Jani, May 28, 1976, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
5
Letter from John Lilley, May 11, 1976. Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
6
Letter from Marvin D. Hayes, May 12, 1976, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 5, Series 10.
125
If this person has the potential, it will manifest itself. We [conductors] can only abet it;
making available to him musical experiences, revealing to him the wealth of extant
literature; raising his horizons by example; and increasing his faith in himself, in music,
and in man.
7

As illustrated in the reflections of his former students and colleagues, Charles Hirt was an
unwavering example of his own philosophy. He introduced his students at the University of
Southern California to a vast range of the highest-quality literature and provided for them, in
seemingly every rehearsal and performance, fresh insight on the music and its power to
communicate. In his passion, excellence, wisdom, and genius, he was the conduit whereby the
students’ horizons were expanded. Ultimately, because of Hirt’s love of his students, his insight,
and deep belief in music as a communicative force, the testimonies have proven that his students
did indeed come to a deep, abiding faith in the efficacy of music, their own ability to create it, and
humankind’s ability to receive it and be changed.
In an interview with Carol Glenn, Hirt said, “At the end, I ask my myself, ‘Did we
achieve any of these short-term goals? Are my people leaving a little happier? Do they love music
more? Do they love each other more? Have they acquired certain skills?’”
8
Undoubtedly, the
voices of the thousands who were forever changed by Charles Hirt (both the man and the music
educator) would join in one accord with a resounding “Yes!”

7
McEwen, “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts,” 242.
8
Transcribed interview responses to Carol Glenn, Charles C. Hirt Collection, Box 4, Series 9.
126
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alderman, Pauline. We Build a School of Music: The Commissioned History of Music at the
University of Southern California. Los Angeles: The Alderman Book Committee, 1989.
American Choral Directors Association. “Awards and Prizes.” Accessed February 28, 2013.
http://acda.org/page.asp?page=awardsandprizes.
Azusa Pacific University. “Marvin McKissick | Azusa Pacific University | Email @apu.edu.”
2013, accessed February 22, 2013.
http://www.lead411.com/Marvin_McKissick_11792876.html.
Baylor University. “Baylor University || About Baylor || John M. Lilley.” Accessed February 22,
2013. http://www.baylor.edu/about/index.php?id=89267.
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: Institute of the Arts, Volume 42, Number 4,
May 1947.
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Volume
44, Number 7, July 15, 1949.
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Music, Volume 46, Number 21,
December 1, 1951.
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Music, Volume 48, Number 6, April
15, 1953.
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Music, Volume 50, Number 17, June
1, 1955.
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Music, Volume 52, Number 17, May
1957.
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Performing Arts, Volume 62, Number
7, October 15, 1966.
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Performing Arts, Volume 65, Number
14, June 1, 1970.
Bulletin of the University of Southern California: School of Performing Arts, Volume 68, Number
7, December 15, 1972.
BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications. “Staheli | College of Fine Arts and
Communications.” 2013. Accessed February 22, 2013.
http://cfacweb.byu.edu/directory/staheli.
California Digital Library. “University of California: In Memoriam, March 1976 | Raymond
Moreman, Music: Los Angeles.” 2011. Accessed December 29, 2012.
http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb9k4009c7&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00036&t
oc.depth=1&toc.id.
Catholic University of America, The. “Leo Nestor - School of Music.” Last reviewed March 25,
2010, accessed February 22, 2013. http://music.cua.edu/faculty/leo-nestor.cfm.
127
Chapel Hill UMC. “Dr. Cecil J. Riney, Director of Celebration Choir | Chapel Hill UMC.” 2010,
accessed February 22, 2013. http://chfumc.org/?page_id=3488.
Charles C. Hirt Collection, American Choral Directors Association Archives, Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma.
Choral Journal, The. “USC Chamber Choir Sings in Nachmani Hall, Tel Aviv.” January 1964:
28. http://acda.org/files/choral_journals/Jan_1964_USC_Chamber.pdf.
Colla, Ginger Covert, “In Memoriam - Jane Skinner Hardester, October 3, 1922 - October 23,
2006.” SCVA Newsletter (on-line version). December 2006. Accessed February 22, 2013.
http://www.scvachoral.org/news/news1206.html.
Colorado Daily. “Dr. R. Lynn Whitten - Boulder Daily Camera.” Your Daily Camera Online.
Posted April 25, 2008. Last modified July 31, 2009. Accessed February 23, 2013.
http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_12965023.
Daily Trojan. “Campus Monument.” Vol. 55, No. 10, October 4, 1963.
Decker, William Kenneth. “A Study of Vocal Pedagogy for the Choral Rehearsal Based on
Theories Presented in Published Literature From 1960-1970 and on Interviews and
Observations of Selected Choral Conductors.” DMA diss., Temple University, June
1975. ProQuest (302830499).
Dehning, William. Chorus Confidential: Decoding the Secrets of the Choral Art. Pavane
Publishing, San Pedro, 2003.
Dehning, William. “The Hirts: Lucy and Charles,” blog entry, July 15, 2012. Accessed March 10,
2013. http://williamdehning.blogspot.com/search?q=Lucy+Hirt.
Del Giudice, Luisa. “Dr. James H. Vail (Organist and Choirmaster, St. Alban’s): An Oral
History.” www.stalbanswestwood.com. Accessed February 22, 2013.
http://www.stalbanswestwood.com/work/ohp_vail.pdf.
Epsi-Lion,The. A Publication of California Epsilon Fraternity, “Hirt in Recital: Last
Undergraduate Appearance.” Vol. 1, no. 2. (May 1934): 1.
Fred Bock Music Companies, The. “Albert McNeil.” 2007. Accessed February 22, 2013.
http://www.fredbock.com/Promo.asp?page=236.
Fred Bock Music Companies, The. “Don Fontana.” 2007, accessed February 23, 2013.
http://www.fredbock.com/Promo.asp?page=244.
G. Schirmer, Inc. and Associated Music Publishers, Inc. “James McKelvy, Work List.” Accessed
February 22, 2013. http://www.schirmer.com/default.aspx/www.schott-
music.com/shop/products/show,306191,,f.html?TabId=2419&State_2872=3&ComposerI
D_2872=2533&CategoryID_2872=0.
Garrett, Jennifer M. “Elements of Leading Collegiate Choral Programs in the United States.”
DMA diss., Arizona State University, May 2010. ProQuest (3410690).
Glendale News-Press (CA). “Victory at Fresno Climaxes Successful Singing Season.” May 13,
1941.
128
Glidden, Robert. “The DMA: An Historical Perspective.” Proceedings of the 57
th
Annual Meeting
of the National Association of Schools of Music 70 (1982): 157-161.
Goshen College. “Doyle Preheim.” Accessed February 22, 2013.
http://people.goshen.edu/~lonhs/Doyle.html.
Herald, The. First Baptist Church of Glendale (CA). “Woodrow Wilson Junior High School A
Cappella Choir.” May 9, 1937.
Hirt, Charles. “Graeco-Slavonic Chant Traditions Evident in the Part-Writing of the Russian
Orthodox Church.” PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1946. ProQuest
(301826247).
IMDB. “Harve Presnell – Biography.” Accessed February 22, 2013.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0696193/bio.
Lang, Paul Henry. Letter to the editor, New York Times, November 1, 1953.
Lapp, Rachel. “Doyle Preheim – Cultivating harmony, seeking balance.” Goshen College
Bulletin, March 2003.
http://www.goshen.edu/news/bulletin/03march/doyle_preheim.php.
Latimer Jr., Marvin E. “The Nation’s First DMA in Choral Music; History, Structure, and
Pedagogical Implications.” Journal of Historical Research in Music Education (October
2010) XXXII:I, 19-36.
Latimer, Marvin. “Harold A. Decker (1914-2003): American Choral Music Educator.” PhD diss.,
University of Kansas, c. 2007), 194.
Leighton, Lesley Gayle. “Howard Swan, Charles Hirt, Roger Wagner: Their Influences and the
Building of Choral Culture in Southern California.” DMA diss., University of Southern
California, May 2012. ProQuest (3513798).
Lodi News-Sentinel. “Tenor Brian Sullivan to Open Lodi Concert Season.” October 5, 1964: 12.
Accessed February 22, 2013.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2245&dat=19641005&id=at4zAAAAIBAJ&sji
d=JjIHAAAAIBAJ&pg=7016,376277.
Lytle, James. “Gwendolyn Koldofsky, Accompanist, Dies at 92.” USC University of Southern
California. December 7, 1998. http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/4096.html.
McEwen, Douglas Reeve. “Music Philosophies, Choral Concepts, and Choral Techniques
Employed by Selected Choral Conductors in Southern California Four-Year Colleges and
Universities.” EdD, Colorado State College, 1961. ProQuest (302055330).
Miami University School of Fine Arts. “Dr. William Bausano - Voice | Department of Music |
Miami University School of Fine Arts." Accessed February 22, 2013.
http://arts.muohio.edu/music/people/faculty-listing-bios/william-bausano.
Miami University School of Fine Arts. “Dr. William D. Hall | Faculty Directory | Chapman
University.” Chapman University. 2013. Accessed February 22, 2013.
http://www.chapman.edu/our-faculty/william-hall.
129
Musica International. “Composer or Arranger or Author of the melody : McKelvy, James
(Musica Database).” Accessed February 22, 2013. http://www.musicanet.org/cgi-
bin/epeios.cgi?_target=gesbib&_skin=Musica&_session=&_language=en&List=19&App
lyQuery=&Pattern.16=$9045&$Profile=S.
National Association of Church Musicians The Journal. “Myron Tweed Recovering.” Vol. 55,
no. 4 (July/August 2004): 5. Accessed February 22, 2013.
http://nacmhq.org/documents/0407_journal.pdf.
Oron, Aryeh. “Douglas Lawrence (Bass-Baritone, Choral Conductor) - Short Biography.” Bach
Cantatas Website. Contributed April 2010, May 2011, accessed February 22, 2013.
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Lawrence-Douglas.htm.
Point Loma Nazarene University. “Myron Tweed | Point Loma Nazarene University.” Accessed
February 22, 2013. http://www.pointloma.edu/experience/academics/schools-
departments/department-music/faculty/myron-tweed.
SAGE Journals|Music Educators Journal. “In Memoriam.” September/October 1965 52: 47.
http://mej.sagepub.com/content/52/1/47.extract#.
Sharp, Tim, and Christina Prucha. American Choral Directors Association: Images of America.
Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, SC, 2009.
Strimple, Nick. “Nick Strimple: composer, conductor, scholar, author of the critically acclaimed
book Choral Music in the Twentieth Century and faculty member at the University of
Southern California Thornton School of Music.” Nickstrimple.com. 2013, accessed
February 22, 2013. http://www.nickstrimple.com/.
Taubman, Howard. “A Matter of Degree: Eastman School Sets Up Doctorate for Musicians.”
New York Times, October 25, 1953.
University of Oregon. “H. Royce Saltzman, Director Emeritus Oregon Bach Festival | UO School
of Music and Dance.” 2013. Accessed February 22, 2013.
http://music.uoregon.edu/people/emeriti/saltzman.htm.
University of Texas at Austin. “Office of the General Faculty.” March 14, 2000, revised April 27,
2000., updated: August 21, 2012. http://www.utexas.edu/faculty/council/1999-
2000/memorials/Ducloux/ducloux.html.
USC Emeriti Center. “In The News.” Colleagues for Life | USC Emeriti Center | Retiree
Community Newsletter, September 2009: 6.
https://emeriti.usc.edu/files/2011/06/ECnltr0909.pdf.
USC News. “In memoriam: Brandon Mehrle, 89 | USC News.” January 30, 2013. Accessed
February 22, 2013. http://news.usc.edu/#!/article/46285/in-memoriam-brandon-mehrle-
89/.
University of Southern California. “USC Thornton School of Music : Faculty Profiles: Nick
Strimple.” Accessed February 22, 2013.
http://www.usc.edu/schools/music/private/faculty/strimple.php.
USC University of Southern California. “USC Faculty Portal - Especially for: All Faculty:
Looking Back at the Faculty.” Accessed March 3, 2013.
http://www.usc.edu/academe/faculty/especially_for/faculty/looking_back_at_the_faculty.
html.
130
Vail, James. “The Department of Choral and Sacred Music and the Chamber Singers at the USC
Thornton School of Music: A Retrospective,” in accompanying booklet, Legacy, 60
Years of the University of Southern California Chamber Singers performed by the USC
Chamber Singers, University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, 2009.
Compact disc.
Wade, Sampson. “The History of Two Disney Christmas Traditions.” MousePlanet. February 25,
2009. Accessed January 6, 2013.
http://www.mouseplanet.com/8691/The_History_of_Two_Disney_Christmas_Traditions.
Warland, Dale. “Biography.” Dale Warland | Distinguished choral director, composer and
conductor. 2013, accessed February 23, 2013. http://dalewarland.com/biography/.
Wells, Lois. “May We Introduce... CONVENTION HEADLINES Dr. Charles C. Hirt.” The
Journal, Choral Conductors Guild XX, No. 9 (May 1968): 1.
West Coast Mennonite Men's Chorus. “History of Concerts | 1980 | Arise and Sing.’ Accessed
February 23, 2013. http://www.wcmmc.org/8Concert0.htm.
Wikipedia. “Albert J. McNeil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Last modified October 4,
2012, accessed February 22, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_J._McNeil.
Wikipedia. “Citroën DS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Last modified on February 22, 2013.
Accessed December 20, 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroën_DS.
Wikipedia. “Dennis Morgan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Last modified February 28,
2013, accessed on February 22, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Morgan.
Wikipedia. “Milburn Price - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Last modified on November 15,
2012, accessed February 22, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milburn_Price.
Wikipedia. “Ned Romero - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Last modified October 10, 2012,
accessed February 22, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Romero.
Wikipedia. “William Dehning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Accessed February 23, 2013.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dehning.
Wikipedia. “William Vennard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Last modified on November
17, 2012, accessed on March 3, 2013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Vennard.

131
APPENDIX A: THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA MADRIGAL
SINGERS/CHAMBER SINGERS REPERTOIRE PERFORMED, 1949-1975
Repertoire of songs taken from the USC Madrigal Singers/Chamber Singers
programs 1947-1975, Charles C. Hirt Collection, ACDA Archives, Box 5, Series 10, listed
in alphabetical order. Titles and composers are reprinted as found in the programs.

A Child’s Ghetto Hanley Jackson
A Mesa Rost Amarela arr. Damiano Cozzella
Abendlied Johannes Brahms
Adieu, Ye City Prisoning Towers Thomas Thomkins
Adoramus te, Christe Guiseppe Corsi
“Agnus Dei” from Mass Paul Hindemith
Agnus Dei Thomas Morley
Ah, Could My Eyes Behold Thee Orlando di Lasso
Ah, Leave Me Claudio Monteverdi
Anthony O’Daly Samuel Barber
April is in My Mistress Face Thomas Morley
Arboluca, Te Sequeste Chavez
As Costureiras Hector Villa-Lobos
As Fair As Morn John Wilbye
Au Joli Jeu Clement Jannequin
Ave Maria Hector Villa-Lobos
Because Your Voice Jacob Avshalomov
“Benedictus” from Mass Paul Hindemith
Bonzorno, Madonna Antonio Scandello
Brincan and Bailan arr. Walter Anderson
Cancion de Cuna arr. Luis Sandi
Cantate Domino Hans Leo Hassler
Cantate Domino Guiseppe Pitoni
Cantate Domino Heinrich Schütz
Canti di Guerrieri Claudio Monteverdi
Cantiones Sacrae Henrich Schütz
Che se tu se’il cor mio Claudio Monteverdi
Ching-a-Ring Chaw Aaron Copland
Choose Something Like a Star Randall Thompson
Come Again, Sweet Love Doth Now Invite John Dowland
Come Away, Death Robert Baska
Come Soon Johannes Brahms
Cradle Hymn Edmund Rubbra
Dance, Dance My Heart Emma Lou Diemer
Dance of the Shepherds Zoltán Kodály
Das Schifflein Robert Schumann
Deo Gracias Benjamin Britten
Der Abend Johannes Brahms
Der Gutzgauch Lorenz Lemlin
Der Kuckuck auf dem Zaune sass Johann Stephani
132
Die Rose stand im Tau Robert Schumann
Dominic has a doll Vincent Persichetti
Dormiva Dolcemente Giovanni Gabrieli
Don Pedro a quien los crueles arr. Jose Wilkes
Echo Song Orlando di Lasso
Ein Hennlein Weiss Antonio Scandello
Enchanting Song Béla Bartók
Excerpts from Israel in Egypt George Frideric Handel
Fa La La, I Cannot Conceal It Pierre Certon
Fa Una Canzona Orlando Vecchi
Fair is the Rose Orlando Gibbons
Farewell My Love Anonymous-arr. Hirt
Fire Fire My Heart Thomas Morley
Folks Song Johannes Brahms
Four Country Songs Randall Thompson
Füng Motetten Vic Nees
Fuyons tous d’amour le jeu Orlando di Lasso
Gaelic Mouth Music McLeod
Glory to God Randall Thompson
Gloria Johnson
Glorify the Lord Jan Pieterszoon Sweelink
Go Lovely Rose Halsey Stevens
Go To the Ant, Thou Sluggard Jean Berger
Good Day Dear Heart Orlando di Lasso
Gossip, Gossip Jester Hairston
Gute Nacht Robert Schumann
Ha, Ha, This World Doth Pass Thomas Wilkes
Hacia Belen va un Borrico arr. Parker-Shawn
Happy and Gay Paul Peuerl
Have You Not Heard the Silent Steps? Ernst Toch
Hear the Voice and Prayer Thomas Tallis
Henry Was a Worthy King Daniel Pinkham
Hodie Christus Natus Est Claudio
How Precious is Thy Lovingkindness Daniel Pinkham
I Love Alas! I Love Thee Thomas Morley
Ich weiss mir ein Meidlein Orlande de Lassus
If Luck and I Should Meet Madrigal Halsey Stevens
If Ye Love Me, Keep My Commandments Thomas Tallis
Il est be lest bon Pierre Passereau
in Just-spring Monte Tubb
In Spring Franz Schubert
In the Merry Spring Thomas Ravenscroft
In voce exultationis Guiseppe Pitoni
It Was a Lover and His Lass Theron Kirk
Jägerleid Robert Schumann
Je Pleure Claude Le Jeune
Jenny Kissed Me Kirke Mechem
133
Jig for Voices Alec Rowley
Julia’s Voice Kirche Mechem
“Kyrie” from Hammarskjold Prayer Eskil Hemberg
“Kyrie” from Missa Pnage Lingua Josquin des Prez
Kyrie Eleison Tomas Luis de Victoria
Lord, How Long Wilt Thou Be Angry Henry Purcell
La La La, Je Ne L’ose Dire Pierre Certon
La Espero Andrzej Koszewski
La Tête Me Fait Si Grand Mal Anonymous
Laboravi Clamans Jean-Philippe Rameau
Lady, As Thy Fair Swan Halsey Stevens
Lady, Your Eie Thomas Weelkes
Las Agachadas Aaron Copland
Lasciatemi Morire Claudio Monteverdi
Laudate Jehovam Georg Philipp Telemann
Le Belle se sied au pied de la tour Francis Poulenc
Le Chant des Oiseaux Clement Janequin
Le Mois de Mai arr. Halsey Stevens
Let It Be Forgotten Kirche Mechem
Let Them Neglect Thy Glory Samuel Holyoke
Liebeslieder Walzer Johannes Brahms
Like as a Culver on the Barèd Bough Halsey Stevens
Long Have the Shepherds Sung This Song Thomas Greaves
Lullaby Korean Carol
Lullay My Liking Gustav Holst
Magnificat Halsey Stevens
Magnification of the Nativity arr. Peter S. Michaelides
Mary, Molly and June Vaclav Nelhybel
Mary’s Little Boy Child West Indies Carol
Mass Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John Gustav Holst
“May God the Wit Inspire” from The Fairy Queen Henry Purcell
Mein Herz in steten treuen Arnold Schoenberg
Messa d’oggi Eskil Hemberg
Misericordias Domini Francesco Durante
Misericordias Domini Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mon Coeur se recommende á vous Orlandus Lassus
Mori quasi il mio core Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrin
Motet, Op. 29 Johannes Brahms
Music, Spread Thy Voice Around George Frideric Handel
Musette George Fredric Handel
Music, Spread Thy Voice Around George Fredric Handel
My Dearest, My Fairest Henry Purcell
My Heart, It Seemed, Was Dying Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
My True-Love Hath My Heart Jean Berger
Neckereien Johannes Brahms
Noche oscura del Alma Carlos Surinach
134
Now Sing We All This Day Hans Leo Hassler
Nun danket alle Gott Johann Pachelbel
O Care, Thou Wilt Despatch Me Thomas Weelkes
O Clap Your Hands Henry Woodward
O God, Thou Faithful God Johannes Brahms
O Lady Fair Orlando di Lasso
O Maria Mater Gratiae Giovanni Battista Crivelli
O Mistress Mine Robert Baksa
O Musica Penrl
O Rex Gloriae Luca Marenzio
O Spotless Rose Herbert Howells
O Stay Sweet Love John Farmer
On Our Street Senhor Brandão
On the Plains Thomas Weelkes
On the Shortness of Human Life Gordon Binkherd
Pilons l’orge Francis Poulenc
Psalm XXXVIII Louis Bourgeois
Qui S’y Frotte, S’y Pique Orlando di Lasso
Rest, Sweet Nymphs Francis Pilkington
Revecy Venir du Printans Claude le Jeune
Riqui, Riqui, Riqurran Venezuelan Folk Song
Sam was a Man Jimmie’s got a goil Vincent Persichetti
Salvator Mundi John Blow
“Sanctus” from Mass Paul Hindemith
“Sanctus” from Mass of Texture Joseph Ott
Say, Now Ye Lovely Social Band Early American Folk Song
Scaramella Josquin des Prez
Scarborough Fair arr. Henderson
Scherzo for Spring Robert Washburn
Sempre mi ride sta Adrian Willaert
Serenity Charles Ives
Sie ist mir lieb’ Michael Praetorius
Sigh No More, Ladies Robert Washburn
Sing, Love is Blind Martin Peerson
Sir Robin Hood Thomas Weelkes
So Ben Mi Ch’á Bon Tempo Orazio Vecchi
Song of Innocence Earl George
“Song of the Rainchant” from Indianisches Regenlied Ellis Kohs
“Sound the Trumpet” from Come Ye Sons of Art Henry Purcell
Stabat Mater Antonio Caldara
Stay Sweet Love John Farmer
St. Matthew Passion Johann Sebastian Bach
Stabat Mater Antonio Caldara
Sure on This Shining Night Samuel Barber
Sweet Kate Robert Jones
Sweet Suffolk Owl Thomas Vauter
Tanzen und Springen Hans Leo Hassler
135
The Cat Senhor Brandão
The Cuckoo Johann Stephanie
The Creation Tom Scott
The Dove Descending Breaks Igor Stravinsky
The Hunter arr. Henderson
The Lament of David Daniel Pinkham
The Last Words of David Randall Thompson
The Leaf Daniel Pinkham
The Living Flame of Love Norma Beecroft
The Match Sellers Adriano Banchieri
The Pedlar Traditional
The Shepherd and His Love Kirke Mechem
The Shepherds Had an Angel Maurice Besley
The Strings of the Guitar Senhor Brandão
Though Philomela Lost Her Love Thomas Morley
Though Amaryllis Dance William Byrd
Thought That Love Had Been a Boy William Byrd
Three Gypsy Songs Johannes Brahms
Three Hungarian Folk Songs Béla Bartók
Three Madrigals Emma Lou Diemer
Three Songs of the Navajo Ellis Kohs
Thus Saith My Cloris John Wilbye
To Be Sung on the Water Samuel Barber
To Bethlehem Singing arr. H.R. Wilson
Too Much I Once Lamented Thomas Thomkins
Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day Jonathan Willcocks
Tongue of Wood Jack Boyd
Totentanz Hugo Distler
Two Motets Heinz Werner Zimmermann
Two Motets: “Et Incarnatus Est,” “Crucifixus” Francesco Durante
“Two Songs” from Honey and Salt Robert Starer
Un Jour, Robin Claude de Sermisy
“Under the Willow Tree” from Vanessa Samuel Barber
Valse Ernst Toch
Vedrassi prima senza luce il sole Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Viva Tutti 18
th
Century Glee
Waldesnacht Johannes Brahms
Weep O Mine Eyes John Bennet
Weepe O Mine Eyes Halsey Stevens
What Saith My Dainty Darling? Thomas Morley
When to Her Lute Corinna Sings Harris
Wind, Gentle Evergreen Ray Henderson
Winds of May Kirke Mechem
Won’t You Buy My Sweet Blooming Lavender arr. Ray Henderson
You Say There is No Love Kirke Mechem
You Stole My Love Walter Cecil MacFarren
Ya Viene la Vieja arr. Parker-Shaw
136
Yaqui Cradle Song Luis Sandi
Yver, nous n’estes qu’un villain Claude Debussy
Zanni Orlando di Lasso
Zither Carol Czech Folk Song
Zum Schluss Johannes Brahms
Zuversicht Robert Schumann
137
APPENDIX B: “DONA NOBIS PACEM” SCORE
“Dona Nobis Pacem” was composed by Charles Hirt for Europe Cantat VI held in
1976, and was published by Möseler Verlag. The score is contained in the Charles C. Hirt
Collection at the American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 10, Series 25.

138

139

140

141
APPENDIX C: SELECTED COURSE MATERIALS
BY CHARLES C. HIRT

Reprinted from original materials.

Course Title: Choral Development Course Number: MuEd 441

Instructor: Hirt

I. Course Objectives:

A sequel to MuEd 402, this course is designed to regard choral development in its fullest
implications. It is hoped hereby to train the student to develop his own methodology, and his
ability to meet and solve the many unpredictable problems which may arise within the kinds
of choral ensembles for which he may ultimately be responsible. The course is intended to
improve the student’s knowledge of the voice in ensemble, his understanding of choral
development through discreet use of choral literature, his knowledge of choral styles, and his
ability to employ psychology and empathy for achieving choral excellence.

II. Content:

1) A review and discussion of areas in choral development listed under II 3 of MuEd 402,
i.e. balance, blend, dynamics, precision, diction, and intonation. However, rather than using
merely isolated vocalizes and techniques developed in these areas, as in MuEd 402, this
development is accomplished by reference to the varied demands of the choral score., e.g.: A)
Renaissance music and its implication for choral tone, etc.; B) Baroque and Classical music
and the discipline they impose on a choral ensemble; C) Romantic music and choral
sonorities, etc.; D) Contemporary music with its variety of demands and disciplines.
2) Each member of the class presents choral compositions in a mock rehearsal, preferably
those compositions usable in his own situation. His presentation is discussed by the class in
relation to his methods of solving technical problems, his psychology in rehearsal, and his
interpretation.
3) Growing out of the above evolves a discussion of advanced rehearsal techniques, criteria
for selection of repertoire, and as time permits, program building.
4) Since this class customarily is offered in the spring, opportunity is taken for “field trips”
to adjudicate as a class several ACDA choral festivals, after which open class discussion and
evaluation is held.
5) At least one excellent choral ensemble is invited to a class meeting each semester for a
demonstration, e.g.; Jane Hardester’s El Camino Chorus.

Prerequisite: MuEd 402 or the equivalent.

142

CHORAL DEVELOPMENT
FALL 1973

SEPTEMBER
17 Introduction to
Course-Auditioning

19 Voice classification
Balance-Seating

24 BLEND

26 DICTION

OCTOBER 1 DICTION

3 INTONATION

8 DYNAMICS

10 PRECISION

15 CHORAL

DEVELOPMENT
THROUGH
LITERATURE

17 PLAINSONG

24 RENAISSANCE

29 RENAISSANCE
and Repertoire

31 BAROQUE

NOVEMBER
5 BAROQUE
and Repertoire

7 SYNTHESIS
Class Conducting

12 CLASSIC

14 ROMANTIC

19 ROMANTIC
and Repertoire

21 NEO. CLASSIC

26 CONTEMPORARY

28 CONTEMPORARY

DECEMBER 3 Avante garde-
aleatoric

5 (SCCS) VAIL

10 Avante garde-
electronic

12 (SCCS)
SOMERVILLE

17 Avante garde-
non-verbal

19 Avante-garde-
non-verbal

JANUARY 7 SYNTHESIS
Class Conducting

9 SYNTHESIS
Class Conducting

14 REVIEW

JANUARY 21 FINAL
143
Choral Conducting III

A TAXONOMICAL CONTINUA SEQUENCE OF CHORAL CONDUCTING SKILLS**

FOUR MAJOR AREAS Skills in ascending order of complexity

TECHNICAL CONDUCTING
SKILLS 1. good posture
2. fundamental patterns clear and economical
3. clear attacks and releases
4. clear handling of fermatas
5. clear handling of dynamics
6. staccato and legato passages delineated
7. good cuing motions
8. expressive shaping of gestures
9. clear tempo changes
10. clear dynamic changes
11. appropriate facial expressions
12. communicating the flow and pull of a phrase

IMAGE OF THE PIECE 1. correct pitches, tempo, and dynamics
2. ideas about balance and blend
3. valid stylistic interpretation
4. concept of compositional devices
5. concept of phrase relationships
6. concept of how the music interacts with the poetry

EVALUATING THE PIECE 1. identify incorrect pitches
AS IT SOUNDS 2. identify intonation problems
3. correct diction
4. correct balance and blend
5. evaluating stylistic interpretation
6. identifying factors that inhibit meaningful text flow

VERBAL AND OTHER 1. quick, clear verbal directions
NON-CONDUCTING 2. good pacing
SKILLS 3. maintain sympathy and respect of singers
4. teach concepts, not just notes
5. empathize with the singers
6. be an imaginative leader
7. use of word-images
8. ability to create a creative climate
9. inspire performers

**nonisomorphic

144
APPENDIX D: THE CHORAL CONDUCTOR: A COMPENDIUM OF HIS ART,
BOOK OUTLINE

The subsequent pages contain a detailed outline of the book The Choral Conductor: A
Compendium of His Art that Charles Hirt intended to complete and have published by Dodd,
Meade and Company. To this day, the book remains unfinished. The outline is a part of Hirt’s
book materials that reside in the Charles C. Hirt Collection at the American Choral Directors
Association Archives, Box 6, Series 15.

145
146

147

148

149

150

151

152

153

154

155

156

157

158

159

160

161

162

163
APPENDIX E: BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH AND SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS

The following materials contain biographical information about Charles C. Hirt and are housed in
the Charles C. Hirt Collection at the American Choral Directors Association Archives, Box 5,
Series 11.

164

165

166
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS

167

168

169

170

171
APPENDIX F: INTERVIEW WITH DONALD BRINEGAR

DONALD BRINEGAR
October 30, 2012
8:30 a.m.
Telephone Interview

SHAWNA STEWART. Hi, Don. This is Shawna.

DON BRINEGAR. Yeah, hello.

SHAWNA STEWART. Can you hear me okay?

DON BRINEGAR. Yes, I sure can.

SHAWNA STEWART. Great! Are you traveling this morning?

DON BRINEGAR. I am.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. Well, we’ll see how cell phone-to-cell phone recording
does; hope it works.

DON BRINEGAR. All right.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, again, thank you so much for being willing to do this. It’s
been a real privilege to get to know Dr. Hirt through his students, and I get to meet with Dr. Vail
on Thursday.

DON BRINEGAR. Oh great.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. So our interview – it’s written so that it would last about
forty-five minutes. Some of them have lasted two hours (like with Darlene Hatcher, which was
fun). So I have prepared ten questions. Some of them are very basic. I’d like you to feel free to
answer them in any way you want and to take a right turn if you feel like there’s information
that’s really pertinent to what I want to know and discover and hopefully the world can discover
about Dr. Hirt. So feel free just to answer in any way you’d like.

DON BRINEGAR. Okie dokie.

SHAWNA STEWART. All right. Our first question is, “Would you please state your
name and your present position or positions and how long you’ve been there?”

DON BRINEGAR. Donald Brinegar. I’ve been at Pasadena City College for thirty-four
years as a Professor of Music, Director of Choral Studies, and Coordinator of the Music
Department, and an Adjunct Professor of Choral Conducting and Choral Voice at USC, and I’m
co-director of the Summer Master of Music in Choral Conducting program at Cal State LA.

172
SHAWNA STEWART. All right. So in other words, you have lots of free time on your
hands.

DON BRINEGAR. Oodles of free time.
SHAWNA STEWART. [Laughs] Would you state what degree or degrees you received
from USC under Dr. Hirt and what year?

DON BRINEGAR. I received a Bachelor of Music Education while being in the
Chamber Singers and Dr. Hirt’s teaching assistant. The year I left SC was ‘73. The year the
degree was granted was ‘74 as part of a credential program that I have taken.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wonderful! What years did you sing in the Chamber Singers?

DON BRINEGAR. My first go-around was ’70 to ’73. So that was three years – two of
the years I was the assistant. He actually had two assistants at the time: Joel Pressman was his
business manager and I was the president, assistant conductor.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. Well, from your point of view, what are the significant
contributions that Dr. Hirt made to USC as an institution?

DON BRINEGAR. Well, he kind of invented the department. He came, I believe, in the
’40s. Typical of that time, they had pretty free rein to create what they wanted to create. I think he
developed the position he later became chair of. He was very creative and always thinking outside
the box. He was very influential in Southern California in bringing in folks from the outside. He
was very interested in seeing people collaborate together and kind of join forces, as it were, and
so SC kind of became a center for that kind of thinking and that kind of approach, with Charles
leading the charge in the ’50s. It wasn’t until the 1960s that he actually got some assistance on
that. He was pretty much doing it all by himself. I had a chance to talk to Lucy quite a bit, and she
talked about how large his choirs had gotten and how many people were involved and kind of the
sense of spirit and community that Charles is famous for creating. At that time [unintelligible] it
came out of the spirit of being in church music with choral music, and then he developed it into a
course for the choral music and church music departments. It’s quite something to really kind of
invent the wheel as it were.

SHAWNA STEWART. Did you ever talk to Dr. Hirt or Lucy about the evolution of his
vision for the growth of the department?

DON BRINEGAR. I guess not in so many words. I did get chances in quite a bit of time
with the Hirts when I did the CD project (kind of a retrospective of the years of Charles Hirt at
USC) by going back and finding recordings and compilations. I’d go over to the house and we’d
listen to recordings. I think I put 240 samples together for them on cassettes, and it was really
kind of a neat project because they really poured their heart and soul into it – which is just the
way the Hirts operated. He was kind of always on high speed, had a lot of energy, was a “get
things done” kind of guy. Even when I came to the Music Education Department, he had been
responsible for hiring the person who’s head of the secondary teacher credentialing program, Bill
Triplett. He asked at one time if he could be the dean of the department, but it was all for choral
music kind of. I can tell Lucy, of course, had great pride in his accomplishment, because at that
173
time, if you looked around Southern California, there really wasn’t much else as a center for the
study of choral music. For instance, there were some great liberal arts colleges, not the least of
which were Whittier and Occidental and Pomona, and places that all had a long liberal arts
tradition, but no place that you could actually focus into a deep study of the art itself and then get
granted a degree in that area.
I think what occurred to me as a music education major when I came to SC is that they
changed the music education major from having an emphasis on a particular instrument or voice
(and then you get your degree also on this in education) to purely a Bachelor of Music Education.
I was pleased that they’re still integrated in performing it in a high-end ensemble, taking voice
lessons and doing the things that became the hallmark of SC has been known for – that is, a high
level of performance, teachers teaching you how to teach well and developing your level of
musicianship, and then also emphasis on literature and history. That’s been kind of the hallmark
of the program from the time Charles developed it.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. As a point of clarification, when you were speaking about
going over to their house, you said he was always on a high or something. I missed those few
words.

DON BRINEGAR. No, he was just always so very enthusiastic – even in the days of Bill
Hall. He was kind of a high-speed guy. He was always making something happen and creating
something, organizing something. I mean, my goodness, he’s responsible for CCG [Choral
Conductors Guild, SCVA [Southern California Vocal Association], ACDA [American Choral
Directors Association], International Choral Federation – I mean, it goes on and on, the interests
that this man had and, of course his church work, which was phenomenally well-known. He was
quite something.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow. What drew you to USC?

DON BRINEGAR. Well, I had gone to the University of Redlands. I had actually
auditioned at SC, at UC Irvine, and University of Redlands. Redlands is the only school that
clearly said to me I could be both a trumpet player and a singer. It seemed that USC was
interested but not all that interested. I chose Redlands and it was a great university. I had a great
year there and an opportunity to do a lot of things. It didn’t feel very competitive to me, so I
transferred to Citrus College. When I transferred, the director there was someone I’d met through
a Summer Music Camp up at Idyllwild (the Idyllwild music camp was filled with SC folks);
almost all the counselors and the folks who were sectional leaders were SC students, so I got a
pretty good earful of the kind of things they were doing and the opportunities. Then when I went
to Citrus, the director there said, “The place for you to go is USC and to study with Charles Hirt
and hopefully study voice with William Vennard, and I got to do those things. I just had one year
in Citrus and then went to USC for my junior year.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. And I’m sorry – you completed your DMA there as well?

DON BRINEGAR. No, I’m ABD.

SHAWNA STEWART. ABD, okay.

174
DON BRINEGAR. I did get a master’s degree in ’85 where I was named outstanding
graduate in the School of Music, master’s degree level with Rod Eichenberger, and I was his
assistant for two years. So I have an interesting perspective because I was Hirt’s assistant for two
years and I was Eichenberger’s assistant for two years, and so it was really interesting to see the
difference in the way the groups were organized and how they went about their business. In the
days I was in the Chamber Singers, we had sixteen members for two years. In my last year, there
were fifteen members – three sopranos and four to each of the other sections. Then with
Eichenberger we were twenty-four, so there was a whole different feeling.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah, definitely.

DON BRINEGAR. The group, I think, had more people.

SHAWNA STEWART. Why did he take it down to fifteen that year?

DON BRINEGAR. We were singing at the National Convention in ’73 and I think he just
wanted to make sure he had the very best singers and he did not find another soprano that’s really
good, but the sopranos we had were Julia Moyer, Gloria Grace (Gigi) Prosper, who was a very
well-known commercial artist and film person, and Jane Thorngren. In fact, I was on her audition
panel, and it was one of the best auditions I had ever heard. She sang everything flawlessly with
musicality and in several languages. She spoke three or four languages, which was insanely
amazing. Then Jane Thorngren who has gone on to a major singing career in New York (City
Opera), was featured on the “Northwest Journey” album of Lauridsen as the featured soprano
(Mid-Winter Songs). Jane was just a consummate musician. She was finishing her master’s in
voice. I think Julia was finishing her bachelor’s and Gloria was working on her doctorate, so it
was an interesting section. That third year of my tenure in Chamber Singers, Don Crockett was
singing tenor (he, of course, now is the chair of the Theory and Composition Department),
myself, John Mack (who substituted and actually came on tour with us and played French horn),
and we had Joel Pressman singing bass. Dave Morales has gone on to a major career in church
music in Northern California. Shirley Close is on the faculty at Florida State and has had a major
career as an opera singer. I mean, it goes on and on with that group. They were just people with a
lot of intelligence and talent, and Hirt had the ability to bring that all together. We gave a
significant performance at the ’73 convention. Many people said our Chamber Singers
performance set a new standard for choral performance at a choral conference.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow. What do you think was so remarkable about it?

DON BRINEGAR. The range of literature. I mean an absolute and huge variety of
literature from chant to Renaissance music to Telemann, world-class or romantic, contemporary
to atonal. I mean, the ensemble in an hour covered practically everything, and his point was (and
it’s really stuck with me rather profoundly) at that time, in 1973, there were two kinds of schools
of thought about choral music. You had the Westminster Choir College and you had the St. Olaf
and the variety of influences of approach to choral music that were based on a particular kind of
sound or a sound ideal and [unintelligible] attention to a certain kind of literature done in a
particular stylistic way. Hirt’s theory was that, well, we should be eclectic in an ensemble. The
human instrument is incredibly flexible. So when you were asked to sing with a big sound for
certain pieces, you should have a big sound. When you’re asked to have a thin, vibrato-less
175
sound, you should have thin vibratos. He wanted to demonstrate that the colors in the timbres and
the ideas that you create in a choir come from the music. They are not imposed on the music. It’s
hard to believe from this point in time what a radical concept that was. [laughs] That was not the
common thinking.

SHAWNA STEWART. Do you have any idea where it came from?

DON BRINEGAR. Well, yeah. I think it was, first of all, his upbringing with Smallman’s
involvement at the Congregational church (my family came from that church). So I have a history
in connection all the way back to that. Howard Swan was involved in that and Charles Hirt was
involved in that, and so the image of a large church program with a solo/quartet in doing major
works and then taking early sacred music – I think that just kind of got into his psyche very early
on. He was a good singer himself. He could play the guitar. He played trumpet. Something that
seems to be missing, by the way, in things I’ve read about Charles is that he taught for a time in
Corona. He taught pretty much a lot of migrant workers. Lucy was saying just how he had
galvanized them into a choir but he did it by using folk music. I think of those kinds of things
when I think of his influence – and we never did a concert without world music in it. No one was
doing that. We didn’t do a concert that didn’t cover a wide range of colors in palettes, and I think
that when you bring in – I mean he had Robert Shaw come in and guest lecture. He had John
Finley Williamson come and guest lecture, but he was interested in the ideas. He was interested in
the literature itself. I probably never met a man who with few resources to study as we have
today, and you think of the books we can go to to find out about style, very few resources intuited
how the music should be done in a very stylistic way. When you go back and listen to his
recordings, you’ll realize just how on the mark he was, especially with the groups in the early
’70s. A group in the early ’60s had a very kind of robust, operatic sound. I mean, just amazing
[unintelligible] the group that traveled abroad for three months. [Unintelligible]
I won’t say who said it, but one of the singers became very concerned in ’65 that almost
everybody was leaving the group. In that next year there was a big influx of freshmen – Scott
Bowen, Jim Shepard, Rhonda Miller, Jane Campbell – a bunch of folks came in as freshmen, and
he never had freshmen in the group. And the guy comes in and says, “Dr. Hirt, what are we going
to do? Everybody’s leaving,” and Charles says, “Well, I’ll still be here.” [Laughter] The utter
confidence the man had and I think it had a profound influence on me – that just give me some
human beings and I’ll work them into a choir. I think that was kind of just [unintelligible] that
wherever there were going to be human beings, he just had to find a way to get them to sing and
to participate and to read. And although, yeah, you get spoiled in a place like SC – working with
some very, very talented folks – he never lost this ability to work with people of modest abilities,
and that was witnessed in his ability to work with these large groups and these honor choirs and
kind of whip them into shape real fast to the surprise of everybody because that was not common
at that time. So a huge personality with a great grounding in the aesthetic of literature – and
literature as it dictates to the ensemble a color, tone or the timbres, the approach to vocalism. I
really heard that very loudly and clearly when he said that in class. It very much impressed me
that I was not bringing a technique to the music. I was learning a technique from the music.
That’s been the kind of cornerstone of my philosophy ever since.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right. Just one moment; let me look though my notes here real
quick.

176
DON BRINEGAR. Sure.

SHAWNA STEWART. Thanks. So I believe we’ve already talked a lot about it but I’ll
still pose the question. What techniques in addition to what you’ve talked about still stand out to
you? We think about traditional things, reading choral tone, blend, balance, rhythm, those kinds
of things. What techniques still stand out to you today?

DON BRINEGAR. He had a real gift of language, ability to, in my mind, take fairly
abstract notions and ideas and make them kind of clear and plain to you. I would even say, at
least from my point of view back as a twenty-, twenty-one-, twenty-two-year-old that… He came
under some criticism for his conducting style. I mean, his arms were very active and there’s lots
of motion and movement. But as I sat there and watched him, I saw my musical line being
unfolded physically, and he would often talk about the “mind wills it, the body does it.” I think he
was constantly looking within gestures of musical material, a voice in embodying that in gestures
physically. So he was an early proponent of thinking about the music to create a physical field
and then represent that, versus the notion that you were conducting per se prescribed patterns and
imposing them on the music. It’s kind of like Conducting 101. You come in the class. You learn
that there’s a two-pattern, a three-pattern, and a four-pattern. You practice those until they look
like two, three, or four, but I think Hirt would say today (in fact, he did say this to him when I
was talking with him in the living room), but does that look like any music that you know?
[Laughs] But that’s kind of my premise in my conducting class at USC, because we should have
made certain basic skill sets but at the same time, not what we impose on the music. We look for
opportunities to use them within the music, but it is the music itself that would suggest to us the
gestures. So he could have a very huge palette of physical things that as I said, as a singer, I felt
motivated for my voice to unfold the musical ideas.
Now, I sat next to some people who felt that that was just too much and they were too
busy and weren’t interested in that, but for me, it sure has made my music-music making much
more joyful and I think such an [unintelligible] experience. I think in the long run, research will
show that the greatest of our conductors have a level of language in their gestures which
transcends obvious patterns, that there’s a more subtle language going on. I think Hirt was very
much all over that. I had long discussions with several conductors about this who felt his
conducting was kind of all over the map. In fact, after we sang in ’73, Joel and I, Jane, and a gal
by the name of Fran White, who is now at the LA Philharmonic as a publicist, had sung for
Robert Shaw, and Shaw’s assistant was Clayton Krehbiel, who was at that time at Florida State.
He came up to us and said, “Oh my gosh, guys, that was a remarkable concert. How could you do
that with that guy making that nonsense at the front?” I said, “Well, that nonsense is the thing that
makes us sing.” [Laughs]

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow.

DON BRINEGAR. It’s just being odd to me how people look for certain things that are
not there. Therefore, what you just did doesn’t exist.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right.

DON BRINEGAR. I mean, that was going on. [Laughs] Do you not have ears or it was
like, it’s like, use your ears and it’s one of the old problems of “Should you conduct with your left
177
hand? Should you not?” I mean, people have religious fervor over this and I think it makes no
difference. I mean, it makes a difference in terms of quality of sound, and I can prove that in
demonstration, but no one notices unless you’re awkward. If you’re awkward, everybody notices
everything. If you’re not, they just think it’s amazing. I never thought of Charles as awkward as
much as I thought of him as motivating for me to evoke the best of the sound that came from the
music. The second thing I’ll tell you about that is that no two performances of any piece were
ever the same. I could use one of the originators of the idea that you work hard and you polish
and you get to a high level of understanding a piece, but every performance is an opportunity to
improvise in that moment with your audience. [Unintelligible] led me to ideas. In my hierarchy of
things, I think improvisation is our highest calling in our business, and it’s been a constant
disappointment to me to go to conventions and hear choirs that are polished to a point that they
can’t change a thing. They can’t move a crescendo to another place. They cannot express a word
in a new depth of tone because they’re not making music; they are regurgitating music. I think
Hirt was very much about always creating. So therefore, I’ll tell you this: the best concert I ever
sang in was under the direction of Charles, and the worst concert I ever sang was with Charles. I
mean, we did a concert before we went to convention that was just a disaster. On every level
artistically. [Unintelligible]. A lot of people that were there just said, “Are you going to do all
right at the convention?” I said, “Yes, it’s early in the season.” This was October. When we came
back from convention, one of the people that attended our October concert said, “That was UN-
BE-LIEVABLE,” and I said, “Well, we’ve had a little time to work the concert out.”

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow. How did he keep it alive? How did you keep it alive?

DON BRINEGAR. Well, I think that it’s a spirit of having the score with you and
realizing that you could continue to look more deeply in it. Or that, as you are actively listening
while you’re performing, you find other things that are profoundly important in the conversation.
Let’s say that you and I just said we’re going to talk about some fine points of politics or religion
for the next month, and each time we come back, we bring another level of information, which in
Hirt’s world, that would mean “You’ve been living.” You’re bringing your experiences of the
world into that. You know this is true as a choral conductor – that no kid arrives at the rehearsal
the same as they were the day before – and he had a way of galvanizing that through the music
into what I would describe as a spiritual experience or as what I would describe as a highly
musical experience. And sometimes that didn’t galvanize. Sometimes that didn’t come together,
and he was risking the failure of that because the reward for doing it well was just way more, had
a much more powerful and lasting effect than constantly doing the polished performance that had
no dimension of real-time music-making, and he was willing to risk that. So not everything was
clean and neat and pretty. Sometimes it’s messy. That became, again, a major influence of my life
– that I didn’t have to scrub things clean of its humanness out of fear that someone would notice
that someone put a stray “T” on somewhere. [Laughs] Because someone had a personal moment
or wasn’t paying attention. It wasn’t a matter of attentiveness; it was a matter of kind of
galvanizing us to that very special place.
We had a concert like that in Hawaii. This was – I want to say ’72. Joel Pressman did this
incredible job of organizing a two-and-a-half-week tour to Hawaii. We went into this theatre and
performed and the first half was not pretty. It was one of those everybody’s kind of off in space
and he’s pounding the table trying to get us back together. Charles kind of walked off stage angry
and I saw Lucy walking away and trying to calm him down. I was like, “Come on, gang; let’s get
our stuff together here.” We walked down. I think we started the second half with the Barber “To
178
Be Sung on the Water,” you know with “Twelfth Night,” I think it’s Op. 92 of Barber. He just
ripped the piece. When they finished the audience started to applaud which was, oh I’d say it
must have been five or six seconds after the last note melted away and Hirt had put his hands
down. The audience exploded. I mean, just exploded with response. We all just felt this incredible
surge of energy, and the group … what happened after that was just magic. Everything we did
could not have been more flawless. At the time, he said, “Well, it was a strange experience
because I actually could feel myself stepping out of myself and watching the group perform this
music and that I could feel the spirit moving among the group. I just felt like I was having an out-
of-body or what I describe as totally in-body experience. He was having a moment where we just
all connected on all levels. We walked out of there, really having felt that we’d communicated to
a not very sophisticated audience. These were not folks of huge musical backgrounds and we
were singing a pretty sophisticated set of music, and yet it communicated and people received it. I
don’t remember how many encores we did but there was a truckload.
We were even making up encores on tour. Remember, John Mack and Jane Thorngren
and Don Crockett got together. Don was the guitarist and they made up this incredible
arrangement of “Amazing Grace.” It was so gorgeous. We put together a barbershop quartet with
Joel Pressman and John Mack, myself, and Phil Hooper. We’ve got a recording of it; it’s just
stunning. I mean we did “Coney Island Baby.” I mean, just that kind of eclecticism and openness
to communicating to an audience and giving them a great experience with the choral art, and I
think Hirt was just willing to risk walking out and saying, “Let’s find out where we are today.
Let’s find out who we are today.” Not unlike what a great athletic team does – they have their set
plays but who knows how it’s all going to work out right.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right. It’s just inspiring listening to it. I mean, it’s incredible.

DON BRINEGAR. You could tell the profound influence on me – and we’re talking
about forty years ago.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right. It’s amazing. Do you have any perspective that you could
share on his philosophy on the power of music? Several people have referenced Dr. Hirt’s belief
in music’s sort of transcendental efficacy. What did he really believe about the power of music?

DON BRINEGAR. Well, I mean, I think that’s well said. I do think that he believed it
could take us to places that we can’t experience in any other realm. I think he was one that got me
thinking about the holistic aspect of music as involving all my intellect and my spirit and my
physicality, and then when we have this common experience of doing it together, there is
something synergistic about that experience that transcends up. I think synergy was a word that I
came away from SC as understanding that when we put two bodies of energy together, we can
have a sum greater than the total of the two, which was impossible in physics but he believed is
possible in music. He would constantly, Shawna, talk about music as three-dimensional. He often
had the image of a sound as having dimensions to it. I’ve really spent a lot of time in my life
investigating the feeling of that. When people hear the sound that I create, they call it kind of the
sonic hug – that the sound surrounds you and kind of gives you a little gentle hug. I really do
think that Hirt influenced me to follow through on that particular approach to vocalism. He
claimed, when I talked to him personally, that he didn’t quite know what I was talking about.
[Laughs] I said, “But, Charles, I learned it from you.” I was talking about the tuning things and all
of these things. He said, “Where did you learn these things?” I said, “Well, I thought I got the
179
concepts following through on these from you, but correct me if I’m wrong.” [Laughs] There’s
just a way the man had of inciting a riot in your mind of investigation because he just seemed so
passionate about … not on life but about this opportunity to make sound together and do it
through this great literature, and he was very much a composer advocate. We had a chance to do
premieres of Halsey Stevens, whose office is right around the corner from us. So every once in a
while he would pop his head in [unintelligible]. I know he would have been a champion of all the
current composers at SC right now, because that was just his nature. He wanted to see them get
out there and be expressive – and he was a champion of doing this. I know for a fact that it was
the cornerstone of his very existence.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow. That’s amazing.

DON BRINEGAR. When he was in college, did anybody say he had a group? He had a
group that went out and made money.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, he did?

DON BRINEGAR. Yeah. It was a group called … I want to say it was Chuck Hirt. but I
think it was Charles Hirt and the Black Cat Syncopators. They were kind of a jazz, Black Cat
Syncopators.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, my goodness.

DON BRINEGAR. This is a group he had in college. The sidebar was that Lucy
Thompson was at Occidental College and Lucy had a roommate. Turns out that I find this out
many years later – her roommate Corinne and my dad went out for a date, and my dad actually
met Lucy Thompson when she was at Oxy and my dad was a student at Chapman College. I
mean, the connections are just obscene. I know. We sat there one night and finally figured out this
whole circle, and then Lucy said, “I’ve met your father. I can remember when I met him.” It was
like really weird. [Laughs] But they were talking about things they did in college, and so I got to
my computer and I made the little poster for him and took it to him. I think it was Chuck Hirt, but
it could have been Charles Hirt and his Black Cat Syncopators. [Laughs]

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow. Are you aware of any recordings or any writings on that?

DON BRINEGAR. No. There will be no recordings. Writings, I don’t think so. Maybe
his daughter would know about it, but I don’t. I just remember we talked about it that night and
brought this little sign over and gave it to him. I’ll be glad. I made a little poster so that they could
put it up. He laughed and laughed and laughed about it.

SHAWNA STEWART. And you said they did mainly jazz music?

DON BRINEGAR. Yeah. It kind of covers the music of the ’20s and ’30s. He was a
trumpet player so he had some experience. So we share that kind of common ground because I
went to college to major in trumpet, and that’s kind of where [unintelligible] started.

180
SHAWNA STEWART. Amazing. What of his philosophies and techniques do you still
carry with you today? Then how, if at all, has it changed in your hands?

DON BRINEGAR. First of all, rehearsals were interesting, motivating; well, by the time
I got there, they became full of laughter. It’s pretty hard not to be full of laughter when you got a
Joel Pressman and a Don Brinegar constantly pushing your button, and we were. We caught
every joke and laughed, and he found it kind of charming that people forty years his junior were
catching his very, very deep sense of wit, sometimes even a sarcasm. I’ve certainly borrowed his
sense of having fun with it, being serious, but at same time having fun. I certainly think a lot of
my sound ideal was started by his notion of how you create ensemble, not by what you take away
but by what you put into sound. I think at that time, people were talking about, you take the
vibrato out and you take dah, dah, dah out, and you take this out, but he was talking about what
you put into it. He certainly got me to think very long and hard about the whole intonation…

[Audio gap due to phone disconnection. Subsequent commentary unrelated to the interview was
omitted at the discretion of the interviewer.]

DON BRINEGAR. We very often would start rehearsal with a pitch; then we would not
refresh it. We were really responsible for kind of taking on pitch. We very often had perfect
pitchers in there. We did an awful lot of a cappella singing. So I remember my mind grinding on
this issue. And so in later years, I was over at the house talking about the tuning principles, and I
just was blown away by not only this utter fascination but the detail of his ability to understand
and comprehend and contribute continuously even though he was not in great health. I mean, he
just had a mind that was wanting to continue to refine that. His statement was, “Gosh, I wish I’d
known this when I was teaching.” I said, “Well, you did. All I’m adding to it is labeling things
that I think you intuited and were doing anyway.” I can remember in Choral Development class
we were talking about overtones and he was creating them and we were trying to listen for them.
I could barely hear them and I went to Dr. Hirt and said, “I don’t think I’ve got a good enough ear
for this.” “Ah, you do. You have a good enough ear.” “No, I really don’t.” So we went into
Chamber Singers rehearsal that day where we’re doing one of his Russian arrangements that he
had written and it (I think it was “Salvation is Created” by Chesnokov), and we get to the final
chord and I could hear a soprano singing a high C, and I whipped my head around to see which
soprano was doing that and he pointed his finger at me and said, “You DO hear it! That’s an
overtone.” [Laughter] Then I went, “Oh.” [Laughs] He just had that ability to sort things up so
that you had an opportunity to learn, and I think he had a real consciousness about that… I can
remember coming in to Chamber Singers and being scared to death. I mean, he could be a pretty
intimidating figure, and I didn’t come from a place where I much enjoyed being intimidated –
although that was fairly common in the era of the ’70s – see how big your personality and how
puffed out your chest could become, see how many people you could intimidate. I don’t come
from that spirit although I think a fair number of students say that I am, but I don’t try to be. I
think what I found in Hirt was just an unquenchable desire to know and he put that flame inside
me and so – you know…

[Audio gap due to phone disconnection. Subsequent commentary unrelated to the interview was
omitted at the discretion of the interviewer.]

181
DON BRINEGAR. I was basically saying he had a way of inciting in you an interest in
looking further – at least in me he did. My teaching of conducting or choral pedagogy or any of
those subjects is highly influenced by Charles’ high level of intellectual integrity. You don’t just
put opinions out there; you talk about subjects that you can back up by actual demonstration or
fact or research, and it kind of takes a lot of BS out of the discussion without making it less fun to
learn.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right. Speaking of the spiritual dimension, can you talk about
the ways, the nonmusical ways that he influenced you?

DON BRINEGAR. He was very demanding; not easy being his teaching assistant. If he
asked you to do it, he expected it to be done, and done now and done well. The experience I had
at the end, I know it’s a little self-serving, but he got pretty good at the time at the convention and
called me and said, “I cannot be in the rehearsals for the next two weeks. You have to get them
there.” So I took the last several rehearsals before the convention, and I was in fear of my life. I
was twenty-two years old and –

SHAWNA STEWART. And this is the ’73 convention?

DON BRINEGAR. Yes. So you gird up your loins and you come in the rehearsal armed
to do the best that you can. Kind of my approach was, “Oh, I’ll just clean up any messes there are
and kind of inspire the group to be on their game.” I think we had good rehearsals. I mean, I have
only a vague memory of it; I was in such fear of my life. What I was really fearful of was
bringing him a group that I had somehow diminished and somehow was not up to his standard.
So he came from his hotel room (he had been at the hotel now already a week), the Muehlebach
in Kansas City, and he came down to the rehearsals and [unintelligible] and turned to me and
said, “They sound phenomenal. Thank you very much.” And to say “Thank you” to me he says,
“Can I take you out for dinner tonight?” I said, “Well, thank you. I’d love to do that.” At the
dinner was Charles and Lucy, Catherine and Howard Swan, Roger Wagner, Father Trame, there’s
somebody else missing in this formula, but here I am, twenty-two years old sitting with the
luminaries of the choral world. I could not have been more thankful. So he was grateful, never
afraid to say thank you and give you the kind of recognition; and as far as I know, I don’t know if
anybody [unintelligible], he let me then conduct a piece at the concert in the spring, and that was
not a common thing in those days. I got to conduct Brahms’ “Warum” from his Opus 92, and all I
remember is that Jim Vail said, “Too fast. Too fast.” [Laughs] I learned that from Charles after
all. [Laughs] Charles loved that tempo.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, man. You know, thinking about a rehearsal, could you
outline a typical rehearsal? There might not be any typical, but generally, what do rehearsals look
like?

DON BRINEGAR. The literature would be on the board for the day, and he’s very, very
fast-paced. There was just kind of a fourfold approach. Usually the first piece was to warm up the
voice, to get the voice motivated. So we didn’t do warm-ups per se unless we had special retreats.
So we kind of launched right into it. I think we did an 8:00 in the morning choir; we would have
done vocalizing, but because we’re meeting at 1:00 in the afternoon, I think he felt like we were
awake enough. But he always talked about in Choral Ped that you use the first piece to kind of
182
wake up the voice and get the muscles going and then the second piece usually was something
newer or partially learned, or something you were in the process of learning. And then the
rehearsal would evolve itself around a piece that was new, sight-reading, or some aspect of
[unintelligible] that was new, and then the final groups of pieces usually were polishing things
that we already knew. So it tended to kind of always be a fourfold process. Distinctly know that
the first piece was to help us kind of get the voices in gear. He’s very sharp about putting
contrasting styles and ideas together –

[Audio gap due to phone disconnection. Subsequent commentary unrelated to the interview was
omitted at the discretion of the interviewer.]

DON BRINEGAR. I think he was very, very smart and very aware of the temperature of
the group in terms of their ability to stay on voice and stay on task. So he was willing to abandon
something when he felt like he was beating it up too much. I say the only thing pedagogically
from a rehearsal point of view that was challenging is that he was willing to work before a
concert for several hours and really tire you, I tell you. He rarely did a concert without a two-hour
warm-up and that could be a bit much.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow. Yes, our students these days would rebel, wouldn’t day?

DON BRINEGAR. Well, some people still do. I just don’t do it. I meet my kids right
before and say, “Are you ready to warm up? If not, make some noises and let’s go.” I just don’t.
They rebel.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. They do. I’m just going to take a second to look at my
notes again.

DON BRINEGAR. Sure.

SHAWNA STEWART. All right. There’s a quote that I found from him that says,
“Music performance should reflect the discrimination which recognizes the profundity of which a
composition relates to man and man to God.” I was just curious if that sort of philosophy ever
came through to the students. That’s pretty deep. Did that come through? Were you aware of
that? If so, how?

DON BRINEGAR. Oh, very much so. He was not shy about his faith system or his belief
system or where our powers come from and his sense that we have kind of a manifest destiny that
we reflect back to God what God has reflected in us, I think. That was very much at the root of
his philosophy. I think I would describe the process as not being preachy at SC. He was very
spiritual still, still very spiritually connected. You know, he had his days. [Laughs] He had his
days when it was tough sledding, and he would kind of beat you up a bit, but I heard that before I
got there that he was a much more intense person because he, well, was a little uptight about the
outcome, and with us he was just very generous with the laughter and very generous with having
a sense of joy in our rehearsal process. I really think he had come to peace with everything that he
was doing. I’m working with him in [unintelligible], and I studied with him when he was 62, so I
often think of what parts do I need to continue to work on the measure up and what parts do I
need to bring back into the spirit of the class at SC because I feel that presence with me all the
183
time. Yeah. I’m sure the students always understand the interesting position I’m in, having seen
every conductor at SC since the program was founded.

SHAWNA STEWART. Unbelievable.

DON BRINEGAR. Yeah, and having sung for all of them.

SHAWNA STEWART. That’s amazing. Wow.

DON BRINEGAR. So there’s a perspective you get from that.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. Regarding his leadership, what things were unique to him
that you really didn’t see exist in any other conductor?

DON BRINEGAR. Well, that’s a very interesting question. I guess I’d say that Charles
was well-suited to Hollywood. He always had a big personality. He could be just unbelievably
charming. He could also be very direct and kind of force you to measure up at times when you
didn’t always feel like it. He was unique in that he brought so many gifts to the table. He was a
fine musician. He was extremely well organized, albeit he had incredible support from Lucy in
helping him run the church program and the various things that he did. I got the sense that USC in
1970 was just a very unique place. Going through a peak transition at that time, I came right at
the transition, but you had Charles, Ralph Rush, John Crown, William Vennard, Gwendolyn
Koldofsky, and it just goes on and on – these luminaries that had become important in their fields
throughout the country if not the world. It’s like I say to the graduates, “Look at your cohort
because a lot of what you’re going to know, you’re going to learn from them.” I think that he,
among leaders, was a leader in his own field as others were leaders in their fields. He had one of
the best music educators, one of the best voice people, and one of the best historians. He had one
of the best teachers of piano, one of the first to develop on a collaboration program. I mean, they
were all there at the same time. I can’t help but think that there was kind of an incredible energy
that came around about inventing and becoming that comes from talent like that, and it was
competitive in the nicest of ways, but I never remember a disagreement between [unintelligible]
voice and choral. That didn’t happen until Vennard passed away, and Charles was very much into
the study of the voice all of that. So it’s very interesting that he exhibited a strong leadership for
the whole of the collegiate experience, while at the same time, I think he had a vision for what
our art could become that was very unique.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. Right. Could you contribute any stories that you know
about childhood influences, early music education influences that you’re aware of from either
him or Lucy?

DON BRINEGAR. I know that he was involved with John Smallman at the
Congregational Church. I know that had a major influence. I don’t know a lot of the childhood
history. I know his father was a grocer and supported him in his ability to make music, which
again, was another rare quality because most parents –

[Audio gap due to phone disconnection. Subsequent commentary unrelated to the interview was
omitted at the discretion of the interviewer.]
184

DON BRINEGAR. Sorry I made a mistake for turning off my car. [Laughs]

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh. So sensitive these phones are.

DON BRINEGAR. What? Oh, right, I’m connected to the Bluetooth.

SHAWNA STEWART. [Laughs] Okay. At least I know it wasn’t the connection this
time. All right. That’s good.

DON BRINEGAR. No, it’s not you. That was me.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. You were just –

DON BRINEGAR. I think that there was a support within the family to let him pursue
this area of study. I don’t think anybody minimizes the influence, the importance of Lucy in this
whole process. She was very much an equal to him. She was a fine musician. She was a fine
conductor in her own right. She was willing, on a certain level, to play second fiddle. She really
was the Hollywood Presbyterian Church music program. It wasn’t ever done in a… I don’t know
how to put it; it never felt odd. It’s just that they were a team and he used every opportunity to
thank her and be very forthcoming about that, but I never really heard much about the family life.
I know there was a lot of tragedy with the children as well, and some disenfranchisement at some
point. So that was never really very clear, and as students you don’t get very obligated to kind of
get in there and dig. I certainly didn’t do that later on. But however he became how he became, I
think he was a real representation of what Southern California was at that time, and that is
influenced by many different places coming together at one place – and I think that’s where his
conducting style came from.
When Swan was writing his article for Decker in his book, he was seated behind me in
the Robert Shaw workshop, and he was doing the article on Robert Shaw. I asked him, “What are
you doing?” And he said, “I’m writing an article for a book on the Robert Shaw Choral School.” I
always felt that one choral school in the Swan article was left out: the Charles Hirt Choral School,
which I think was distinctive in that it’s the best of all of those, all of them. He didn’t try to
galvanize one approach over another, but rather use choral principles derived from the music
itself. So, I mean, he knew the Fred Waring materials. He knew Robert Shaw from the time he
was at Pomona College. He knew Howard Swan. He knew Roger Wagner. He knew all of these.
I’ll never forget that dinner in Kansas City, how Roger in a certain begrudging way gave Charles
a huge credit for putting together an amazing collegiate ensemble. With Roger being at UCLA at
the time, I think there might have been a bit of competitive jealousy that Charles had
accomplished at USC what had not happened at UCLA under Roger’s leadership. Now Roger, of
course, did other things, had done these other things, but it seemed pretty clear to me sitting there
that this little guy at the end of the table watching all this [unintelligible] among people…. You
know, Swan was very loquacious and easy-going. Father Trame was very intellectual, but Roger
was [unintelligible] and Charles was making jokes. It was hilarious to watch, and then discuss
things over dinner.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right. What’s your perspective on why the Charles Hirt Choral
School never existed? Why is he not more well-known?
185

DON BRINEGAR. Well, he didn’t write. He doesn’t mind about it, and his writings are
very few and far between. At some point you’ve got to find a way to put down in print what
you’ve come to believe, and I think that he found it difficult to put such a layered and intuitive
process down in an artificial way. In other words, this is a tendency – once you’ve created a
theory to say, “Well, this is how it is for all things or this is how it is in all situations,” I think he
was unwilling to do that. I do know that those people who didn't get to sing for Charles, but took
other classes with him, felt like they were missing an important part of the process. Singing with
Dr. Hirt was a visceral experience, to be experienced as he drew sound from each individual in
the ensemble. When Bill Dehning first came to Southern California, I got into his California
Choral Company for a year and that happened to be the last year they were doing it. But that’s
how I said you are going to know a conductor, who they are, what they are, and what they’re up
to, not by with they say about it, but what they honestly do. So that’s always been revelatory to
me. With Charles, I think so much of this was just from his kind of in-the-moment spirit that I
don’t think he could put down the words without making them sound pretentious or kind of,
“Look at my smart mind and what I came up with.” I know he wanted to give attention to the
literature and composers, the creators of the art. We, as choral conductors, were and are re-
creators. I think he would find troubling some of the books that are out there that are filled with
lots of interesting information, but have essentially no methodology or a well-developed
pedagogy. His pedagogy was centered in the style practices of a particular piece, and the vocal
techniques that would best realize the composer’s intentions.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. Are you aware of the fact that he was writing a book at the
time he died?

DON BRINEGAR. Yeah, I was.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yes. So I have all that information. I think it’s about a
seventeen- or nineteen-page outline of it.

DON BRINEGAR. Yeah, I saw.

SHAWNA STEWART. Did you see it?

DON BRINEGAR. I did see it, yeah.

SHAWNA STEWART. It’s amazing. Well, in closing, can you share some of your
favorite stories? You have an incredible perspective, Don, of just having so much personal
connection with him as an artist, as sort of a colleague even, and you had all this time with Lucy.
Are there stories that need to be told? If so, what are they?

DON BRINEGAR. Well, I think the story you get is the kind of the things that most
people don’t know about Charles: his giving of a rose every day to Lucy in preparation for their
anniversary and she was always greeted with a bouquet of roses on the day of their anniversary,
and their trips to France were very important, and his maniacal driving of Gigi, which was the
name he gave to one of the Citroëns they leased in France and brought over. I had a chance to be
on one of the scariest car rides of my life with Charles. We were going eighty miles per hour
186
down Figueroa Boulevard to catch a ride from Glendale to USC, and I was grabbing onto
everything I could hold on to. He has a wicked sense of humor and would do things on the spur.
We were doing a piece by a Santa Barbara composer, [John] Biggs, and it was called “On the
Brink”; it was an examination of how in our nuclear age we are on the brink of destruction. So
we’re in Hawaii and we’re visiting the volcano and we get out there and he rips off his shirt and
stands up in the middle of the lava and flexes his muscles and he shouts, “Sur le bord! Sur le
bord!” which means “On the brink” in French. [Laughs] We were all just falling down and
laughing. He just had that teenage spirit inside of him of “I can find something really fun to do
with this.” Of course, now you can’t sing the piece, I guess, without seeing that or having that
image of it. In many ways, he was just a down-home guy, swam every day in the pool, had a
martini with Lucy and yet, he had lived this world-class existence as an artist. I think it’s the
common touches that I came to learn, to know about him that impressed me more than all the
phenomenal motivating that he did. He just really lived life and he found many, many ways to do
so, and we felt fortunate to be the ones to intercede with that in making music because it came
through every piece of music he directed. It was always a living and breathing, organic
experience with him, and no piece music could just sit there or lie there. [Laughs] It had to come
alive.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow, and yes if you can find that picture… I have 10,000
documents because I took pictures of just about everything I thought was important in the
archives. I’m not sure I realized that was Charles Hirt without a shirt on when I saw it… if I saw
it.

DON BRINEGARL. [Unintelligible]. We had a little get-together and he had brought out
this poster that he had put together for a Chamber Singers party at their house, and it was pictures
of different things that were on the brink. I don’t know if it exists anymore. But we laughed and
laughed and laughed. Just that wicked sense of humor that he had that was very spontaneous.

SHAWNA STEWART. I mean, he’s so intelligent and I’ve heard that he really liked
intelligent singers. They would get it, I suppose. That’s the – yeah. Amazing.

DON BRINEGAR. It’s funny. When I went, Shawna, to USC, I never thought of myself
as very smart. I kind of thought of myself as a kind of get-by student. I did exactly what I was
asked to do and I’d do maybe a little bit more, but I just really wanted to sing and perform. I
really wasn’t that much interested in school per se, but he really inspired. [Laughs] He made me
start to believe that maybe I had a brain in my head. It wasn’t until I was sitting one day talking to
Rod Eichenberger about some of these things (which I was fortunate to be with Rod for lunch
every Tuesday for a couple of years); we talked about some pretty deep things in the musical
realm, and I was talking to him one day about Charles and [unintelligible] Roger and he says,
“Well, you realize how smart you are?” “Oh, I’m not smart.” He says, “You have no idea.” I said,
“Really?” Being around, I mean, he was very much like my father. My father had a PhD
education and was very, very smart and out of the same era. So I’d been around intimidating male
intellectual figures my whole life, and you’re just always never feeling like you could quite
measure up to that level of intelligence. So it’s fascinating to be sixty-two and you end up being
like, “Okay, what part of this did I get? That part – ” [Laughs]

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. Right now, right?
187

DON BRINEGAR. Not to mention the [unintelligible].

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. I hear you. Well, you’ve always blown my brain to pieces
every time I listen to you speak at ECCO [Evergreen Conference Center Oakhurst. The site is
used for the annual California ACDA summer conference] .

DON BRINEGAR. Well, you are very kind. Thank you. All I can say is I’ve had my
mind blown by a lot of good people (unintelligible].

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. Well, is there anything else you would like to contribute at
this time?

DON BRINEGAR. No, just how much I appreciate you doing this study. I think it’s long
overdue that Charles get some attention and his ideas in any way that you can help get them to
see the light of day. I think you’ll do that with a great deal of straightforwardness and humility,
and that’s greatly appreciated because sometimes his ideas have been couched in other forms that
don’t always represent, to me, who the man was as a conductor and as a music-maker. The thing
is he knew how to make music in a profoundly beautiful way. I think at the end of the day, you
put that into the air and I think Charles will say it’s still going out there towards the outer reaches
of space – that sound is still out there, [unintelligible] just kind of believed that. That’s still out
there in the air. [Unintelligible.]. I think his spirit continues to live on in Southern California, and
I just pray that we’ve been good servants of that.

SHAWNA STEWART. I’m sorry. Could you repeat that last sentence?

DON BRINEGAR. I just said that to the degree that it’s still out there and that we served
him well in that way… I certainly hope so because it’s really important that he develops, and still
informs me every day.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. That’s amazing. Well, thanks for everything. It’s been a
pleasure to hear and I’ll keep you posted on its progress. I assume I have your permission to use
your name in the paper if I need to. Would that be okay?

DON BRINEGAR. Absolutely.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay.

DON BRINEGAR. I’d be honored to be mentioned in the same breath.

SHAWNA STEWART. All right. Thank you so much.

DON BRINEGAR. All right. Take care.

SHAWNA STEWART. You as well. Bye.

DON BRINEGAR. Bye.
188
APPENDIX G: INTERVIEW WITH FRANK BROWNSTEAD

FRANK BROWNSTEAD
October 30, 2013
1:00 p.m.
In-Person Interview, Cathedral of the Lady of Our Angels, office of Frank Brownstead

SHAWNA STEWART. What degrees did you receive under Dr. Hirt?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. None

SHAWNA STEWART. In what capacity did you know Dr. Hirt and during what years?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. I was a student at USC; actually I was in the DMA program
there and I didn’t really think about doing a doctorate, but I went to see Dr. Hirt because I knew
of him and he said, “Well, why don’t you come here and go to school?” And I said, “Okay –
sounds like a good idea.” I was a TA [teaching assistant] in Church Music Placement because my
background is in church music. And then there were a whole bunch of things that kept coming
open that needed somebody for and I would just do whatever they wanted. So I was a TA for six
to eight years – supposed to be two semesters… I conducted one of the choirs when I was there
that toured, the Trojan Chorale (don’t know if they still have that choir). I taught choral
conducting with Leo Nestor who is now at Catholic University, and we had the two sections of
choral conducting separately once a week and then together once a week. It was actually Jim Vail
who I answered to for that project. But I took lots of courses with Dr. Hirt and he became a
friend, so it was fun.

SHAWNA STEWART. What years did it span?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. Let’s see. I came here in 1967, and I think it must have been
ten years, so ’67 to ’77, or something like that.

SHAWNA STEWART. What are your perceptions of Hirt’s significant contributions to
USC?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. Well, I think at that time USC was a different kind of a place,
and I think he was one of the people that made the music department a particularly noteworthy
place. They had some famous people who taught there, but I think in the area of choral music I
just remember coming into the old music building, the wooden building there, Widney Hall, and
the Chamber Singers would be rehearsing kind of before the semester started, and it would be oh,
some difficult Poulenc motet or mass by Hindemith or something. They had it going at that point.
It was a smaller group I think than it became later, four or five on a part; I can’t remember
exactly, sixteen or twenty singers or something like that. They just rehearsed; I don’t know how
often, but it seemed every time I walked in there they were practicing. And the idea of becoming
a member of the Chamber Singers with Dr. Hirt conducting, that was the epitome, that was the
summit and I could still picture him conducting. He had kind of an interesting way of conducting:
big hands, and he used them in such skillful ways.
189
But I also remember going to Hollywood Presbyterian at that time, which had nothing in
particular to do with SC, but that was a big church job; he was the director of music there, and I
remember the choir was way up high (still is), and he had a great choir there. Then there was a
second choir that was a feeder choir for the first choir and it had a waiting list. And imagine…
that was quite something.
So that was my exposure to him. Then I took quite a few courses with him and my office
was right – the place where all the offices were was this little hovel, so we were all stuck in there
together which we thought was terrible at the time, but looking back on it, it was a lot of fun,
because we all interacted with each other and we’d go out to lunch… I remember Dr. Hirt had a
Citroën French car. He thought that was the greatest thing in the world. While you were going
along on the freeway it would adjust; it had hydraulics or something and it would go up in the
back and down in the front and all this and he drove sort of wildly. But the lunches were lots of
fun; I can remember those excursions.

SHAWNA STEWART. Can you tell me any stories that you remember from those
lunches or from being in the departments in such close proximity?

FRNAK BROWNSTEAD. Well, Dr. Hirt was fun. Now he was serious too, but he had a
way of having fun. I remember one time we went to a junior high school and he had all these
things going. It may have been around Christmas and he always did the music at Disneyland, so
he was doing that and something else in Europe or Asia or somewhere, but he accepted to go to
this junior high school for a festival of some type, so we all jumped in the cars and went out there.
And I remember I was backstage and just wanted to watch and see how he did with these junior
high kids. You know, kids that age are not easy to deal with. Anyway, we got there and he was
kind of slumped over – oh, he was tired, exhausted. All of a sudden it came time for him to go out
on the stage and suddenly you saw this barrel-chested guy with all the energy in the world, and he
bounded out onto the stage and started working with these kids. They were mesmerized; they had
been so noisy earlier, but suddenly it was very quiet. I remember he’d just count with them and
play games with them. He’d conduct evenly, then suddenly he’d speed up and they’d speed up.
All they had to do was just count. But he instantly had a rapport with them that said to them,
“We’re connected. We’re in this together.” And, boy,, I learned a lot of things. I learned more
from watching him, observing his ways than I ever did in any class. I think that’s the way most of
us learn the important things in life – from experiences.

SHAWNA STEWART. What do you think his philosophy of teaching was?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. His philosophy of teaching? Well, this may sound like heresy,
but his philosophy of teaching was… well, it may not have been his philosophy, but for me I
learned from the experiences more than I did from the actual classroom experience itself. I don’t
mean by that that he was a bad teacher, but uhmm… he was always funny. I don’t really know
what his philosophy of teaching was. I learned less from him that way than I did from the
experiences.

SHAWNA STEWART. What about his philosophy of the power of music? Did he ever
speak about that or share that with you?

190
FRANK BROWNSTEAD. I don’t know. This sounds like it’s going to be a very short
interview [chuckle].

SHAWNA STEWART. It’s okay because everyone has contributed something different,
and I do not know what he shared with some people and not others. So of all his choral
techniques, and to clarify, you did not sing under him?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. No. I didn’t sing under him. I became a friend and he was a
mentor, basically.

SHAWNA STEWART. What choral techniques of developing sound, or developing what
he wanted, do you still remember today? Or even, what of his techniques influenced you in a
musical way?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. I still picture him, and what I remember when I picture him is
that he was a very commanding figure when he conducted. I remember hearing the Chamber
Singers and then wondering how he’d be with big choirs, huge choirs. Then I saw what he did
with those. But it was with the Chamber Singers that I heard what he did in terms of tone and
balance and blend and all the different components of a good choral sound. But he didn’t preach
about it very much, but he rehearsed them a lot and it came together. Probably those that were in
those groups would have better answers on that stuff.

SHAWNA STEWART. Can you speak to the nonmusical ways he influenced you?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. I enjoyed watching him in so many ways, and one of the
things that I remember very clearly is at the church, and in his life his wife was a very important
part of things. And I don’t think I ever remember him referring to Lucy as “Lucy.” I would say,
“Well, what’s up tonight?” and he would reply, “Well, it will all depend on what Mrs. Hirt
decides we should be doing.” And I knew people at Hollywood Presbyterian who enjoyed Dr.
Hirt very much, but it was Lucy who was the organizer. And if you ever see pictures from that
era, the ’60s and ’70s, I guess, there were multiple choirs. It was that Protestant way of having a
choir, for every segment of life you’re in a different choir. Wonderful, really. But they would take
a picture every year on choir day and it was Lucy. Maybe he had the ideas, but let me tell you,
she could organize anything. And I remember going to their home with other students and things
like that, and it was always a lot of fun. But she was a big part of it. He talked about her as though
she had the say in things, but I don’t know if that was really so or not. Sometimes you never
really know. But I think it was funny how he always referred to her: “Well, I’m just not sure what
Mrs. Hirt would think of this,” he would say. Now he maybe with people like Jim Vail, or people
like that, a colleague, they were both professors, and maybe it was different. But it would be fun
to ask them that.

SHAWNA STEWART. When you went to his home, what were the topics of
conversation?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. Well, I was there with a group of people so I wasn’t always
talking to him personally, but they were always very cordial to us.

191
SHAWNA STEWART. What is your perception of why Charles Hirt’s name is not more
recognizable today?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. I think it may be because [people like] Howard Swan
published more and…had many interests outside of choral music. But I think probably Charles
Hirt did more conducting around the world than almost anybody else. Maybe… I don’t know how
to compare him with the others. I just remember in those days he was at the height of his career
and his influence, and he was… Oh, the one who would be most helpful in this… did you talk
with Jim Vail yet? He’ll remember all that. I think that probably Dr. Hirt and Jim Vail together
were really a very good combination, because Jim was much more scholarly and Dr. Hirt was the
performer; hey were nicely complementary. I know that he brought Jim to SC and Jim was the
other person, and then the department got bigger as I recall. Then they decided to hire a third
person and that was when I was there. The third person kept coming and then something would
go wrong and that person would leave and they’d have jobs and I’d do those jobs because I was
never hired there as a faculty member; I was a TA. But I was just a continuing TA.

SHAWNA STEWART. Were you in a master’s program?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. No, it was a doctoral program. I did my master’s at Union
Theological Seminary back in the days when that was the place to go for church music in New
York. That’s at Yale now. It’s now the Yale Institute. The people at Union decided to move, and
there was a woman who had plenty of money and she offered it to them. So they went to Yale and
it’s been there since. It changed a lot. It was the main place back in those days if you wanted a
church music job.

[Due to information of a confidential nature, commentary has been omitted with the agreement of
the interviewee and the discretion of the interviewer.]

I heard Dr Hirt do St. Paul of Mendelssohn at Hollywood Presbyterian.

SHAWNA STEWART. How was it?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. It was very good. And he could conduct orchestras. Not all
choral conductors are very good; I mean it’s a different skill and putting the two together is
sometimes tricky. But…probably my contribution is not very – it’s mostly personal stuff.

SHAWNA STEWART. But you know, that kind of information is not what is recorded
anywhere. Are you aware that all of his memories are in the ACDA [American Choral Directors
Association] archives? Lucy collected and saved everything, literally, I think. About four to five
years ago, I believe, ACDA received eighteen to twenty boxes of his things. So I’ve spent a
couple of weeks with those materials. As I understand it, he rarely, if ever, let himself be
recorded. He hated recordings of his work, for whatever reason. And there certainly isn’t a
journal of his thought life, so this personal information is very interesting.

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. Well, he was very congenial and mysterious. I don’t know if
mysterious is a right word. Quixotic. And there were some ways in which he opened up to certain
192
people. I think Jim Vail knew him as well as anybody. He’ll be able to tell you a lot. He was also
very devoted to him, fond of him.

SHAWNA STEWART. Dr. Hirt was to Vail or Vail was to Hirt?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. Well, I think both. Because Jim had things to offer as I saw…
I used to go to the staff meetings because I was the temporary guy but I had to go to these
meetings and they were very good together. And there’s been a lot of water over the dam since
that time.

SHAWNA STEWART. Do you feel like you had some sort of a collegial relationship
with him since you were his TA for so many years?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. Kind of.

SHAWNA STEWART. What was it like to work alongside him?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. Well I wasn’t much supervised by Dr. Hirt. If I had questions
or if I wondered how the choral conducting would be taught, it would have been through Jim.
And I probably shouldn’t have even done this interview. It’s not that much.

SHAWNA STEWART. What is your perception of the uniqueness of his leadership?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. I don’t know. I don’t think I have much to say on that.

SHAWNA STEWART. Was there anything regarding the Chamber Singers from an
observer’s perspective that you felt was unique to them? That set them apart?

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. Just that they were so good. I mean it was such excellence.
And what I think I admired the most about Dr. Hirt was that he could go to Disneyland and do
that, make sense of it. And then he’d go to this junior high school conference, or whatever
conference he’d go to, and he’d be equally good there. I got something like ten Catholic choirs
together one time – we went to St John’s Adamson Flower and he conducted choral festivals and
adjudicated the choirs there. And he was so good there. But what I remember I think as much as
anything about him was that, when he’d get ready to conduct, his posture – and he wouldn’t stand
that way all the time – it was like he would transform himself, and he got a little tummy towards
the end and it all ended right up in his chest. And I bet Jim will say something about that. But he
was just a consummate professional.

SHAWNA STEWART. In closing, is there anything from Dr. Hirt that might still be
alive in you today? Also, if there are any additional personal stories you would like to contribute,
please feel free.

FRANK BROWNSTEAD. No, I think that’s about it.

193
APPENDIX H: INTERVIEW WITH TERRY DANNE

TERRY DANNE
October 30, 2013
11:00 a.m.
Telephone Interview

SHAWNA STEWART. Hello! This is Shawna. Is this Mr. Danne?

TERRY DANNE. Yes, it is.

SHAWNA STEWART. Hi! Thank you so much. I’m glad to finally be speaking with
you.

TERRY DANNE. I was on another line, and I heard a buzzing going, but I was in another
room.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, no problem. I’m glad we’re able to connect.

TERRY DANNE. Okay. How are you coming on your project?

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, thank you so much. I have had the time of my life
conducting these interviews. It has been so much fun. It’s really been inspiring.

TERRY DANNE. Well, he was inspiring for many, many people as we all hope to be, we
choral directors and instrumental directors; we all wish to be that, but he certainly achieved it. It’s
such a force in the advancement of and promotion of choral music in particular throughout the
country, being instrumental in the structure of the American Choral Directors Association, the
forming of that organization. I can remember standing with him, it was held in Salt Lake City,
and the Mormons were very strict with each other, and so they were strict with all of us. And I
was a little bit late to one of the sessions, and Dr. Hirt – we were together waiting outside, and he
was the one who started that organization, but they wouldn’t let him in.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh my.

TERRY DANNE. [Laughs] I said, “This man started this organization.” But it didn’t
matter; they wouldn’t let him in. They have their rules. He was cool with everything. He was a
little bit upset initially. I thought it was quite ironic that the person who was the most instrumental
in that coming to be…

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. These kinds of stories have been a real joy to hear. It’s
been very fun.

TERRY DANNE. Well, he was wonderful to me. I was Roger Wagner’s assistant prior to
that and had been a touring singer with Wagner. I did the [unintelligible] here and I was at UCLA
with him and with the Master Chorale, and then I was being offered a teaching assistant position
in instrumental music there at UCLA. So I could have had both, but I went over to Dr. Hirt and I
194
heard that he needed a replacement to conduct the group at SC. So I went over and auditioned for
him, and he offered me the job. He was just so excited to get me away from Roger Wagner. He
was really rather funny. I have to tell you a little of my background, which helps put it in
perspective with him. I had been on tour for a year prior to that with a group that was produced
by Walter Gould and Robert DeCormier, and, of course, Gould is the Lawson-Gould Publishing
Company and had [unintelligible] artists. Lawson, which I didn’t know and perhaps you don’t,
that was actually Robert Shaw.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, I see.

TERRY DANNE. So when I landed that job I was with Roger in New York on tour. I
thought, “Well, I ought to audition for something while I’m here.” The pianist, we had Albert
Dominguez… Walter Gould was looking for someone to conduct the men’s group on the College
of Fine Arts concert and community concert tour. I went over and auditioned for them, and they
hired me. I was busy for the rest of the year before I came out to Los Angeles. Anyway, Dr. Hirt
was very impressed with my credentials, and I didn’t have to do a recital or anything like that or
work on doctoral work, because of the professional experience that I have had. I asked him about
it and he said, “No, don’t worry about it. You have so much professional experience.” That’s
what he always said. He even offered after I went to USC; he then said he would like to offer me
to come to Vienna to participate in workshops. I’m not sure – a “symposium” I guess they were
calling it in Vienna. I kept disappointing the poor man. I went to Vienna and it was no cost to me
at all to take this workshop. I went in one day and I have not had the opportunity to travel in
Europe and I went in for one day, and I’m sitting in this classroom hearing the same things that I
would hear in a symposium here in the United States. I can’t tell it to him, but I said, “I don’t
want to disappoint you, but I really don’t want to sit here in this classroom. I want to get this
information from you back in the United States, but I’ve got to go.” So I spent the rest of that
summer running around Europe and seeing all of the music history come into life for me that I
had been studying. I am just a kid that grew up in Iowa, so I knew nothing.
Anyway, he was so gracious with all these things. He knew I wanted to be a conductor on
TV, and that was my goal. My interest was in pop music. At that time, pop music wasn’t all that
bad yet. He was, at that point in his career, where he felt it was uncomfortable with being a little
out of the times. He was looking to me and the success I’d had with my group on tour. So I
designed some and choreographed and then he would ask me to come in and give him ideas for
his Chamber Singers. “What could we do on this?” I never knew what to tell him because it was
always a package that I was dealing with and I felt intimidated to really try to [unintelligible].
Anyway, it was that kind of relationship where I was really in awe of him. In some
respects, he was very, very much impressed with my work because it was a small circle of people.
Coming from Iowa, why, I saw this big world of music, never guessing that they all knew each
other and that it was really a very small circle of people, not a great big universe of music. As
soon as I did anything that might not have been in someone’s favor, I knew that all of those
people who are important would know about it. [Laughs] You had to be on your alert. The first
time that I had a conversation like this Dr. Hirt said, “Oh, yes, Walter Gould and Roger Wagner,”
oh gosh, who were the rest of the guys? They were the same people that formed Chorus America
– all of the top conductors of the choral groups that were connected to large symphonies like
Wagner was with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. These people were all… Michael Corn was
one… but anyway, this was his circle, and Dr. Hirt was a part of it. I don’t know of many other
educators that were. Dr. Hirt was responsible for the American Choral Conductors Group and
195
also the church, the Choral Conductors Guild, but he also was involved with Chorus America,
too, not as strongly because that started out as the Association of Professional Vocal Ensembles,
and their goal and mission was much different than it is now.
I can remember having youth groups that I was responsible for because I was parks
administrator with the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Music for a number of years. They had no
interest in children’s choirs, and we were sponsoring the California Boys’ Choir at the time,
which Walter was very, very impressed with, saying they were the best in the country. Anyway, I
just found this very small circle of people that when one was in favor of you, you were in good
shape. When one didn’t like you, you were in bad shape. Really, they were the controlling group
in the choral field. But anyway, when I found out that Lawson was Robert Shaw, I thought,
“Man, I am on my way.” [Laughter]
So I can recall the first time that Dr. Hirt came over to see me work with the group that
he’d assigned me to, which at that time was the Trojan Chorale. I was walking back to the music
building with him and I said, “Do you have any suggestions?” because we were talking about
things in general about the music there and what I had done, et cetera. He said to me, “I wouldn’t
presume to give you suggestions.” I found out later from Jane Hardester that she was sitting with
him in that rehearsal and I was trying to get some idea across to the soprano as to what I wanted
in a pop tune, more bending of the pitches.

SHAWNA STEWART. Mr. Danne? I cannot hear you right now. I’m so sorry. Can you
hear me?

TERRY DANNE. I’m so –

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, there we go.

TERRY DANNE. Yeah. I hear you fine. You don’t hear me at all?

SHAWNA STEWART. I do now. The last thing I heard you saying was about pitch
bending.

TERRY DANNE. Yeah. It’s okay. So he leaned over to Jane Hardester and said, “If you
would just tell them” (I was giving them a description of what I wanted them to do), he said, “If
you just tell them to make it sound cuter, it would have the effect.” And no sooner had he said
that to Jane, but that came out of my mouth. I think that was the exact thing that sold him forever
on my choral work because I said exactly what he was telling Jane Hardester. It was after that
when he said, “I wouldn’t presume to try to tell you about what to do.” He was respectful and it
was interesting because in this, what did they call that class where you were studying about
choral literature?

SHAWNA STEWART. It might have been Choral Lit two or three.

TERRY DANNE. It seemed like there was a different name to this, but that’s what it
was. One of our assignments was to basically take an era of music and compile lists of good
literature to do, which was very helpful to all of us. I chose jazz influences in classical or in
serious music. They sort of turned their nose up at some of this, but I think that he was very
196
interested in this, in growing in that respect. So we had a nice relationship because of all of this. I
had lunch every day with him until I got him upset. [Laughs]

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh dear.

TERRY DANNE. I’ll tell you when you get him upset, he’s just a little upset to start
with, but by the time he’s done, he’s very upset. He would grow and grow until there was disdain.
But he was very protective of his singers in his chamber group. I needed an accompanist. I had
had Joel Fried; that’s my accompanist who became one of Dan Lewis’ assistants for a while,
before he graduated, and then became one of the assistant conductors at New York City Opera.
So he was quite a talented young man, but he was only able to work with me for one semester,
and I was just hired down there and I didn’t know anybody, and I needed an accompanist and
Crocket, was it Crocket? No, it wasn’t. It was one of the Chamber Singers, I’m trying to
remember the name… they needed work, they needed a job, and so Dr. Hirt (I didn’t realize it) so
I approached him and came back with all of the right answers, I thought, to Dr. Hirt. Oh boy, he
was upset! That was one meal that we didn’t enjoy so much.
But it was wonderful – just a certain talk with him if I had that opportunity, and all of the
things that he was aware of and what he had done. He was such a force and so influential.
Because I was interested in doing the variety show things on TV… unfortunately I did a little but
not nearly what I had wanted to because the variety shows all went off the air at the same time on
getting here. I grew up with them and never guessed that would happen. Anyway, he was trying
to push me to start the doctoral program. He said, “If you just get your doctorate…” We’re in the
parking lot one day and he said, “If you just get your doctorate, I will get you one of the best jobs
in the country, in one of the universities.” He had the ability to do that and I just wasn’t on the
same wavelength. I said, “I really appreciate it...” That’s why it was kind of disappointing to him,
I think. I’m kind of disappointed now because SC’s forgotten about me.

SHAWNA STEWART. I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?

TERRY DANNE. Yeah. I said, I’m kind of disappointed now because SC’s forgotten
about me.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, well, they’re going to hear about you now in the paper.

TERRY DANNE. [Laughter] Well, he just had a way of working with, not just his
conducting technique… but his way of expressing things were so amazing to the musical result.
The musical result was fantastic. I can remember I had been on that tour with Roger, a national
tour with Roger, and about a semester later, I heard Dr. Hirt’s Chamber group in concert, and I
went to him and I said, “That is so much better than anything we ever did.”

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow!

TERRY DANNE. He was that good. In my mind, he was that good, and I’m sure he was.
In fact, because I was so bent on this professional thing, I said to him, “Why in the world did you
go into education? Why aren’t you out in the professional world?” That was my perspective at
that time. That if someone was that good, then they should be doing the concert at the music
197
center not at Bovard Auditorium. It took me a few more years of growing up to realize all of the
effect that he had on choral music in the country.

SHAWNA STEWART. Do you remember his response to you on that question?

TERRY DANNE. It was very gracious and he appreciated it because he didn’t get that
comparison very often. So I think he appreciated my compliment to him, but I also think he
thought that he was probably accomplishing a whole lot more than what he was getting credit for
at the moment, because of my shortsightedness, in terms of what he had done. I’m not sure that I
knew of his relationship with the organization that he had started, but since he was such a good
friend in that circle of all those professional conductors, I thought basically, what a shame it was
that not more people were hearing his work.
Of course, they did when he had his Chamber group at a National Conference at ACDA
[American Choral Directors Association]; he was certainly very well known. But you see Wagner
and Swan and those people, and Corn and the one that I can’t think, and Margaret Hillis and
Margaret Hopkins at Milwaukee and Greg Smith – all of those guys are getting the play, so to
speak – Robert DeCormier – because they were professional conductors. I was more aware of that
professional arena than I was of the educational. The educational had Dr. Moe at Iowa. You just
had a few places. You had Juilliard and Eastman and USC. Indiana and USC were competing for
the top groups in opera at that time. It was all kind of compartmentalized.
In meeting him and getting to know him, I realized that the level that was being
performed was just as good, at least in what I was hearing from him. How he got that was
amazing! He was not that comfortable, as far as the stories that I’ve heard; I never spoke with him
directly about that. He was not as comfortable with the instrumental forces in the large group. His
big deal really was the chamber size. That may not be doing any justice. He did a lot of honor
choirs. In fact, he did the Olympics. When the Olympics were held in Los Angeles, he did the
mass chorus for the Olympics. I don’t know if someone else has told you that or not.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yes. I’ve been able to read some of the newspaper articles and
some of his collections that were in the archives.

TERRY DANNE. Yeah. Well, as far as Hollywood Pres[byterian], he was the musical
director at Hollywood Pres for a number of years. This was before I knew him, but basically, all I
know about that is that that was a fine musical program, and that they named rooms after him.
The Charles Hirt room… I was always able to borrow music because I knew him. [Laughs] You
know that I would use his name [unintelligible] to borrow music from the library. I don’t know,
what [unintelligible] might spark a memory.

SHAWNA STEWART. If I could just step back for a second, tell me the different
capacities in which you knew Dr. Hirt and what years that covered.

TERRY DANNE. Oh, you’re going to make me think. This was at the conclusion of the
tour. This was about probably ’69 and ’70. I was one year there and then I was two years up in
Idyllwild as an arts administrator. I worked for Dr. Zipper. I still had a close connection with Dr.
Hirt. He did a retreat in Idyllwild, and periodically we would talk about the project up there. I
think he was always amazed that I was interested in that because I had turned him down on some
other things because of my interest in the television thing. But it was a challenge, and I enjoyed
198
that. He had me give him suggestions of programming when I was up there. What was the first
part of your question? I digressed so far.

SHAWNA STEWART. No, I just wanted to know, in a list format, the different
capacities in which you knew Dr. Hirt. Was it just primarily through your employment at USC
and some other outside connection such as Idyllwild?

TERRY DANNE. Well, basically it was through that circle of people, the professional
circle that I said existed. There was so much crosstalk between all of these people. So going to
Europe, I did spend some time with him while in Europe, but I was only there at USC as an
interim director. They had hired me to replace a director that had moved on. It was really just that
year, and then I adjudicated with him doing festivals. A lot of that and we would be paired
together on some of those things. I was called by him to come and meet with Johnny Mann. I
don’t know if you’re… is that name familiar to you or not?

SHAWNA STEWART. It’s not.

TERRY DANNE. He was a musical director on television and very much known for
patriotic things. He formed a committee of people and formed the “Johnny Mann Great American
Choral Festival,” which was a national thing.

[Due to information of a confidential nature, commentary has been omitted with the agreement of
the interviewee and at the discretion of the interviewer.]

Anyway, it was not a close relationship. Jane Hardester said to me one time… You didn’t
happen to know her, did you? Before she passed away?

SHAWNA STEWART. I never met her, but I know some of her students, so I know her
through them a little bit.

TERRY DANNE. Right. Well, she was a prize student of his and it was interesting
because she told me that story about what he had said to her at that rehearsal they attended. I
worked with her for a couple of years and she said, “We always used to go and ask you to ask Dr.
Hirt, because we were all afraid of him and he liked you so much.” I said, “You’re kidding me.” I
said, “I always thought that you were his favorite.”

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, funny!

TERRY DANNE. Yeah. She said, “Oh, no. If we wanted something, we were afraid to
ask him, but you could ask him.” I never knew that was happening. I was oblivious, I guess, to
that whole thing.

SHAWNA STEWART. That is okay.

TERRY DANNE. That was a very strong relationship that existed there between them.
So I was very surprised at that comment. She was very successful. I go back far enough with her
that can I remember her asking me when I was at the city, because I was dealing with the
199
American Choral Directors Association, she said, “How do you get a group into the American
Choral Directors Association?” I said, “Well, you have to go into the studio to do your recording
because you’re going to be just making yourself frustrated for a long time unless you can produce
something like that.” Well, once she got in, she was in every year from then on whenever she
wanted. But she took my advice. I never did. I never had enough money to do that.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right. Can you tell me your perspective on his philosophy of
music and its power on people?

TERRY DANNE. No, I can’t and I’ll tell you why: because I never sang with him. The
only thing that I could tell you is how powerful it was when I heard them. In other words, what he
would say to his group and the genuine integrity that he approached his music with was just so
sincere, and his ability to reach people with these philosophies and so on. As far as actually being
exposed to them for any length of time, to be indoctrinated (for lack of a better word), I don’t
have a great perspective on that. I just have a great deal of respect for what he was able to
accomplish. The results were fantastic in the little bit of time that I saw him work. Unfortunately,
my chamber singing group experience took place at Indiana, and I didn’t enter into anything like
that at USC. I was still with Roger, actually, at the time. I just didn’t have time but visited
periodically. Then in our lunch meetings that we had on a daily basis were… I don’t recall much
of that I’ll tell you, hardly, because I was worried about doing the kind of work that I felt he
wanted to have done with Trojan Chorale. So a lot of the time, it was like that accompanist
situation. I’m hired to do something, I want to do it the way he’s expecting it to be done, so I
think a lot of that talk. We talked about programming and so that came more from his questioning
of me, frankly, because of his interest in… I certainly can understand this now. I can’t relate to
what’s being done in the pop music field at this point in time with hip hop and all of the Western
genres. I don’t relate to that at my age. I think he was at that age where he was impressed with
learning about that.
I was working for Elmo Publishing at that time, doing workshops with their publications.
That was all original stuff for pop music. He was trying to bring himself up-to-date, the way I
excelled all the time, when I would talk to him, so it wasn’t very much… I was so inundated with
Wagner, that was what I think surprised me so – was the result that he had with his chamber
group.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, as an outsider, you have a real interesting perspective then.
I have a two-fold question: What set apart his Chamber Singers from other chamber singers in
Southern California or perhaps the nation? The second part of that question is: What was unique
about his leadership, as compared to other conductors?

TERRY DANNE. Well, there was a sincerity to him that was not an immature type of
enthusiasm or a youthful type of enthusiasm. He was much more distinguished. He was genuine
and as big as life. He was a big man, first of all. That was sort of the fun part of seeing him
conduct because he was so large and his arms were so long, and here he was getting this very
delicate nuance out of the singers. As I mentioned before, that came so much from what he was
saying to them and it would be descriptions of things. It would be like… anyone who could
describe things as he did would be a tremendously successful voice teacher, if you’re dealing with
that type of imagery as a vocal student, because it was so beautifully phrased. He was a brilliant
man and really knew how to work with people, and at the same time a very, very demanding
200
person without you necessarily knowing it. I found that out when he got mad that day. I’d never
seen that side of him; I was really shocked.
He was just so impressive. He was impressive physically and a very impressive person.
He had everything to back it up, in terms of his ability to communicate. It’s just wonderful. Since
he had so much to do with starting his organizations, he was brilliant! He was a very, very
brilliant person that everyone respected.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

TERRY DANNE. I never heard anyone that didn’t just have a total respect for the man. I
don’t know if that answered those two questions.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yes. I wonder if you could provide any more specifics on,
maybe even two things, the images he would use. Does anything he ever said specifically stand
out to you still today?

TERRY DANNE. Remember, I wasn’t in any rehearsals with him. You would have a
better perspective from people like Brinegar, for instance. He sang with him on a regular basis. I
never performed anything with him as a conductor. We were always on a conductor-to-conductor
basis. I went into a workshop once when I was conducting in high school, when I first came out
here after college, and the only thing I remember from that was just a technique he used on breath
support. It was pretty much just a physical exercise. That’s about it. Just stepping in and hearing
the result of what I was hearing in the rehearsal, if I would go in, where he was asking me to give
him ideas, “I’d like to make my shows more interesting.” This was another thing that he liked
about having me – because I had put together a show of people for these college fine arts concerts
and so on.
So all the directors are coming up to me and asking me about the music that I was doing,
where I had found it, how did I choose it, who put the show together, and who choreographed the
show, and all that kind of thing. That was very interesting to him and I think that he adopted some
ideas. He had people like Pressman, for instance, I know who was not shy about giving his ideas
and so on. I’m sure that he had some very good ideas for that show that I saw, where they had a
barbershop quartet and a real variety of things that I don’t think he was necessarily known for, in
terms of the showmanship aspect. Again, that’s only a perspective that I have, which I’ve never
really talked to anyone about. I’ll be interested to see what you come up with also. I’ll learn a lot
about him from you and with the people that you talked to. My relationship was probably a little
different from those people that you’re talking to.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right. You and Dr. Vail are some of the primary sources for his
collegial relationships. So if you had some more stories you would like to share about what it was
like to work alongside him as a colleague, I’d love to hear those.

TERRY DANNE. Well, I always thought of myself as a kid. As he was looking at me
from a certain perspective because of my background and what I was able to do, I was always
looking to him as a mentor. I don’t know. That’s probably the best description of my relationship
with him. Just the opportunities that he provided, I was trying to build a professional career… I
don’t have a perspective as a student. I don’t have a perspective as Dr. Vail would have had either
because Dr. Vail was with him for years. Dr. Vail basically was an underling, but he was
201
certainly more connected to him as a professor at the university than I was. I was just a kid who
fell into some very wonderful opportunities as with Gould and Wagner, et cetera, that put me in a
position to be able to show what I could do at a fairly early age. I don’t think I ever felt on an
equal basis with him. I did to some extent with Dr. Vail, but he was a professor there, and I knew
I was interim and then I was going on to other things – that I had no desire to be there at that time.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. I know you said that most of your luncheon conversations
were about job-related topics. Did you ever have any conversations about his vision for the
development or about departmental issues that would give insight into his vision for the
department?

TERRY DANNE. I’ll have to think about that. My relationship, again, with him was
more personal. It was not as much a work-related relationship. It was more of a personal
relationship where he respected what I did and was looking for thoughts along the line of the
areas where I was performing in and programming ideas, et cetera. Again, I was never a part of
the university. For the next two years, I was under Dr. Zipper where I was doing a private project
for the University in Idyllwild, but not so much with Dr. Hirt.
I’m sorry I’m not more helpful on those lines. I’m hoping that the perspective that they
have in that relationship that I had is… I can’t ever recall sitting down and talking to him about
music, other than trying to give ideas on programming and other kinds of music, and how did I
put this together for touring and so on. I was still so closely connected with Wagner that I think
that he had more questions for me than I had for him.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, do you feel like he influenced you in nonmusical ways?

TERRY DANNE. Well, he influenced anyone that he spoke to in almost all ways. As I
was saying before, he was just bigger than life. You couldn’t help but know, when assuming that
there are great people and some of them – he knows this in various ways. With him, there’s a
gentleness there, but there was such a bigger-than-life character in front of you, that you never
felt like, well, this individual I can be a friend of, I can talk with him. I wouldn’t feel that way. I
have such respect for him. He still surprised me when I saw his work in action.
Again, I’m at a loss for words with the relationship because I don’t think… I doubt that
many other people had that same kind of relationship that we had on a working basis. Tom
Somerville took over that group. Have you spoken with him?

SHAWNA STEWART. No, I haven’t spoken with him yet. I’m still trying to connect
with him.

TERRY DANNE. Okay. He should have because he was there for quite a number of
years. I was there for such a short amount of time. My relationship with him then, beyond that,
was always in a meeting. Well, in the Great American Choral Festival and so on, where we were
on the board together for that. I represented community music, City of Los Angeles, and was
really assisting him. He brought people in from various areas of music for Johnny Mann.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

202
TERRY DANNE. That was an interesting project and that was the last thing that I did
with him where I was having that much communication. Otherwise, there were always festivals,
and we were adjudicating and we would ask how things were going and exchange niceties, but
beyond that… I did ask him, “Do you think I should go back and get that doctorate that was
offered?” His answer was, “No. I don’t see any reason why you should. You have so much
professional experience. I don’t know why you need to do that.” So that was still the attitude – in
terms of how he viewed me, it was the same as it had been when I came to him.

SHAWNA STEWART. As we conclude here, are there any additional pieces of
information that you’d like to share that will just help in illuminating Dr. Hirt’s contributions to
USC or just who he was as a person even, or as a musician.

TERRY DANNE. Well, I tried to give you my perspective on that, in terms of the type of
person that he was or kind of influence that he had on his singers, on everyone, anyone. That was
him. His organizational abilities, in terms of the American Choral Directors Association and the
Choral Conductors Guild, which is now something else – it’s national. He was instrumental in the
formation of those two organizations. You know, a few anecdotes like not being allowed in. His
sincerity and the love of music and his ability to share this love with his students and his success
with the students, in terms of their vocal performances. His ability to communicate. What always
influenced me the most, when I saw him, was his ability to communicate music and the depth of
the music and the feeling of the music and so on with words, as opposed to these long arms that
he had because they flapped around and so on. Boy, they did mean something after he had said
something to the singers. I’m sure that it was tremendously helpful, but again, you would get this
from the people who sang with him. Mine is an observation not from the longest way, but from
far enough away that I certainly wouldn’t have the things to share that a member of Chamber
Singers would, in terms of how they perceived his effects on them.
So for myself and so on, it was a great experience to know him and to… It was an awe-
inspiring experience to hear his group, really not knowing that they were… You see this kind of
tells the story when I say, “I didn’t really know that he was that good.” I had known his
reputation, but when I heard that concert and heard those people perform, all of these things that I
might have heard about him or maybe didn’t care enough about him to really respect…
His name was big. It’s sad because what you’ve just said. I will say to people that, “Oh, I
worked with Dr. Hirt.” They don’t know who he is. But, I say, “I was Roger Wagner’s assistant,”
and they don’t know who he is. All that tells me is that I’m too darn old. [Laughs] I somehow
outlived… And then if I say, “Well, my name is Terry Danne,” nobody knows who he is, so he
can’t get anywhere. That’s what I’m saying. I know these guys that are down there working
with… who’s that good choral director down at SC?

SHAWNA STEWART. Dr. Scheibe.

TERRY DANNE. Yeah. I know all of those guys. Nobody has called me. I haven’t left
my room here for several weeks. I’m just here waiting for a phone call. So you can imagine how
excited I was when I got your phone call.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, I’m so sorry we didn’t get to meet in person.

203
TERRY DANNE. Yeah. I would have really loved to have done that. I think I could’ve
gotten the ideas across that I am able to share with you with the enthusiasm and the look on my
face. I always feel uncomfortable on the phone. If I tell you something, I’ll giggle a little bit.
Don’t judge. Just know that I’m just teasing or something.
But it was a great experience; that’s the thing. It was a wonderful experience to have met
him and to found someone as gracious as he was. I do know that he was so excited to get me
away from Roger. He enjoyed that. I always got a kick out of that because I know it wasn’t all
that I was so brilliant, but that Roger is brilliant, but that I preferred to go to him my second year
of working with those guys. So I hope that I helped you so.

SHAWNA STEWART. Definitely! Every piece of information that I’ve gotten and the
stories I’ve gotten have been really valuable and illuminating. Thank you so much.

TERRY DANNE. Okay.

SHAWNA STEWART. If for some reason, you think of anything else you want to share,
feel free to send me an e-mail yourself or through your wife, or give me a call back at this number
and I’d be happy to hear that. Thank you so much, Mr. Danne. I really appreciate it. Blessings on
your week!

TERRY DANNE. Thank you.

SHAWNA STEWART. Thank you.

TERRY DANNE. Bye-bye.

SHAWNA STEWART. Bye-bye.

204
APPENDIX I: INTERVIEW WITH DR. WILLIAM DEHNING

WILLIAM DEHNING
October 25, 2012
9:00 a.m.
Telephone Interview

WILLIAM DEHNING. Hello, Shawna!

SHAWNA STEWART. Good morning, Doctor Dehning! How are you?

WILLIAM DEHNING. Boy, are you prompt; right on the money.

SHAWNA STEWART. Trying to keep a decent reputation going, you know.

WILLIAM DEHNING. I see. [Laughs] Well, okay. Here we go.

SHAWNA STEWART. I’m using my cell phone. I’m recording this in three different
ways. One of the ways I’m recording this is through an app on my cell phone. If you have any
problems with the sound or if there are any interruptions that are problematic, let me know and
I’ll see what I can figure out. I can do it a little bit different way.

WILLIAM DEHNING. All right. Okay.

SHAWNA STEWART. So far they’ve all gone pretty smooth, but we’ll see.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Okay.

SHAWNA STEWART. Great! Well, before we start, I have read your book and I have
gone through and noted all of the times that you’ve referenced Dr. Hirt.
So even as I ask these more formal questions, feel free to reference your book or just
make it a free conversation, whatever comes to the top of your mind, and know that I’ll
supplement with anything that you’ve said in your book and those kinds of things.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Okay. Yeah. I don’t remember what I wrote. I wrote it ten years
ago.

SHAWNA STEWART. Has it really been that long?

WILLIAM DEHNING. It has, yeah. Ten years ago this month.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, my goodness.

DR. WILLIAM DEHNING. I had not quite left yet.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow!

205
WILLIAM DEHNING. So I don’t remember what I wrote and I haven’t read it a lot. It’s
been a long time. That was just part of my subconscious so I may repeat myself or I may not. I
may not remember what I said, but you do. [Laughs] You can use it any way you like.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. Thank you.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, do you have a specific timeframe for this interview? My
information sheets states that it will be forty-five minutes, but most interviews have gone well
over forty-five minutes. I just want to be sensitive to your time though.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Really? Yeah, okay. Well, yeah, I need to stop by noon at the
latest. I’m taking Erin’s rehearsal today and I need to get up and get moving.

SHAWNA STEWART. Terrific! Okay. And it is 11:00 in Alabama right now.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Right.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay.

WILLIAM DEHNING. I have an hour max.

SHAWNA STEWART. Great. Well then, we’ll get right to it.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Because you said it’ll be forty-five minutes and so –

SHAWNA STEWART. No, that’s fine and it’s just been interesting. I mean, Darlene
Hatcher and I – we talked for two hours.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Sure. I’m sure.

SHAWNA STEWART. Forty-five minutes is great too.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Well, they have got a lot to say and they were staying with him
and she was with the church choir. I took it one summer, and she and Doug were in the paid
quartet. Not one summer, one month when the Hirts went to France again. So I was a substitute
there at Holly Pres [Hollywood Presbyterian]. They knew him extremely well, and it was a
different perspective than mine, and their association with him was longer.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. Well, for the record, can you state in what capacity you
knew Dr. Hirt and during what years?

WILLIAM DEHNING. Okay. I was a graduate student from the spring of ’66, January of
’66 through May of ’69, and it was during that time that I got my master’s and had finished my
quals by that time. I think I hold a record.

206
SHAWNA STEWART. Really?

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah, three and half years.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow!

WILLIAM DEHNING. I had not finished my… anyway, I won’t go on about that, but I
am proud of that. I went every summer and every semester. I barreled right on through in three
and a half years. So I was a student in choral development and Conducting III, in church music,
of course, music and worship. I had all of those courses.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow!

WILLIAM DEHNING. I learned most about choral conducting and choral development
and so forth. But then when they hired me, when they took me on as a graduate assistant to do the
conducting classes, they started a new chorus, which I called The Leftover Chorale. Vail had
ninety in Concert Choir and it was just unmanageable. So I took thirty and it was a wonderful
experience. That group kept going. It has changed over the years and it’s no longer there, but it is
in a different form. That’s all. Well, no it’s not because we went to the glee club format, which I
was glad to have back – men’s and women’s choruses. They made the most sense, and so we did
that. I auditioned for Chamber Singers but, you know, he had killer singers. I wasn’t a good
enough singer. I mean, I’m a broken-down horn player. So I did not make it, but then when I
started to conduct the group, I talked with him and I was kind of forward. I said, “Dr. Hirt, I’m
going to observe your rehearsals.” I didn’t ask. [Laughs] He was just, “Sure.” So for a whole year
(I think this was ’68, pretty much all of ’68) I went to his rehearsals and observed them all.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow!

WILLIAM DEHNING. I just sat in the back of the room and I learned so much in there –
almost more than if I sang because I could use my ears and watch everything he did, and heard
everything he said and learned an amazing amount there. I’m awfully glad I did that. I guess I
was a bit forward, but he didn’t mind. He didn’t like people observing his rehearsals for some
reason. I never figured that out. They kind of considered it a closed shop and a closed family.
They often did. They didn’t much care for observation of rehearsals. Not many people did. I don’t
recall anybody besides me. But then I haven’t done any research, but he let me do it. That was the
year… I’m sorry, that’s it. Okay. That was the capacity. I was a graduate assistant. I taught
beginning conducting and I had this group called… I named it the Trojan Chorale, which I’m
sorry about because now I hate that word “chorale,” but there you go. [Laughter]

SHAWNA STEWART. All right. Can you tell me the years and what degrees you
completed then?

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah. January ’66 to May of ’69 and at the end of May, I
finished my qualifying exams and passed them. I had my dissertation half-written, but then I went
to Europe for seven months and then came back and finally got a job at Northern Michigan.
While I was at Northern Michigan, I finished the dissertation, came back and defended my
dissertation in spring of ’71.
207

SHAWNA STEWART. ’71, okay.

WILLIAM DEHNING. It was a time of traveling there and then a period while I was
working and finishing off.

SHAWNA STEWART. Got you. Did you complete your master’s at USC as well?

WILLIAM DEHNING. Uh-huh.

SHAWNA STEWART. You did. Was that in ’66?

DR. WILLIAM DEHNING. That was ’68, the year that the Israelis… the Seven-Day
War. [Laughs]

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow! Yeah, right.

WILLIAM DEHNING. They blew the Egyptians out of the water. I was typing and
watching it on television, so it was kind of fun.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow!

WILLIAM DEHNING. I was cheering for the Jews, I’ll tell you that.

SHAWNA STEWART. [Laughs] Memorable, for sure.

DR. WILLIAM DEHNING. Yes, it was.

SHAWNA STEWART. What is your perspective on what Dr. Hirt brought to USC?

WILLIAM DEHNING. Well, he’s the reason I went to USC. I was at UCLA and I met
this guy who was a conductor, and while I was at UCLA, I kept hearing about people at USC
getting all kinds of church jobs. They were getting all the good jobs in town. So this guy (Don
Ray was his name) had a group of chorus and orchestra up in the San Fernando Valley, and I got
to know him through my ex-wife, and I knew him really well. He had me guest conduct at one
point. We were talking at some function, and I said, “Gosh, I’d like to go to USC but it’s so
expensive.” He said (sorry this is being recorded), he said, “Bill, you bust your ass to get to
USC.” So I did. I sucked it up and I was in debt for quite a while, but then the assistantship
helped pay for some of my units. I got units for each course that I taught. It just kind of reduced
it, but still, I was in a lot of debt… but it’s not as bad as it is now.
However, at that point, it was a lot, because late 1960s’ dollars were worth a lot more
than they are now. What was your question?

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, what did Charles Hirt bring to the University of Southern
California?

208
WILLIAM DEHNING. Well, he was conducting the all-universe and all-Mars chorus
and the all-intergalactic chorus and he was everywhere. He brought a lot of renown to the school
because he was so successful on those events, and he brought ACDA [American Choral Directors
Association] to the choral world. I mean, that first convention… I was around when that was
being planned. That first one in ’71, they worked on that for I don’t know how many years, but
Hirt was in charge of that and it was a smashing success. He brought unequivocal, I don’t know if
that’s the word, dedication to the profession and a real… he did not suffer pedants and slow
thinkers gladly. He got into a lot of fights on the phone, and he had a lot of trouble with people
who were pennywise and pound foolish, do you know what I mean? Not in terms of monetary
sense, in a professional sense, in an intellectual sense, you know, and of course an artistic one. I
got to keep the question in mind here.
So he brought all of that to USC and he had a tremendous reputation as a church
musician, as a superb conductor and a devoutly organized man. He got a lot done, and could rally
people around him like crazy. He was worshiped in many circles and in many ways. That’s what I
think he brought to USC. He brought me there, dang it! [Laughs]

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah, that’s right. He brought some of the greatest conductors
like yourself to USC. I mean, you just think of his following. It’s amazing!

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah.

SHAWNA STEWART. It’s really amazing!

WILLIAM DEHNING. I’m very glad that I went.

SHAWNA STEWART. That’s wonderful! What is your impression of the philosophy he
held that underlaid his teaching of choral music and his idea of choral sound?

WILLIAM DEHNING. That tape you sent me, in the background, that year, I have that
vinyl still, of that year. I have it and it’s affected me my entire career. What really got me in terms
of this was those 16 singers were gunners. They were gunners and Widney Hall would shake
during their rehearsals. He let them sing. There were vibratos all over the place. He would be
laughed out of some of these conventions with some of these people [unintelligible] imitating the
European, that prissy British sound. [Laughs] You know what I mean.

SHAWNA STEWART. I do.

WILLIAM DEHNING. This is fine for high school choirs but not for adult choruses.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right.

WILLIAM DEHNING. When you have good singers, let them sing, and that comes out
in my book too, as you know.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

209
WILLIAM DEHNING. That’s what I did with the USC Chamber Singers. You never
heard me ask that they straighten that tone ever.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

WILLIAM DEHNING. It was forte and then it was a vibrato and thereby, got it rang.
That sound I got from him and it comes back when I hear his recordings. They weren’t always as
clean as they might be. Do you know what I mean?

SHAWNA STEWART. I do.

WILLIAM DEHNING. But he didn’t have that fetish. He was an extremely musical man
and that musicality came through and he allowed those singers to sing. That’s been a part of my
philosophy all the way through, and you can hear it in a lot of my recordings too. My God,
they’re singing. Nobody put the brakes on here.
Some of my earlier college groups, which weren’t as vocally adept, of course, they didn’t
have that kind of power and so they could sing that pianissimo beautifully and Hirt could, too, but
it was always an exciting pianissimo. He stole the one from Shaw, “Sing consonants with
impatience,” and you could hear impatience in every measure of Hirt’s recordings. They sound as
if they can’t wait to get that sound out. You know what I mean, right?

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah?

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

WILLIAM DEHNING. That made the rhythm so captivating and yet it had more power
than you hear in Shaw’s recording. They had the same kind of singers, but Shaw was more about
intonation than Hirt was.
I never heard Hirt ever mention intonation in those rehearsals that I sat through for two
semesters. He never mentioned it. He got it in other ways. He got it through excitement or he
asked them to listen or he asked this or that or he gave up the incentive behind what was going on
and that’s in my book too. He never said, “You’re flat.” [Laughs] I wish I could have gone
through my career like that but I can’t. At least I say, “You’re flat and here’s why. Let’s try to fix
it.”
What was the question again? I keep forgetting the question.

SHAWNA STEWART. It’s okay. His philosophy of his choral music, teaching choral
music.

WILLIAM DEHNING. He always was on the cutting-edge in a lot of ways of a modern
repertoire. There isn’t anything he wouldn’t do, including the pop idiom; he did it all. He did it
all, and I took that from him too.
I swear, as I get older, I ask this more often, “Where was I?” [Laughs]

210
SHAWNA STEWART. [Laughs] I already ask it a lot at forty-two. I suspect I’ll be in
trouble. You were talking about his philosophy of teaching choral music. Did you want to
continue on that one?

WILLIAM DEHNING. Teaching. Hirt didn’t instruct. He used metaphors. He used all
kinds of other references to get you to do what he wanted to do and, of course, he had a brilliant
mind and a tremendous sense of humor and, along with that, deep-seated insecurity, which a lot
of people don’t know. I mean, he’d sweat even more than I did. He would come out of those
rehearsals sweating. That’s insecurity. That’s nervousness. That’s why I sweat, because you’re
thinking, “Am I saying the right thing? How can I get this done without being negative?” He was
positive. He was always positive. That doesn’t mean he didn’t get short with you at times, but it
was an impatience born of either not paying attention or rudeness, that kind of thing. He was
always positive and he assumed that you could do it.
I saw him do this with junior high choirs at festivals. He expected the best of you, and
quite often he got it. I saw him at this festival that I went to with him in Gigi Trois – that was the
name of his third Citroën. It was a junior high festival. Hirt still went and did junior high
festivals. He knew he was Charles C. Hirt – Dr. Charles C. Hirt, the grand one. He knew that, but
he would still go out and work with anybody. Anyway, this junior high conductor was giving the
pitches [sings]. And then had them hum it, you know?

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

WILLIAM DEHNING. And, by God, they were doing the Hindemith Chansons too, by
the way – three of them. Hirt bounds up on the stage (no one could bound up on the stage like he
did; he was a lion of a man). He bounds up on the stage and as soon as he went to work with
them, he said, “Okay” and he named the pitch, I forgot which one it was; he went to the piano and
“bip,” that fast, the chord, the whole chord, and they came in right. In other words, he’s showing
the guy “They got it. They can get this. They can pick the pitch out by themselves and you’re not
helping them by feeding it to them.” But he did it without saying it. He had a genius with that. He
just had a genius about it. The man was a genius, period.
I’ll tell you one thing he was not. He was not a great orchestra conductor, okay? You may
have heard this from Vail too, or maybe not; maybe Vail didn’t want to speak ill of the dead, but
it was not his forte. I watched him do the Brahms Requiem at his church. I watched him do the
Messiah. He did Messiah every year in the winter and every spring he did the Brahms Requiem,
which also teed me off about him. Here he’s got this gunner church choir, I mean, it was fantastic
and he’s paying the best studio musicians in town, but he’s got the budget for it, and he kept
repeating the same pieces. Gosh, Dr. Hirt, you know? [Laughs] Gee, what they could do, and
what you can teach us if you would do something else. No one is perfect. No one is perfect and
I’m here to tell you that. That this is my viewpoint.
I also have gotten a little bit teed off with… The Chamber Singers would do these cutesy
little Christmas things.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah, I heard about that.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah. You would see the little Christmas things and I thought
that also was in a way a waste of talent, but later on when I got there and I started having to do
cutesy Christmas things, I began to understand why. He didn’t want to spend a lot of time
211
rehearsing it. It’s entertainment anyway. It’s not some kind of profound experience, either the
audience or the…. That isn’t what we use Christmas music for, unfortunately, except in church.
So I later understood it. It’s like we’re getting to that, but still, I wish he’d done more
with chorus and orchestra. Vail, good Lord! I learned so much from Vail in that genre, just so
much. When I wasn’t singing with him, I was going to hear it. So anyway, that’s that. I guess I’ve
answered that.

SHAWNA STEWART. I love it! I would love to pick your brain on this for two hours.
[Laughs] The stories are the best part.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Well, maybe we can do it another time. It’s just that today I got
to get out.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. So what choral techniques used by Doctor Hirt still stand
out to you today, or do you want to just say, “Read my book?” [Laughs]

WILLIAM DEHNING. They’re all in the book.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay.

WILLIAM DEHNING. They really are. They’re all there. I’ve been using them so long.
That Choral Development class, that two-unit, two-hour-a-week Choral Development class
established my technique in terms of sound and in terms of rehearsal. I was all ears and I believed
it would work. It made ultimate good sense to me. I had worked with Roger Wagner and Paul
Salamunovich by this time, so I’d seen other ways of doing it – both of whom are good. Paul is
Paul and he has his own singular method in sound, but Hirt was more Catholic in his approach to
both literature and sound, I think.
That course set me on my way. That course is everywhere in my book. I fleshed it out,
that’s all. I had fleshed it out. Of course, a lot of the rehearsals I got from Ingolf Dahl, too. I was
his private student for about a year and we worked solely on orchestral stuff. He taught me a lot
about rehearsing. I don’t know what to say because the church music choruses didn’t help me that
much. Hirt was tired of teaching them, I think. He kept saying, “I need to throw away all of my
notes because everything is changing.” So I thought, “Well, give me your notes. I need them.”
[Laughs]

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah, right. Well maybe the more interesting question then for
you would be, how have his methods and/or his philosophies changed in your hands?

WILLIAM DEHNING. I’m a bit more interested in the choral-orchestral rep. No, a lot
more not a bit more. I’m a lot more interested in the choral-orchestral genre, and also I like longer
forms more. I do a lot more Bach.
They may have told you this, but I remember Vail saying this more than once, “Hirt was
a master of the miniature.” He can take these little chansons and make them gleam and charm you
to death. He was such a charming man and he staged his repertoire. I did, too, for a number of
years when I first started, and it was only in years later that I got away from that format. I got
duller and I had them just stand there and sing, but it was a whole experience. It was in many
212
ways like opera with him. Everything was staged and they were like a jazz band. It was a
tremendous visual as well as oral experience when his Chamber Singers performed.
I even took it farther when I went to Pacific. I think I’ve answered that, or have I?

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, yeah, you definitely have. Is there anything about the
sound or particular choral concepts that you have a little different twist on?

DR. WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah. He was a Francophile, I’m half-German. I like things
a bit cleaner than you hear in Hirt’s recording. The rhythm is always exciting, always exciting,
but sometimes it’s not as precise as my ears would like to hear them. I came to like precision
more than just sheer sound. The aspects of choral sounds, those came from that Choral
Development course, by the way. Those six things that I talked about in my book, that’s right
from Hirt.

SHAWNA STEWART. That’s what I thought.

DR. WILLIAM DEHNING. That’s all from Charles Hirt. All of that is.

SHAWNA STEWART. That’s great! Do you happen to have any syllabi or any course
handouts from him, from your classes with him?

WILLIAM DEHNING. I may. They’re in my files out in the garage.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, yeah.

WILLIAM DEHNING. I may have kept them. A lot of that stuff when I left USC, I just
tossed. I’m not going to use these anymore. [Laughs] You know, why should I keep it so that
when I’m dead my kids gotta throw it away. [Laughs]

SHAWNA STEWART. [Laughs] Your kids thank you, I’m sure.

WILLIAM DEHNING. So I tossed them out. I had left it on the floor at my office when I
left. I may have kept some things, but the stylistic thing that you remember of Choral
Development, about the pendulum swinging between circle and the square. That’s all Charles
Hirt. That’s Charles Hirt. That was a brilliant concept and I still use that and I taught that right up
to the end. You may or may not remember. I think that style is everything. I got that from him. It
ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it. Style is everything. Yeah, you need correctness.
It’s got to be correct. To me, it’s got to be precise, but still, it’s got to say something besides,
“Here are these notes and these rhythms.” It’s got to have style.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. Well, I’d love to hear about the nonmusical ways in which
he influenced you.

WILLIAM DEHNING. He dressed like a million bucks. He did, and Lucy had a lot to do
with that and I think she picked out his ties, but he was always well-dressed. Even though I wore
jeans a lot, I usually wore a tie also. He’d look a lot like a professor and acted like one. He had
213
tremendous style and tremendous taste and loved good food and good wine, and I got all that
from him too, in part.
Also, a certain affection for France that I didn’t think I’d ever have, but I later picked it
up. He was just such a Francophile, from his soul. It’s okay to wear French suits but don’t buy
French cars. [Laughs]

SHAWNA STEWART. [Laughs] The Citroën I heard about.

WILLIAM DEHNING. It’s a pretty good car but ugly as sin.

SHAWNA STEWART. That’s great. I’ll get a little more detailed now. Can you describe
his conducting gesture?

WILLIAM DEHNING. It was all its own. It communicated in a way that only he could
use. There are a couple of moves that I’ve used: the hands down by the belly and the hands
shaking for a fortissimo, but the rest of it I couldn’t use. He couldn’t teach that. He was not a
good conducting teacher, not technique. He was teaching analysis and style. He was doing that,
but I didn’t have a technique course from him. A lot of people can imitate him very well and
when I started out, I would try also. I would make some of these moves. Don Brinegar, if you did
talk with him, he’s not the only one, but Hirt conducted with his elbows. The elbow goes one,
two, three, four, and the wrist kind of followed around, flopped around. It was so expressive and
so graphic. I at first tried but then I gave up. That ain’t workin’ for me. I couldn’t do it that well,
so I decided, “I’ll just pick up my own methods here and my own sense of communication,” but I
still think that I do have… Perla Warren, I have it on my website, Perla Warren who died just
recently (she was wonderful, by the way; she was superb, an undersung conductor, superb
woman), she was adjudicating at USC for a high school festival and I was conducting. She said,
“Bill, you’ve got such beautiful hands for a man.” [Laughter] So I obviously got something from
him. There’s a residue of Hirt’s hand. Anyway, that’s it. The rest of it, I can just as easily stick a
baton in there and be just as happy.

SHAWNA STEWART. Since you watched so many of his rehearsals, can you describe
or maybe give me an outline of what a rehearsal with him would be like?

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah. There’s another thing I got from him. That pace (and
again, this is all, what I say about rehearsal), it’s pretty much…an individual rehearsal – this is
pretty much how it would go. They’d start with music and they start with something a little bit
crisp. He never vocalized. He never did. Of course, with 16 seconds like that, you know what I
mean. I kind of took it from him, too. “By golly, it’s 1:00 in the afternoon, what time did we
rehearse?” “2:00.” “Come on. It’s 2:00, folks. You’re all singers. You’d be ready to sing when
you get here,” but I didn’t tax you vocally with that first piece. I got that from him too. Something
light, crisp, easy to sing, familiar, and go right into it. He’d get right to the music. These are all
psychological things, you see. Rehearsal psychology is important. He never did announcements at
the beginning or the end, never. He was always somewhere in the middle. They never took a
break. So, yeah, okay, a little one, but not much of one. I changed that. It was very brief, if they
did, and the announcements were somewhere in the course of the rehearsal and he always ends it
with music. That was the end. He had impeccable timing, which I later picked up. Just as that
214
second hand came to the top, bang, the rehearsal is done. And always, occasionally a little bit
early, never late. I took all of that from him.
He’d alter mood. He would alter mood. Keys are not important as one might think, but he
would alter mood. He would alter tempo and alter the activity whether or not they’re working
very hard or just singing through and laughing and having fun, for giggles. He would alter that
also. I picked that up by osmosis, rehearsal organization and what you want to do basically, and
when. Again, that’s in my book. It’s all in there in some form. He was the most dominant
influence on my professional career period, even though I never sang with him.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right. The singers that I’ve interviewed can’t tell me much about
the structure of his rehearsal because it’s too organic for them, whereas you were able to watch it
happen organically. I love your perspective on it. It’s interesting.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah. He got what he got from those singers through metaphor,
analogy, simile. It was rarely technical. It was rarely technical. That’s why they can’t tell you
that. They had to get inside his head and he got them in there. He got them inside his head and he
was suddenly inside theirs. That’s how he got them and I got a lot of that from him too. I’ve been
told by students later on in generations, “You don’t always say things technically, but you relate
music to living,” [unintelligible] but, you know… [Laughs]. Don’t get me wrong. He would
correct wrong, of course he would, but he did that as little as possible because that’s no fun. I got
that from him too. Get over that as fast as you can. Teach it as quickly as you can and get to the
human part of it here. I got that from him too or maybe it’s just me. I don’t know. [Laughs]

SHAWNA STEWART. No. I definitely think that’s true.

WILLIAM DEHNING. I’d like to say that he was funny. He’s a funny guy and very
clever, extremely bright, of course, but he would just let these funny stories… sometimes they
were corny, but he didn’t care. [Laughs] It just came up. It came out quickly and things were fun,
and, boy, did that pace move. He was fast. That’s why he was sweatin’. That’s one of the reasons,
because it moved. You can’t give theory lectures in a choral rehearsal. You can give history
lectures. You have to use, I just said it, other references, I can’t take…

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure, extra musical references or….

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah, extra musical references. You really have to in those
situations because even if there are superb musicians, that’s dull. The reason why we’re doing
this stuff, and what makes this fun and what makes it interesting. So I learned that from him too.

SHAWNA STEWART. Are you aware of Doug Lawrence’s video “101 Things to Say to
Your Choir that will Improve their Sound 100%?”

WILLIAM DEHNING. I am aware of it. I have not read it.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. I’m going to purchase that; it seems fun. Can you
comment at all on his belief in the efficacy of music, the power of music?

215
WILLIAM DEHNING. Yes. I didn’t take it as far as he did. The other thing I got from
him, I forgot if I put it in the book or not. I did put it somewhere else because Christian Campos
reminded me of it recently. Hirt truly believed in the power of choral music to not only bring
people together but to…he believed in it as a social force, a powerful strength. He really believed
in that. That’s part of the music, part of the reason I think for his involvement with IFCM. He was
instrumental in beginning the International Federation of Choral Music. He was in on the ground
floor and he had a lot to do with the beginning it in the first place. So he truly believed in what it
could do for not only individual people but for societies. He believed in it. He did as much as he
could to try to make that work. In other words, he was far more idealistic than I am.
Another thing, I didn’t do cheap music ever and I still won’t and that’s because of him.
“We’re going to do some real music here.” “Yeah. We’re going to.” But no, we’re going to spend
most of our time doing superb stuff. Of course from Vail, I got that, too. I mean, geez! Vail was
even more of a stickler than Hirt was about stuff like that. I think Vail… he got a little bit tired of
the French fluff and sometimes I did too, but Hirt was so good at it. He made it such a thrill and
he was unyielding about… He was a big supporter of Kirke Mechem when he was just getting
started. He did the music of modern composers, living composers, a lot. He did a lot and was not
at all afraid of modern music. The first time I ever heard any part of the Hindemith Mass was his
group. I didn’t even know Hindemith wrote a mass at that time.
Anyway, he did the “Agnus Dei” and it was excellent. I don’t see why he didn’t do the
rest of it. Well, as I’ve said, for one thing, he’s not a big form person. That piece is a beast. Every
movement is a beast, and he did it. I later tried to do it at Pacific; boy, was I sorry. I was trying; it
was so hard. We never did get it right but I learned a lot trying to get it right.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, what do you believe to be his legacy?

WILLIAM DEHNING. I wish it were greater. I wish it were stronger. As I’ve said to you
and I will say it, I don’t care if it’s recorded or not: He was so vastly more talented and capable
and gifted than about a dozen currently famous people that I can mention, but I won’t. Good
Lord. He wasn’t good at selling himself except at the all [unintelligible] chorus. Even there, he
did it through the music. It was the music that got him and the way he will get the music to come
out. Of course, quick little humor, not jokes, not dancing around, not being a cheerleader, always
centered on the music in those rehearsals. I watched him work with a choir down at Long Beach.
I forget which one it was. He was always moving and he was always using… he went after the
music. Wait, what was the question again?

SHAWNA STEWART. What do you believe his legacy was?

WILLIAM DEHNING. Legacy?

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

WILLIAM DEHNING. I think it has to be the students and choral music at USC. I wish
it were more well-populated, although Scheibe is a far better politician than I am. So he’s driving
a lot more bodies in there. That program of choral music, that’s his. That’s his and Vail’s, and
then the students who came out of that. That’s his legacy. I wish he were more famous. I honestly
do. I hope to heavens that you publish huge swatches of this, okay?

216
SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, I will.

WILLIAM DEHNING. I hope you do. I mean, do it.

SHAWNA STEWART. You got it. That’s my intention.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah, because he deserves it. I just wish Lucy were alive to
know that this is going on.

SHAWNA STEWART. I know.

WILLIAM DEHNING. I really do.

SHAWNA STEWART. I know you mentioned that he wasn’t a good self-promoter. Do
you have any other ideas about why he is not as well-known as he should be?

WILLIAM DEHNING. Well, he did some editions of octavos. You know he did. But in
those days, there was no William Barnes Stobles choral series. There weren’t many of those.
That’s good reasons. That’s about all he did was take [unintelligible] he pieces that he did well
and edited them, which meant he put an English translation underneath and put a few mf and a
few mp’s in there and that was about it. He kept trying to write a book. If you go into my…, he
tried to do what I was doing. He tried to write this book. On my blog, there’s a letter from Lucy.
After I finished mine and gave her a copy, she wrote; look it up, would you?

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

WILLIAM DEHNING. It says… I don’t know. Lucy sent me a letter and I put it into my
blog there about what she’s been. I think what did it was he was so bright and so intellectual
about so many of these things that he couldn’t put it in simple terms like a dodo like me did. You
can put it in simple terms. He kept getting so wound up in himself, making it so intellectual that
he couldn’t ever really finish it because he was so afraid that he’d be misinterpreted, or that
people wouldn’t get it, or the people would make fun of him, or something like that. I think that’s
why.
For such a good man – insecurity again. I think he was insecure about that, but he was
brilliant. He could have done a lot of good, but that’s past and I think that’s why it never got
done. Also, he was so busy out with his guest conducting; he was gone most weekends. I don’t
know how he kept his church job because he’d probably come Saturday night or something like
that, but he was gone all the time, all the time. He’s got all the record. Not even Eph Ehly or
Charlene Archibeque. He had done so many All States whatever. It was constant, constant.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow! Well, when all of these are done and I have time, I will
send you what I have of his book. I’ve got hundreds of documents if you want to just have fun
looking through.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Do you?

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.
217

WILLIAM DEHNING. What are you discovering in those documents?

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, I haven’t had the time to look closely; I’m just now getting
them printed out. I’ve looked at them but I haven’t put them together yet.

WILLIAM DEHNING. I see. This was his attempt at a book that you’re looking at?

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. Oh, he has a nineteen-page outline of the book.

WILLIAM DEHNING. You’re kidding?

SHAWNA STEWART. No. I’ll send it to you when I get time. It might not be for three
months but –

WILLIAM DEHNING. You see, there is the problem right there. What are you talking
about, a nineteen-page outline?

SHAWNA STEWART. Right. [Laughs]

WILLIAM DEHNING. Sit down and start writin’, Charles.

SHAWNA STEWART. I know. [Laughs]

WILLIAM DEHNING. Just the way it is.

SHAWNA STEWART. And there are four different revisions of the outline alone and
you should see, you talked about him being brilliant and not being able to simplify it. I mean, I
have hundreds of snapshots of all the little corners of a church bulletin where he wrote an idea
down. It’s insane. It’s absolutely crazy. So it’s fun.

WILLIAM DEHNING. He had an I.Q. I’m sure of 195. I’m absolutely sure. He was
brilliant in so many ways.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. Wow!

WILLIAM DEHNING. I’ll tell you this too. He liked a couple of my low-slow-soft
syndrome. He liked that. I personally did it in a paper for Choral Development. He loved it! He
absolutely loved it. I was so proud of myself and I never mentioned in my book that he liked it.
Anyway, one time I also wrote a paper for him (and I think it was Choral Development)
and I turned it in. A couple of days later he called me in there and he handed it back to me. He
said, “You can do better than this. Do it again.” That was all he said. He was right. I just tossed it
off. I shined it on, whatever. I didn’t treat it seriously. I did it in a big hurry and I thought I would
blow it by him. He just gave it right back. I learned something in there, too. [Laughs] I don’t
mind telling you that.

218
SHAWNA STEWART. That’s great. Well, we are coming up on 12:00 for you and
probably the only thing I haven’t asked is for you to share some of your most memorable stories
about him. If you want to try to shoot in eight minutes, go ahead. We could also talk again or you
could send me an email.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Well, I just gave you one.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yes, you did.

WILLIAM DEHNING. He gave that paper back.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Well, that made quite an impression on me. [Laughs] It had a lot
to do with my own teaching. Don’t take that, especially if someone is any good. If they’re a dodo,
I took that as a compliment, eventually. He did that because he thought I was better than that and
that I should be doing better and so he expected it. There was that.
Before I was a TA, we worked in that little office there in Widney Hall. We would hear
him come down in his size fourteen shoes walking on that hallway coming down the hall [wap,
wap, wap], and it was a Dutch door, where the top opened and then the bottom; he would come in
and then he would slam the bottom of that Dutch door. Steve and I or Eleanor, those of us
working in that little cubical up there, would have to jump out of our chairs it was so damn loud,
and then he’d go into his inner office, sometimes saying, “Good morning,” and sometimes not,
depending on his mood. So one day, I went out and I got some rubber weather stripping. I ran out
and got the rubber weather stripping. I put it along that door on both sides of the door and on the
doorframe so that it was nice and soft and spongy. The door was still closed. So he comes in the
next morning [clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp]. He opens the door and instead of this “Wham!” you
hear “woof.” He stopped, he opened the door and he looked at it, and he saw the rubber weather
stripping, and he didn’t say a word. He did not say a word. [Laughs] “Well, we got tired of it!”

SHAWNA STEWART. [Laughs] That’s so funny!

WILLIAM DEHNING. That was a good one.

SHAWNA STEWART. That’s great! That was great. I’ve had a number of stories like
that from people where his reaction is “nothing,” just observation and then done. [Laughs]

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah. He sometimes would react to things and sometimes
wouldn’t. We were having our picture taken. Doug Lawrence may have told you this. I don’t
know. Doug Lawrence is a very bright man too, by the way, extremely bright.

SHAWNA STEWART. I’m sorry, who?

WILLIAM DEHNING. Doug Lawrence.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, yes. I enjoyed that conversation with him.

219
WILLIAM DEHNING. Extremely bright.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

WILLIAM DEHNING. We had a picture taken up there in… it was in my office for a lot
of years; it was a picture with me and Hirt. He came and, this was before he left, we had the
picture taken of the summer choir, summer chorus up there in the loft. So the photographer was
way out there in the church on a ladder, kind of looking right at us. Somebody said, “Gee, that
camera looks perfect.” Hirt just said very quietly, “Funny, it comes from a good family.”

SHAWNA STEWART. [Laughs] Man, you cannot have good wit without real
intelligence.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah, okay.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate it, and gosh,
this is just going to be so much fun to put together and it’s been really wonderful getting this
picture of him and hearing everyone’s stories. Thank you so much. I hope you have a great
rehearsal.

WILLIAM DEHNING. He was a hunk according to any woman you talk to.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, man.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Oh, yeah.

SHAWNA STEWART. Debonair seems to be a word for him.

WILLIAM DEHNING. What?

SHAWNA STEWART. Debonair.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Debonair. More than that. Yeah, debonair, yeah, but a very sexy
man.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, yeah. It seems like it was really fun even just to get a few
live moments on that video. I think the Los Angeles Times might have some footage if they would
still have it way back in their archives. I’m going to try to get.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah. Okay.

SHAWNA STEWART. Really special.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Well, Shawna, if you want to talk to me more, I’d be happy to do
it, okay?

SHAWNA STEWART. Thank you so much.
220

WILLIAM DEHNING. This connection is not as good from your end.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, it’s not?

WILLIAM DEHNING. No, it’s not. Interesting. Anyway, I gave you as much time as
you want, but as you know, I’m a man of few words. [Laughs]

SHAWNA STEWART. You are delightfully efficient and I love it!

WILLIAM DEHNING. Delightfully what?

SHAWNA STEWART. Efficient, and I love it.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Deficient, okay.

SHAWNA STEWART. Efficient.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Yeah, efficient.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. [Laughs]

WILLIAM DEHNING. [Laughs] Delightfully deficient.

SHAWNA STEWART. [Laughs] Super! Well, have a great rehearsal. Please tell Erin
“Hi” and I’ll be in touch about next week for sure, before you come.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Okay. All right, Shawna.

SHAWNA STEWART. All right. Thank you so much.

WILLIAM DEHNING. You’re welcome. Thank you.

SHAWNA STEWART. Bye-bye.

WILLIAM DEHNING. Okay, bye.

221
APPENDIX J. INTERVIEW WITH DR. SALLY ETCHETO

SALLY ETCHETO
October 30, 2012
8:00 p.m.
Telephone Interview

SALLY ETCHETO. Oh, yes I can. Can you hear me?

SHAWNA STEWART. I can. We’re going to be up-to-date technologically. We’re both
using cell phones and I’m recording our interview this way.

SALLY ETCHETO. All right.

SHAWNA STEWART. Hopefully it will all work, right? The technology will cooperate
with us.

SALLY ETCHETO. Hopefully, and if we get disconnected, why don’t you just call me
back?

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure thing, I’ll do that.

SALLY ETCHETO. [Unintelligible]

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

SALLY ETCHETO. I’ll just pick up the phone.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. And you have until 10 o’clock or when will you arrive at
your destination?

SALLY ETCHETO. I should arrive at about 9.45.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay.

SALLY ETCHETO. About an hour from now.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay, great! Well, if you would let me know, first, what capacity
you knew Dr. Hirt?

SALLY ETCHETO. Well, I was a student working on my master’s degree in 1970–1971
at USC. I auditioned and was accepted into his Chamber Singers group. I was trying to think this
morning… I don’t believe that I took any other courses with him. I think I just had him in the
Chamber Singers group because my doctorate was in vocal performance. Even at the master’s
level, I was getting a vocal performance degree, not a choral conducting degree.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.
222

SALLY ETCHETO. I came from a very strong choral background with an excellent
choral program at Southern Methodist University with that Dr. Lloyd Pfautsch. So I was very
much a choral singer as well.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right.

SALLY ETCHETO. So I’ve always loved to sing in the choir.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

SALLY ETCHETO. That’s the memory that I have. I think I told you before that it’s
been so long. There are not a whole lot of really sharp memories that I have.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. Well, you can imagine that you’re not the only one in that
boat. Everybody is saying the same thing. [Laughs] Well, do you remember what your audition
was like with him?

SALLY ETCHETO. Yes, I do, and I remember the main thing was that we had a
discussion about being sure that you keep your eyes on the conductor. I could be mistaken but I
think that he complimented me on the fact that I really watched. In other words, he had me sing
something and he was conducting.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, interesting.

SALLY ETCHETO. I think so. The reason I remember this is because I sort of
embarrassed myself because I told him that where I’d been before with Dr. Pfautch, that one time
he made a comment that we didn’t have to look right at his face if we couldn’t handle that, but we
certainly had to be able to see his hands, and look at the level of his tie. I don’t think that Dr. Hirt
liked that answer very much because I think he thought that was sort of avoiding the issue.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

SALLY ETCHETO. You know… as you’re holding the choral folder and really don’t see
the whole conductor but you do see the hand movements.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right, of course.

SALLY ETCHETO. Anyway, that’s why I remember that because I was a little
embarrassed after I said that, and I thought maybe it wasn’t the best thing to say. But I do think
that was part of it. I’ll be interested to know if you find anybody else who remembers that or not.
And it might have been that it was just actually a discussion about watching the conductor and
not that he actually [unintelligible].

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure, sure.

223
SALLY ETCHETO. But as I recall, of course I was pretty green. I think I could be
intimidated by almost anything at that point. It was a pretty intimidating experience.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, I bet.

SALLY ETCHETO. As all auditions are, but I do remember that it was a wonderful
group of people. I mean, we had a great esprit de corps in that group. So anyway, let’s see, what
else? That’s all I really can remember about the audition.

SHAWNA STEWART. The audition, okay. Well, I’ve got about eight questions that are
sort of leading questions and feel free even though we just have forty-five minutes, that’s okay,
but feel free to take a right turn if you remember something that you think is important to
contribute.

SALLY ETCHETO. Sure.

SHAWNA STEWART. What is your perspective on his significant contributions to
USC?

SALLY ETCHETO. Well, I think, certainly he had obviously built a reputation for the
choral program there.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

SALLY ETCHETO. Looking back on that now that I have my own career, I can see that
if a professor does that, it’s because they specifically have chosen that as one of the goals they
have. I remember realizing how very respected he was by everyone, even though I didn’t really
get to know him on a personal level, very closely. This was the man that everyone knew, certainly
in this area and all over the country, but the main thing that I think contributed to that (and maybe
it’s another question you’re going to ask), one of main things that I learned from him was his
showmanship. Whenever we had a concert, I think he certainly gave equal measure both to the
music and musicality of things, but also, just to the way it was presented and the showmanship.

SHAWNA STEWART. Interesting.

SALLY ETCHETO. I remember this particularly with his holiday kinds of things. I just
think he loved to perform. He really was a real showman, and I’m sure that was part of what
helped to build that reputation – because everybody loved the show.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right, right.

SALLY ETCHETO. He would just do things that were unique. One of those things that I
remember was that my friend and fellow student Michael Sells had to do this wonderful sort of
signature solo. I guess it must have had some choral background to it as well, but it would be an
entrance that Michael would make by himself down the aisle, and it was called… it had
something to do with “Lavender.” Maybe somebody else has mentioned it to you. But Michael
224
had a beautiful, beautiful, light lyric tenor voice and it was a folk song kind of a thing, a street
song.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yes.

SALLY ETCHETO. He was actually coming in from the back, and he walked all the way
through the audience down the center aisle or something, to do it. And sometimes, he [Hirt]
would have us sing, I think from the back or surrounding the audience. Then one of the other
opportunities that he got for us (which was just a great thing for me) was that the SC Chamber
Singers were actually hired by Disneyland to become the Charles Dickens singers in Disneyland
for the holidays. We got to wear the Dickens costumes. I think it was like a two-week gig or
something. I don’t even remember if we got paid or if he actually got paid, I don’t remember that
part, but I do remember that it was a whole lot of fun to be able to see the back scenes of where
the employees work at Disneyland. It was hard work because the costumes were heavy and it
wasn’t really cool weather. We were strolling around all day long singing, but that kind of thing –
it was a little bit out of the ordinary I would guess for most college choral programs.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

SALLY ETCHETO. So let’s see. What else do I remember? I remember that I always
thought that his manner of conducting had that showmanship in it as well. What I remembered
the most is the way he would do cut-offs. He had sort of this slip of the wrist with one finger out
that would show you precisely where you were supposed to cut off.

SHAWNA STEWART. Was it his pinky finger?

SALLY ETCHETO. Pardon me?

SHAWNA STEWART. Was it his pinky finger that would flip out?

SALLY ETCHETO. Maybe it was. Sometimes, I think. I think also the pointer finger
sometimes, as well. I remember his hands being rather gnarled because at that point… When did
he retire?

SHAWNA STEWART. 1976.

SALLY ETCHETO. Yeah. So it was only about five years before he retired, that I was
singing with him, but I would say that just the reputation that he built and then, of course, I think
that later [unintelligible] and hopefully it’s still well-founded.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yes.

SALLY ETCHETO. By the time I came back to do my doctoral work, he was already
retired.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure, and what exact year or years did you sing in Chamber
Singers? Was it just one?
225

SALLY ETCHETO. That’s right. One year. I actually was in Spain. I got my master’s
degree in one year. I did my master’s recital and took all those units. If I had to do it over again, I
would never have done that, but for some reason…

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

SALLY ETCHETO. I guess I was in a hurry.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. Yeah. Well, I’m going to move on to another question, but
if you ever have anything you want to go back to, please let me know; that’ll be fine.

SALLY ETCHETO. Sure, absolutely.

SHAWNA STEWART. Can you tell me, if you remember or if you ever heard it, his
philosophy on music itself and particularly the power of music?

SALLY ETCHETO. Well, I didn’t take any courses with him. I’m not even sure what
other courses he taught.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

SALLY ETCHETO. But like any choral musician, he definitely understood the power of
music to sway emotions and to have all kinds of effects. And as I said, he certainly did go for the
effect. I do remember that. In rehearsals, we would sometimes do things several times until we
got the kind of effect that he wanted. But probably people that have worked with him longer than
I had would be more able to remember.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure

SALLY ETCHETO. I just remembered that I really looked forward to the rehearsals. He
was strict; he didn’t clown around or something, I would say. But the rehearsals, for me, it
worked fine because I love choral singing so much.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right.

SALLY ETCHETO. I didn’t dress though; you know I wasn’t afraid of him. I was in awe
of him, but I wasn’t afraid of him. I don’t remember him being that real strict disciplinarian –
maybe some that were undergrads felt like that. And I don’t really remember the make-up of the
group that well, although there were, I would say, a good percentage, a fairly high percentage of
graduate students in that group. I don’t know how many undergraduates were singing.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

SALLY ETCHETO. I know Joel Pressman and Rhonda were at least two of the
undergrads.

226
SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

SALLY ETCHETO. It makes a little bit of a difference in the tone of a rehearsal, I mean
when you have more graduate students.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right.

SALLY ETCHETO. Or equal numbers.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right.

SALLY ETCHETO. I do remember, he kept asking questions, and I won’t forget this
part, so you can come back to this.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. What is your impression of his philosophy of teaching
choral music, as demonstrated in the rehearsal?

SALLY ETCHETO. Well, I would say that, as I recall, he had a very good balance
between being detailed about something and then just going for the overall sweep of phrase or the
overall feel that he wanted to create for a piece. I worked with various conductors or sometimes
they’re a little out of balance in the way that they do that. They get too tied up in the details or
they leave too many other details to you.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right.

SALLY ETCHETO. He sort of gave an overall gesture.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

SALLY ETCHETO. I would say that, as I recall, his approach is pretty balanced. That’s
not to say there may be other people who have a different memory of that.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

SALLY ETCHETO. It makes me feel sad that I don’t remember it anymore specifically.

SHAWNA STEWART. No, I can imagine. Yeah, sure!

SALLY ETCHETO. Are there any videotapes of him rehearsing people?

SHAWNA STEWART. You know, there are not, as far as we know. I mean, except for
one. One of the 1964 international tour singers has a bit of footage of him, but nothing in
conducting. I actually heard that he would not let himself be videotaped.

SALLY ETCHETO. So that’s why even from ACDA conventions there are no
recordings.

227
SHAWNA STEWART. Right. There may be something in existence, but I haven’t found
it yet. Well, of that philosophy, what lives on philosophically in your teaching?

SALLY ETCHETO. Well, I think I tried to achieve that balance. And you know, just sort
of a vague idea that I got that from him. I don’t remember any specific instance of him talking
about that. But I do try to keep that balance. I tend to get a little picky with my singers
sometimes. I think because I’m working in an area where the musicianship skills are a real
struggle for some of our undergraduate students who come in, with not very much preparation. I
don’t know if you know too much about the musical education of the public schools. It’s dire. It’s
a challenge. Unless they’ve had some sort of choral program at high school where they’ve had
some help in learning to read and [unintelligible] to the choral music. I would say the balance
between the music and its being all important, and the presentation as being important. And then
also the balance between music, the details, and this overall essence of the piece, and the power
that that brings when you capture the overall essence in a performance. I do think that he had a
great ear for different voices and picking the right people to solo in the right moments. Those
little choral solos are just over with before you have a chance to be nervous.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right

SALLY ETCHETO. I think he really had a wonderful understanding of how voices
worked, and what voices fit for a particular moment in music.

SHAWNA STEWART. I just have to tell you, even though you’re saying you don’t
remember a lot, you are contributing new things and new ideas to the people that I’ve
interviewed. You’re interview number sixteen. It’s really fun just to hear everybody’s perspective
and what everyone remembers. I really appreciate that. You talked about him being so great at
communicating the essence of music. How did he get you to discover the essence of the music as
a singer?

SALLY ETCHETO. I think he did a great deal of that just with the way he moved. There
are some who give you a lot of it within a rehearsal, and then just sort of give you reminders
during the performance. A lot of conductors, they do more with, you know, or at least equally as
well, with facial expressions. But I don’t remember his facial expressions so much as I do his arm
movements.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, interesting.

SALLY ETCHETO. You know, to shape a phrase or whatever. There again, I’m not
replaying a video in my mind. Other than a cut-off motion, I can’t really remember any specific
thing.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

SALLY ETCHETO. But I do have that memory.

228
SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. Can you remember some of the most impressionable
choral techniques that he used in the rehearsal? When we think of accomplishing things like
blend, balance, those kinds of things, what kind of techniques did he use, if you can remember?

SALLY ETCHETO. I’m really sorry. I don’t have any memory of that at all. It makes me
very sad because I think there have been too many other things that have happened since then.
I’ve sung for so many conductors, and that was just a brief nine months or whatever.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right, sure.

SALLY ETCHETO. So that was a long, long time ago. I’ve had a long career of singing
with choirs. Maybe if I had taken an entire choral development class, but I didn’t even have that
with him. I studied with Rod Eichenberger when I went back for my doctorate. I don’t really have
any other stuff. Hopefully, you’ll find some other people that worked with him longer.

SHAWNA STEWART. Definitely.

SALLY ETCHETO. I didn’t do any touring with him either.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, definitely. We’ve got lots of great information, so we’re
good. Well, can you tell me maybe what nonmusical ways he influenced you?

SALLY ETCHETO. I think just knowing someone in the field that I was attempting to
enter (he was passionate about what we were doing) and knowing someone who’s been
successful. I really have sung for an awful lot of wonderful conductors. It helps you substantiate
in your own mind the rightness of the career you’ve chosen for yourself, when you see people
who are respected and looked up to. I don’t know if that’s really a feasible kind of influence
though. That probably would be the main thing. That and then the whole gift of realizing that this
is more than just being in tune and blending and singing the right notes at the right time. This was
really something that he was trying to present to an audience. He appreciated the presentation.

SHAWNA STEWART. You already mentioned some, so if you feel like you’ve covered
it that’s no problem, but are there any additional ways that you feel like his philosophies or
techniques are seen in your own teaching, or have been seen throughout the years in your own
teaching?

SALLY ETCHETO. Well, I think I already spoke to the idea of balance in the rehearsal
between details and the overall. I think the courage to demand from the singers, that once you
taught them something they’d remember it. Sort of that expectation that you auditioned, you got
into this group and that makes you better than the average choral bear. [Unintelligible]. Maybe
that would be part of it. And then, as I say, maybe the holiday music, maybe because of the things
that we did at Disneyland. The holiday music and the strolling around and singing and that kind
of thing, I would say that was probably one of the lasting contributions to what I’ve done
throughout my career. Just to have the courage to put my singers in all kinds of performance
situations, other than just the typical – we all walk in a line on the risers and we face the
conductor and sing. So it’s just that idea that you can have someone solo down the center aisle.
229
Maybe nobody else remembers this, so maybe I’m remembering this incorrectly, but I would say
that’s one of the things that has stayed with me the longest.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. That’s really neat, and, yeah, that coincides with the other
things I’ve heard. You’ve said it in a new way, which is really neat.

SALLY ETCHETO. Okay. I hope I’m not just remembering a different man. [Laughter]

SHAWNA STEWART. Nope. It all sounds like Dr. Hirt. Even though some of it has not
been said before. It’s right in line with everything else.

SALLY ETCHETO. Okay, all right, good. So one thing I did want to tell you about,
which I really appreciated, was that I came to USC having been a cellist for most of my life and
having to give it up the last couple of years of undergrad school because I just couldn’t be in the
orchestra and the opera workshop at the same time. I remember that we were doing a piece in the
Chamber Singers with Dr. Hirt that really needed a cello sort of as a ground bass. It wasn’t a
really difficult cello part. And so I remember I raised my hand [unintelligible] cello part and he
allowed me to do that. And hopefully I did that up to his standards. I must have or otherwise he’d
never have let me do it. But it was one of those things that confirmed to me that it was okay that I
was still playing my cello even though I was primarily a vocal major.
I haven’t played it very often through the years, but I think that because of that
[unintelligible] and a few others along the way, I still have my cello and, once I retire, once I stop
singing professionally, I certainly intend to play my cello. I think [unintelligible]. He would do
things once in a while that weren’t just a cappella or accompanied at keyboard. [Unintelligible].

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure, yeah. Do you have an impression of how the Chamber
Singers were different from other chamber singers, other madrigal groups in your area?

SALLY ETCHETO. No, I really don’t, because I had not ever been a member of a small
choral group before this. The choral tradition that I came from was a big civic chorus in Dallas.
There was an audition of course, but I think it was probably never smaller than forty. Maybe
that’s another thing I should say that really influenced me, because years later two of my solo alto
friends and I from the Master Chorale formed a small professional a cappella ensemble called
Zephyr. Voices Unbound. We were conductorless. We decided that we really didn’t want to have
a conductor, that we wanted to rehearse and sing together without the conductor between us and
the audience. I have to say that it was an incredible experience. We had about a ten-year run of
doing a concert series [unintelligible].
The group is disbanded now, but there were several people in that group that had sung
with him. And we did have the wonderful opportunities to appear before the ACDA Convention
that was here in Los Angeles. I don’t remember which year it was. We sang at church. So here we
were singing before all these choral conductors, conductorless. One of the things that we did, at
the end of the program, was we each went around and got to say a few words about one of the
choral conductors that had trained us and brought us to this time that we could actually do choral
music without the aid of the conductor upfront. We gave all that credit to all the choral
conductors we worked with. As I recall, Dr. Hirt’s name was mentioned more than once. We
were a 12-member group.
230
The rehearsals were murder not having a conductor because we had to have a consensus
about the dynamics and all of that. But it turned out to be a marvelous experience for us. Those
kinds of things, I wouldn’t change it. I mean, there is a lot of that out there now, but there
certainly wasn’t anything like that in this day. Chamber groups all still had conductors I think.
I would say that he helped to bring that form to a level that…at least a small group had
been trained well enough through all of their choral experiences to be able to do that in creating
choral [unintelligible]. That is a confirmation to everyone. The most gratifying part of it was that
it gave us the direct connection to the audience that I have never experienced before. I think it’s a
bit ironic that fine choral conductors turned out people who didn’t need them. I always tell my
students that the mark of a good voice teacher is when you get to a point that you don’t them
anymore.

SHAWNA STEWART. Dr. Etcheto?

SALLY ETCHETO. Yes?

SHAWNA STEWART. I’m sorry, the last about three or four sentences really cut out,
could you rephrase or restate those by chance?

SALLY ETCHETO. Oh, okay. Let me see. I was saying that it’s a little bit ironic, I
guess, that because someone has done such a good job of training choral conductors, choral
singers, that some of those singers then who are professional can go on to perform choral music
without the need of a conductor.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, yes.

SALLY ETCHETO. But I always tell my students in the solo studio that I haven’t done
my job as a teacher until they are independent of me. They don’t need me to be listening and to
know what’s going on. In the long run, I think that the choral conductors and pedagogues like Dr.
Hirt have changed the way with sort of this newer phenomenon of conductorless groups. And, of
course, you know they are going to stay small; they’re not ever going to be large, large groups,
conductorless groups. But I just said that it gave me a new perspective that I’d only have as a
soloist in performance, because without the conductor, they could have a direct line to the
audience. So in my teaching now, I’m trying to give my students some inkling of that. Did
anybody else mention Dr. Hirt rehearsing us, standing in a circle?

SHAWNA STEWART. No, but can I ask you a follow-up question, and then I’ll have
you talk about that one?

SALLY ETCHETO. Sure.

SHAWNA STEWART. So to clarify, you’re actually saying the Chamber Singers sang
without him conducting sometimes?

SALLY ETCHETO. No. I’m talking about the group that I formed later, and the fact that
having learned from several great choral conductors, and he is one of them. I think he gave me
the confidence to think that that kind of thing could actually happen.
231

SHAWNA STEWART. I see.

SALLY ETCHETO. In trying to achieve the kinds of things that he believed in – the
power of the music and the overall performance. So that may be a total tangent on my part that
you won’t find any spot for in what you’re doing, but I just think it’s interesting to know. I don’t
know if you got the part about – did you get the part about at the end of our ACDA performance
with my Zephyr. Voices Unbound, we went around and named the choral conductors that had
most influenced us.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yes.

SALLY ETCHETO. We all had to pick only one. If we had been able to say two or three,
it’s very possible that his name would have been mentioned by everybody in the group.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, wow!

SALLY ETCHETO. Or almost everybody. I don’t think there’s anybody anymore
influential than he was.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. Yeah. Sure, that’s clearer. Yes, please speak about his
rehearsing in a circle.

SALLY ETCHETO. I don’t know if he did. I’m trying to ask you if he did because I
don’t know where I got that. I do that a lot, and I’m not sure where I picked it up.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. No I haven’t had anyone refer to that, but it doesn’t mean
that it didn’t come from him. Like what you’re experiencing, it’s been hard for a lot of people to
remember some of those specifics.

SALLY ETCHETO. Well, you get to a point where you take the things you’ve learned
and you make them your own and you adapt them to your particular situation.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right.

SALLY ETCHETO. So I used to know where I got all these ideas, but now it’s just like
they are my ideas, even though I don’t know that they are.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right.

SALLY ETCHETO. Anyway, so I wouldn’t want to be quoted of saying that he did that.
It may not be that that’s where I got that from. I really don’t remember.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

232
SALLY ETCHETO. As I said, I worked with Rod Eichenberger too. There are two or
three things that I got from him [Dr. Hirt], that I know are from him, but other things I’m not so
certain.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. Well, out of curiosity, I’ll ask that specific question to a
few more people that I’ve got on my interview list.

SALLY ETCHETO. I think we talked about the people I remember. I think you’ve been
able to talk with them already or you’ve already heard their names. So I don’t think I have any
other singers to tell you about.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay, all right. Well, in closing, do you have more anecdotal
stories that you’d like to share, personal stories about Dr. Hirt? Any memories like that?

SALLY ETCHETO. Well, I sure wish I could remember some specific things, but I
really don’t feel… When you tour with somebody, you end up having more anecdotal things –
maybe, when you’ve worked with him a little bit longer, but I don’t know. I don’t have any
specific things at all. If anything jogs my memory, I’ll give you a call back.

SHAWNA STEWART. That would be wonderful.

SALLY ETCHETO. I’ll read what you’re writing and I’ll go, “Oh yeah, I remember
that.”

SHAWNA STEWART. Right. Yeah. It’s interesting, I’m actually finding a few things
that he did differently by the early ’70s than what he was doing in 1964 with the international
singers.

SALLY ETCHETO. Oh, I’m sure. I’m sure that’s true.

SHAWNA STEWART. He was actually…

SALLY ETCHETO. There’s no way that he could have had the reputation he did and not
have continued to grow and change all the time.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. Super. Well, I’m going to start writing in about two
weeks.

SALLY ETCHETO. Okay.

SHAWNA STEWART. So if anything else comes to mind, feel free to leave it on a
voicemail or send it via email; either way would be fine.

SALLY ETCHETO. Okay. That sounds great. Now, are you full-time at Biola or only
part-time?

233
SHAWNA STEWART. I’m full-time. This is actually my sixteenth year there as Director
of Choral Activities.

SALLY ETCHETO. Good for you, and now you’ve gone back to get your doctorate.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. Well, the crazy thing is, full-time and two kids later. I
started my doctorate in 1999. I finished my exams in 2007, but then we got pregnant with our
second child and it’s just taking a while.

SALLY ETCHETO. Right. Well, don’t feel badly. I think maybe I took six years or eight
years to do mine.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. It just takes a while.

SALLY ETCHETO. I did manage to wait [unintelligible] because I had a friend who had
to take her oral exams and she was eight months pregnant. I thought, “No, I don’t think I’m going
to do that.”

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah, that’s crazy.

SALLY ETCHETO. Well, best of luck and please… I hope that we’ll be able to have an
access to a copy of what you’ve written once you’re finished.

SHAWNA STEWART. Definitely. Yeah. All right, thank you and Happy Thanksgiving
to you.

SALLY ETCHETO. You too, Shawna. Thank you so much.

SHAWNA STEWART. Take care.

SALLY ETCHETO. Bye-bye.

SHAWNA STEWART. Bye-bye.

234
APPENDIX K: INTERVIEW WITH DR. WILLIAM HALL

WILLIAM HALL
October 18, 2012
11:00 a.m.
In-Person Interview, office of William Hall, Chapman University

WILLIAM HALL. We honored the Pope right before he died and we did the Verdi at his
church, St Paul’s Outside the Walls, and we were worried that maybe a thousand people would
show up, but they turned away several thousand; maybe six to seven thousand people were there.
It was incredible, one of those great experiences. And what came out of that, the next day he only
wanted to talk to 30–40,000 people so he called a square meeting, and I met him on the side with
the Swiss guard – David and I and Pablo Colino, head of Catholic Church music for the world. In
fact, after the Verdi he came up to me, here was a TV camera, and I was soaking wet because it
was long and hot and in the church, gave me a big hug and a wet kiss and he turned to the camera,
still holding me, and he said, screaming in Italian, “This is the greatest concert in the history of
the Catholic Church. I want you to meet with John Paul in the morning,” and I said I’d be happy
to. This was about our eighth meeting over the years; he was a great man. I loved that man. So
we’re walking back in the church and he said, “I want you to pray with me,” and I said, “I’m
sorry, I can’t. I’m a recalcitrant Methodist and there’d be a bolt of lightning!” He loves humor, by
the way. We were walking back, and I literally shoved him into his own prayer room where they
are changing vestments and all that, so there were five of us standing outside waiting for him to
pray. This was at the back of St Peter’s, so we got inside of St Peter’s and no one was there; it
was locked. So here the six of us are walking down St. Peter’s and I’m thinking, “This is surreal –
there’s going to be a bolt of lightning.” And he asked, “Do you like the Pieta?” and I said, “I’ve
loved it all my life.” “Well, see what he did here.” And we walked out the door, 40,000 people
screaming, “Il Papa, Il Papa!” and all the Cardinals were there and Pablo Colino said, “Bill, you
sit next to His Holiness.” And I said, “I am not sitting next to the Pope.” And he said, because I
wrote a “Gloria” and we have 800 in the choir out there and we need to open with a “Gloria,”
and he said, “You only have a minute and fifty-eight seconds (or whatever it was) because the
boys are going to sing ‘The Heavens Are Telling.’” So Dave and I are running, screaming (well,
not screaming, but almost) right through the Cardinals, down all the steps, down to 40,000
people, and the guys with guns thought we were terrorists so I said (Italian). So they helped me
over the fence with a couple of chairs and I gave a downbeat for the “Gloria” and I told the choir
the night before, “Sing as loud as you can because it’s outdoors and there’s no mic.” And they
screamed the “Gloria” and people were screaming, “Oh, it’s fabulous.” And just as we end, the
boys go into “The Heavens Are Telling,” which was in Italian, but it was “The Heavens Are
Telling…” Sat down in a chair and it rained about three feet of water in maybe ten seconds. It
was the heaviest rain I’ve ever been in and I started laughing, thinking, “I should have stayed
with the Pope ’cause I’m sure he’s dry, but everyone else was soaking wet.” I mean, 40,000
people were soaking wet, and Dave and I are just cracking up and the water was about here. It
was a giant flood, really. Thirty minutes later the sun came out, water went away and all the little
boys came out with umbrellas for the Cardinals who were soaking wet and I said, “That’s typical
of every church I’ve known.” Anyway, that was the last time I met with Pope John Paul.

235
SHAWNA STEWART. What a story. Well, I know this interview is not about you, but is
there a story that you wished had been a part of your life like that, someone you wanted to meet,
some place you’ve wanted to travel that you haven’t traveled?

WILLIAM HALL. No. I literally have been everywhere, other than I’ve never been to
South Africa. I’ve known people from there; in fact somebody bought one of my boats; the guy
was in sort of a reclamation or something in South Africa. I’ve just never had a desire to go there.
But we’ve performed everywhere. It’s been an incredible career; I mean, I’m blessed. And I miss
teaching really desperately, although I don’t have the energy to do it. I still conduct a concert
once a year here called “American Celebration” where we raise three million dollars for
scholarships, and it’s the biggest fundraiser in Orange County from the standpoint of three
million dollars. It’s becoming a big thing; in fact we’re honoring Richard Dreyfus this year. I
started it thirty-one years ago with a friend of mine who is no longer here (he’s dead) because the
president then said, “Bill we need a fundraiser really quickly.” And I said, “We’ll come up with
an all-American show,” which we did, and everybody loved it and I figured this would be the
only time we’d do it because it takes kids out of their classes and we have to adjust schedules, as
you know all of that, and this isn’t going to work. And thirty-one years later we’re still doing it,
and now it raises monster amounts of money.

SHAWNA STEWART. When is it this year?

WILLIAM HALL. November second and third. It’s fifty dollars a ticket on the second
with a dessert afterwards, and it’s five thousand to one hundred thousand on Saturday night.

SHAWNA STEWART. Why?

WILLIAM HALL. Because that’s where the big money comes in. If I wasn’t conducting,
I couldn’t afford to go.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, thank you again for being willing to do this. And, we’re
supposed to last about forty-five minutes?

WILLIAM HALL. Well, it’s fine. It’s a little under false pretenses because Charles and I
were good friends, sometimes.

SHAWNA STEWART. As with any great leader, right?

WILLIAM HALL. Absolutely. But I got to study with Ingolf Dahl, Bruno Walter, Walter
Ducloux. These were giants. And it was perfect for me because I didn’t have the skills of
someone like Michael Tilson Thomas, who was in one of our classes, and others. But there is one
experience. I was twenty-one when I graduated from Whittier and, just by chance, got into two
different events. I wanted to go in my senior year to Whittier because I graduated literally when I
was a junior because I was mad at the choir director at Whittier College who was really a nice
guy but he was an organist and he was in the wrong position and didn’t know literature, and I had
started the William Hall Chorale my senior year because I got fed up with what he was doing. But
the “theory man,” Bill Dale, said, “Stay here, Bill, because I can teach you more than any of the
graduate assistants or anyone who is teaching at SC right now (I mean he just nailed me). And I’ll
236
help you with certainty.” And he did. In fact, Halsey Stevens was sitting at the table down at the
bottom somewhere when there were 200 of us analyzing something and it happened to be the 10
th

Concerto of Beethoven… I can’t remember what it was, but it was Beethoven and I had done it
with Bill Dale, and we had two hours to do this in this graduate entrance exam and I did it in
about twelve minutes because I knew it. So I walked it down to Halsey Stevens, who I was in awe
of (he was a very famous man) and he looked at it and says, “What does this mean?” and I said,
“Well, it’s A connected to B,” and he says, “We don’t use that kind of…” And I said, “Is it
correct?” and he said, “Who are you?” And I said, “I’m number seventy-one.” And he said, “No,
no, what is your name?” and I said, “William Hall.” And he said, “I want you to study
composition with me.” I wasn’t even a student yet.
So I got that experience with Halsey Stevens, and then in this class of conducting there
were probably forty; two of us were in our twenties and the rest were thirties or forties doing what
you’re doing and doing what I did later on to get the doctorate. Ingolf walked in; did you ever
know him? No, he died before; you’re too young. He came in with forty-five scores, dumped
them on the lid of the piano and said, “Shawna Stewart, come to the piano!” Then he’d put a
score and you had to read it at the piano. We died. I mean all of us. I knew there was a gallon of
water under my chair because I was just, “Don’t call me; please don’t call me!” And I heard, “Bill
Hall!” and I walked down, sat at the keyboard and went – BAM! – and he put by “Christlag in
todesbanden,” Bach BWV 4, for which I had just conducted. It was one of those magic
{moments}. So I wailed and just played, and he looked at the class and looked back to me, put his
hand on my shoulder and said, “Class, this is the beginning of a great conductor.” And then I
started to get up and he held me down and I said, “Oh, shit!” and he put another score; it was
Beethoven’s 2
nd
, which I could play the Ds and then I froze. Just froze. He put his hand on my
shoulder, leaned down and said, “Sign up for private conducting.” So he saved me, but I was
nailed. So lots of great stories like that.

SHAWNA STEWART. Amazing. What year did you complete your DMA?

WILLIAM HALL. ’69.

SHAWNA STEWART. And it was in choral music at that time?

WILLIAM HALL. Church music. And it was the last… It’s the last dissertation in the
DMA program. From then on they started… what do you have to do, four projects, four papers,
or four something? And Hirt told me that…it was on the demise of Missa profunctus, talking
about the mass, because I’ve done so many requiem masses. It was interesting; after I finished it,
Norton Publishing wanted to publish it and I thought about it after a few weeks and realized that I
probably stole more things from so many different sources and I would have been in real trouble.
Not stealing as much as “I like this,” and I’d rewrite it. And Hirt told me (he was on his way to
France; he was always going to France), and he said, “Take a year off and write your
dissertation.” And I sat in the old library here on campus for six weeks and wrote the dissertation.
I had a girl who was a very good typist and I would give her legal pads every night at seven
o’clock and she’d type them in the evening for me and I paid her well; she was really a neat girl,
in fact, a very wonderful soprano. And when Hirt came back from France after six or seven
weeks, I set the dissertation on his desk and he said, “What is this?” and I said, “It’s the
dissertation.” And he said, “That’s impossible. You couldn’t have written…” And I said, “Yeah I
did, and, Charles, I had some help.” I actually went to the Bach Carmel Festival with Malcolm
237
Hamilton and some other people and Malcolm looked it over and said, “No, change this; rewrite
this,” and they edited for me. And he got really mad at me. Oh, God, he was mad. And he said,
“I’ll look at it and get back to you in a week.” There was one change. Just a word he didn’t like.

SHAWNA STEWART. In what capacity did you know him?

WILLIAM HALL. Well, he was in charge of church music. And I wasn’t really good
enough to sing in the Chamber Singers, and all of us were required to sing in the choir. I had a
great love for the man. I was scared to death almost every time I walked in his office because,
compared to anyone else I knew, his vocabulary was stunning. And I learned a lot from him for
that. I probably learned more about vocabulary and how to phrase things than [about] musical
things. Charles was a wonderful musician, had great ideas of composition and programming. He
could put things together that were really exceptional, especially coming from where I came from
– a small college – and the man was limited, he was sort of myopic about one thing and nothing
else.
And Charles wasn’t afraid to sort of take a chance, and we used to argue all the time. In
fact, one of the wonderful moments in our relationship – we were both somehow doing something
in Texas together because I was with William Hall Chorale so I was known for that and not
known for SC. We came back and he said, “You know, in church music I want you to study
conducting with me.” And I said, “And I want to study conducting with you.” It was required.
And we walked into his office one day and he said, “I’ve got three or four scores here,” and we
looked through each one. I knew at least sixty to seventy percent of them because of chorale and
church choir and all that, and he said, “You pick something to conduct.” And I said, “No, I want
you to choose something for me to conduct because I want your expertise.” So we went through a
lot of scores and it turned out, because we were exactly the same in pianistic skills, limited (I
mean both of us played but we were limited), that he chose the Fauré Requiem because it’s really
easy to play. And everything went fine for the first movement. We zipped through the first
movement and we got to the second movement (singing). It looks like it’s in eight but it’s in four-
four. And he said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m conducting the opening.” He said, “It’s in
eight.” I said, “You’re right; it is an eight conceptually, but for the phrasing you have to do it in
four. So it’s a slow four rather than eight or you emphasize some of the wrong syllables.” He
turned around and looked at me and said, “You know, you’ve done so much with the chorale and
your church experience, I’m just gonna write this class off.” It was an hour. And I thought it was
strange at the time and then I realized for a lot of different reasons.
And don’t misunderstand because I learned a lot from him. But it was about two very
strong minds about how music is, and I loved him for attempting. I don’t know what was wrong.
In fact, Howard Swan and Charles were really cut out of the same cloth, both Glendale areas,
both schools, and Howard was a much better singer than Charles was…but neither one was good
in front of an orchestra. I mean not good at all.

SHAWNA STEWART. In what ways?

WILLIAM HALL. In fact, it’s interesting looking at my heroes: Howard, Charles, Roger.
My greatest hero was Shaw. Actually my greatest hero was Ivy D. Hyatt. I thought she was one
of the giants of the 20
th
century and she was at Peabody. And every time I heard her choir, I either
cried or was just blown away by how musical she was. She was a phenomenal artist. But anyway,
the three, I don’t know what it was… Maybe it’s the period of late ’30s, early ’40s and men
238
coming back from the war; I don’t know what it was, building a program, not much orchestral
experience. And all three of them were completely different individuals in front of an orchestra
chorus when they were in front of just the choir. I’m convinced (I look back on the time) they just
didn’t have a lot of experience and then they were thrown into the head of a college program and
head of the chorale and then they had to learn quickly. But they all three suffered.
In fact, I’ve never forgotten Bruno Walter; that’s how I got a chance to study with Bruno
Walter. There were six of us. He came and spoke to all of the conductors. There had to be a
couple hundred and what’s the small hall, it’s about 1200 seats, Newman Hall? It had another
name. Anyway, Bruno Walter walked on stage and asked a question about conducting. Oh, I
know, the kid behind me said something, “Dr. Walter, how do you know the correct tempo?” And
Bruno Walter almost beatifically looked out at everybody and said, “The conductor always knows
the right tempo.” And the more you think about it, absolutely. You study, you do all the things
you know, but Charles was conducting the Beethoven Mass in C, and so both the Chamber
Singers and the larger choir were singing and Bruno Walter was in the front row and Bovard were
at the rehearsal. Whatever the reason was where Charles would phrase something in front of the
singers and he’d do some wonderful things with his hands and move up in the air because his
fingers would travel, not unlike Valery Gergiev. He conducts the LA Phil many times; he’s the
head of Kirov Ballet Orchestra. Brilliant conductor, but he does this [gesturing with his hands],
he’s a pianist, and he’s always doing this [gesturing with his hands] with the strings. And Charles
would go like this and beautifully at times he’d watch his hand.

SHAWNA STEWART. He would watch his own hands?

WILLIAM HALL. He’d watch his own hand. You’d catch him. Have you ever seen the
show “The Mentalist”? He drives an old Citroën, the old style which actually was the first car I
think that had hydraulics in it. The car would lift up and lower, and Charles drove exactly the
same car that’s on television. And every time I see I just crack up and say, “There goes Charles
and Lucy.” He would drive in and then the car would go [sound] because of the hydraulics. It was
really special. But that was Charles because he was very much into drama.
It was a wonderful relationship over the years. In fact, when he was in the wheelchair he
came to our performance of The Beatles,’ McCartney – we did his Liverpool Oratorio, which we
were blessed to do. In fact, that saved two seasons for the William Hall Chorale because we sold
out two nights. And he came backstage and said, “This is the transformational performance, Bill,
of classic and modern music.” And I said, “That is So Charles.” Because that’s the way he was
always in our relationship. He would always bring it up several levels.

SHAWNA STEWART. That is a really great connecting piece of information. Somebody
that I interviewed yesterday talked about how he [Hirt] had a hard time grasping the change from
classical music to more contemporary music.
I’m very interested in interviewing you for what you bring to the musical side of this
versus the purely relational side. Did you ever sing under him?

WILLIAM HALL. Well, we did for major performances like that.

SHAWNA STEWART. So you were in rehearsal with him. And classes?

239
WILLIAM HALL. Oh yes, and let me tell you one other experience. In whatever (I can’t
remember what they call the class) but it was choral literature, and there were some heavy hitters
in that class, I mean people who already had careers and had come back to finish their doctorate,
maybe twelve to fifteen. And we would have to bring something in to describe what this was for,
and seasonal, or whatever. And I brought in an arrangement of the Osaris tune [singing]. I can’t
remember the title. “Song of Praise.” And it’s brilliantly written in sort of a “I like this part, I like
this part,” where whoever did it, I can’t remember his name, it just does this; it’s one giant
crescendo. At the end you’re so excited that the congregation wants to get up and scream and
applaud and all that. And so I played it and we sang it in class, and Charles just ripped it apart. He
was in that mood that day for whatever reason. And he was at the Hollywood Presbyterian and
they brought out their first album for the holiday seasons and the first thing on this album was
this “Song of Praise” about a year later. And I wrote a note to him and left it on the desk and said,
“Wonderful album; in fact, I especially liked the ‘Song of Praise.’” And he came out maybe a day
later, put his arm around me again and he said, “Well, I remember talking about that in that
class.” And I said, “I do, too.” And he said, “I think I was probably too harsh with that piece of
music because I really like it now.” I said, “It’s a good piece, Charles, and you did it beautifully.”
And they did.

SHAWNA STEWART. He said he learned from his students, an amalgamation of all
kinds of things, including his students. What do you know of his philosophy on music and
teaching? What drove him philosophically?

WILLIAM HALL. Well, there’s no question he had a genuine love for teaching. You
could sense that in any class. He loved certain people very quickly, and it was always interesting
because I was always making him mad for some reason – probably because I was fighting him all
the time, which was part of my… maybe it’s simply because we were not on the same level, but
we felt passionately about everything and that we just fought against. But philosophically he
would always choose one or two of us that he considered to be way above the others, which was
very apparent in class. And, in fact, one time Malcolm Hamilton saw me in the hallway and said,
“Well, you’re his favorite person this week.”
I think that helped because he got more excited when, for example, I had some professors
at Whittier that were jealous of anyone who had any talent. I mean incredible to watch – two or
three people. You could sense quickly that they simply weren’t secure in their position. Charles
was the opposite. He was very secure in his position, and if he didn’t know musically something
that he could respond to, he could kill you with his vocabulary. [Laughter] And it was fun. It was
a game. It was a great challenge. And we’d get together two or three students who were in the
business, and we knew what we were doing and we were just learning and we’d get together and
talk about it and say, “Okay, it’s your turn to say something.” And we actually planned several
bits like that to see if he would respond, and he always responded beautifully. It was fun.
[Laughter] He just liked people who were talented, and I used to get reviews here at Chapman,
saying always everything the same year, “We like the class but Dr. Hall only spends time with
those people who are really talented.” Well, I don’t mind that evaluation because those people are
the ones we want in the classroom. I would talk to everyone about those evaluations because
obviously it always hurt and I’d say, “That’s not my goal in this class. My goal is to make sure
that all of us move up.” You know? We have to help each other. So I am going to spend more
time with people who have the answers quickly because they can help. And you could sense that
Charles was that way too.
240
So I know, in fact, those years at Whittier I would go over more often to Occidental than
I would to USC because I liked the sound that Howard produced. Howard had great ears, and as a
tenor he loved to hear a tenor sing. He loved to hear this sound 2800–3200 cycles per second; he
wanted this noise all the time in the chorus. His problem that I was looking back on… I mean we
were close, close friends. I would sit in on his classes. I was at Whittier College and would go to
Occidental and sit in his classes and when he wanted to emphasize anything, he’d rip his glasses
off and look you straight in the eye and go “BUT!” With one “but” like that you were scared to
death, you know. But I remember asking him once early (I think I might have been a sophomore
at Whittier) and he said, “You keep coming over here.” We finally introduced ourselves… I was
in awe of him, but he didn’t know what to do with the female voice. And it was interesting
because he knew exactly what to do with the male voice. Which is exactly what you need to do
with the female voice. I mean, teaching voices… well…
So I’ve been blessed at Chapman all these years because of Charles and Swan. I used to
go up behind Howard and say, “But.” I’d say something like that, because one of his [vocal]
chords was frozen and he had started to use cortisone [speaking high, in an airy tone]. So he
would come down a little bit [stop] and it would be more breathy as he would talk. Catherine and
I became very good friends, too, and I’d go up behind her and say, [speaking high, in an airy
tone], “Catherine, we must go home.” And she’d turn around, “Howie? Bill, stop doing that!”
And that was another thing too about all these – everything is connected in my world. I was asked
to do Howard’s funeral. He taught thirty-nine years at Occidental, had all of these students and
why the family wouldn’t ask one of his students to do this was amazing to me. And I said no at
first. I said, “No, I just want to be there.” And they said, “No, we want you to do the music.” And
Howard told me once and he was really, really upset that I didn’t go to Occidental, and I said I
was going to both schools because I could learn more from him than I could with the present
teacher. And I felt the same way about Charles. But I didn’t have the same feeling vocally about
Charles. Charles had the ability to get just some monster talent at SC.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yes, the alumni roster is amazing.

WILLIAM HALL. Yes, it’s scary amazing, you know? And I think I tried all these years
here to do the same thing. I mean if there was any breath on the mirror, I’d let them in the choir
and then say, “Okay, produce this sound.” But we also had some great instruments at Chapman
over the years who have gone on. In fact we have six tenors right now singing in major opera
houses around the world, which is neat. It’s a funny bit. But back to the original question, I don’t
think I can answer any more about philosophy.

SHAWNA STEWART. That’s okay. Choral techniques. I would love to know rehearsal
techniques and even additional teaching techniques outside of the rehearsal that still stand out to
you.

WILLIAM HALL. I really can’t answer that simply because I simply didn’t sit in on any
of his rehearsals… well, one or two. But I when I got here they said, “Oh, the Madrigal Singers
are the group, Bill.” So I listened and said, “We need to develop the larger choir too because the
larger choir is going to recruit more than the Madrigal group will recruit because people just like
the larger sound.” So at SC I sang, I think it was… I’m trying to remember who was conducting
the larger choir.

241
SHAWNA STEWART. Dr. Vail? Dr. Eskelin? Terry Danne?

WILLIAM HALL. Terry Danne, I remember him in a few rehearsals. And it might have
been Vail. It probably was.

SHAWNA STEWART. What years again?

WILLIAM HALL. Well I was there from ’56, ’57, and ’58, and I went in the service and
came back to finish the doctorate. So ’56 to ’58.

SHAWNA STEWART. You came back to finish the doctorate later?

WILLIAM HALL. Charles and I had a falling out over something; he got mad at me for
something and I don’t want to get into that. And so when I got out of the service, we were again
doing something together somewhere in the South and he said, “Come back and finish your
doctorate. You don’t have to take exams again; just go through the orals,” or whatever it was. I
honestly can only remember him in the major works with a large choir and he was so buried in
the orchestra score that there wasn’t… but I do recall watching him work with the singers
sometime. I can’t tell you anything about the technique. Actually it’s possible I’m having a brain
fart.

SHAWNA STEWART. That’s okay. You know how to reach me.

WILLIAM HALL. It was so long ago.

SHAWNA STEWART. Is there anything, either about his philosophy or any part of him
that influenced you and played out in your teaching?

WILLIAM HALL. Oh, well, what I said already. There’s no question that he understood
what he wanted to hear, and that might have been the greatest lesson I learned. When you’re
rehearsing and you’re looking for something, and you know, as all conductors, we love certain
parts of a certain work and sometimes overwork the best parts because the other parts need more
work. And I remember a number of times thinking back on what he did in class that “listen”
corrected; “listen again” and make sure it’s right. And I think that probably stuck with me more
than anything else. And it’s to demand something as a conductor in the nicest way possible in
front of your groups, but if it’s not right, you correct it and listen for it, making sure everybody is
on the same page. I probably learned that from him. I learned it from so many different people, so
many wonderful teachers. I learned more from Ingolf Dahl than God.
Ingolf Dahl was a renaissance woman and a renaissance man. He simply knew
everything. He was a scary, scary individual. He could play any score either from memory or a
score in front of him, or put up a surprise or something new. I was studying with him once on the
Missa Solemnis, and he was playing the Missa Solemnis at the keyboard without a score. I hated
that man. I mean what talent, you know. And I’m conducting and he said, “Bar 245, you missed
the second clarinet.” And a couple of years later I was at his chalet in Switzerland, opened the
door, knocked on the door and I said, “Ingolf?” And he said, “Bill, bar 245, second clarinet.” And
I said, “You planned that didn’t you?” And he said, “Of course I planned that. How could I know
things like that?” But I loved that kind of… That happened to me several times as a “gofer” for
242
Ingolf. He and Etta lived up in the hills of West Hollywood in a grubby place; there’s no other
way to describe it, just a grubby place. And he called me and said, “I need some scores. Could
you bring them up?” I said, “Sure, fifteen to twenty minutes,” because SC was fairly close. So I
grabbed the scores from Meg. (Oh, wow that’s a heavy for me to remember that. Meg. She was
the librarian and she was a great help to all of us, Joan Meget)…
I got all the scores. I got on the screen porch in Hollywood at his home and I said,
“Where do you want the scores.” And he said, “Oh, just put them on the table in the living room.”
And I said, “Where are you?” And he said, “In the kitchen cooking for tonight. I understand
you’re doing Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms Saturday night.” And I said, “Yeah, it’s really my
favorite work of Igor. It’s too bad (trying to be knowledgeable) he didn’t write anything after
that.” The chair right there turned around and Igor Stravinsky was sitting right there in the chair.
[Laughter] There is no way to describe that feeling of stark terror, let alone my lips dried up and
he was very small, maybe 5' high, so he was buried in this chair and he said, “You don’t like my
mass?” Which I didn’t, so I didn’t say that, so I said, “No, what I was referring to is that your
Symphony of Psalms was the greatest choral orchestral work of the 20
th
century.” And he smiled a
little bit, looked back and said, “You don’t like my mass?” Twice! Well, we had a drink and
talked about…!
I’ve had several experiences… I had an experience in Spilleto during the War Requiem
and we had just recorded the War Requiem and I had sold a boat to pay for it. I mean, I was in
tears over this boat because it was a great sailboat. I’d sailed to Hawaii on it. And so we’re
looking down to the church outdoors to where the choir and orchestra were. Christopher Keen
was conducting from the New York Opera, the Met, and I was screaming in very bad Italian to
turn off the treble and just turn up the bass because the sound was awful. And the hillside went up
like this [gesturing with hands] and there were little restaurants over on this side and a balding,
white-haired (like me at this point), came up to me and he said, “Do you need any help?” And I
said, “Can you tell these idiots to turn off the treble and turn up the bass” and he’s yelling [bla-
blah-blah (fake Italian)] and all of sudden the sound goes, “Mmmmm…” And I said, “Oh, that’s
wonderful! Can I buy you a drink? My name is Bill.” “My name is Sam.” And I got about six feet
and I said, “Oh, my God. I am so sorry, Dr. Barber, that I didn’t recognize you.” But that wasn’t
the end of it. So we go over to a table and there’s another white-haired, balding gentleman sitting
there, and Sam said, “Jerry, do you know Bill Hall?” And I said, “Group there!” And Sam asked,
“Do you have a group here?” and he said, “Yeah, we danced last night,” and it was Jerome
Robbins. And then, second-floor window right above the restaurant and Gian Carlo Menotti and a
bunch of beautiful boys leaned out and said, “Come up – we’re celebrating my birthday!” So we
all went upstairs to celebrate the birthday with Gian Carlo Menotti. But that’s how music helped
all of those experiences. It’s just amazing.

SHAWNA STEWART. It must be fun to sit in your choir and hear the stories.

WILLIAM HALL. Well, we’re celebrating my fiftieth year.

SHAWNA STEWART. Will there be a performance?

WILLIAM HALL. No, I told everybody if you want to get together and sing that’s fine.
But kids on this committee, the five decades of students, they want to do a roast and I said to do
that on Friday night, then on Saturday night when we have other people there that don’t
243
understand the ’70s, let’s do the 50
th
anniversary there. And we’ll sing something maybe to close.
But I can’t even believe people would hire me for fifty years, but I have been blessed. And all the
years here of teaching were just stunning. When I started, there were 360 kids on campus in 1963
– total. Now there are close to 8,000. And you know the campus is just exploding. I told
everybody I’ve been waiting 50 years to do this – to build a beautiful performing arts center.

SHAWNA STEWART. Is this the same designer as for Segerstrom?

WILLIAM HALL. No. This is really – it’s Pfeiffer Partners Architectural Firm in Los
Angeles who designed a number of different auditoriums around the world, then I hired Yasu
Toyota, then I hired Theatre Projects Consultants who built Disney Hall, and I hired Fred Vogler
who runs Disney and runs The Bowl, because I want the system to be built in the hall where you
don’t have to hang speakers anywhere; they just have to be built in just like they did at Disney
with these giant speakers in the middle of the room. So you can put seventy-five in the pit, the
stage you can have any size from 42' to 60', the shell floats up into the ceiling, and we can turn
around the house in forty-five minutes. It’s incredible what he’s designed, just around 1100 seats.
And now we have seven major artists who have given us all sorts of artwork including three
eight-foot bronze statues of musicians that are just beautiful. In the entryway just to the left is a
stairway, and there will be a big area that will be sort of an art gallery there and we have seven
major pieces of art that are going to go in the building. It just keeps happening. This is the only
thing I don’t like – the tempietto. The president wanted to put the names of anyone who donated
over three million and I said, “Let’s move it up away from the front of the building; let’s move it
up to the gate.” And we’re going to do that. In fact, the major donor of thirty-two million said
they don’t like it at all; let’s get rid of it, but Jim Doty has sold the pillars to five million, eight
million, ten million, so… And there’s a height law in the city of Orange that you can’t be higher
than fifty-five so the building is buried thirty-seven feet.

SHAWNA STEWART. What’s down there?

WILLIAM HALL. The rest of the stage, the whole building is. There will be lots of
offices. The classroom, they’ll have to tear down the liquor store here on the corner. We’re
painting it right now because it’s so ugly. It was a purple red. It was unbelievably ugly. We
offered them two point five million for it, an old Korean couple in their late 80s and they want to
give it to their grandchildren, but the grandchildren just want the money. So we have to wait till
they die; they’ll sell it to us and then we’ll tear it down and build classrooms and a theater.
Actually the theater footage so you can rehearse in a classroom that’s exactly the same as the
stage…
But just think of the students’ experience over the years. The times in Russia were just
incredible, but the times in Germany were also incredible and scary. But music surpassed
anything.

SHAWNA STEWART. I know that Dr. Hirt believed in music’s ability to change people.

WILLIAM HALL. Well, I think he was probably the first. That was another thing I must
have learned from him – when he took his choir to Russia and they went to Russia in the ’50s, I
think, which is really a scary time because of bombs and things like that. I remember him talking
about that experience – that music was such a power, and no matter how mad the bureaucracy at
244
the upper levels in the army and everything else in Russia, music solved all the problems because
the Russians loved to sing and they had some great choirs. And I taught at both Leningrad and
Moscow Conservatories, and I was invited simply because they liked the sound of Chapman,
because it was deeper for them and they loved the Russian voice, and, of course, I would say
something and they’d say, “Oh, you must have a background, your parents...” And stories were
invented, but I think of the experiences of all of our students and you should see – they’re on
Facebook now and they can’t wait to tell some of the stories and I say, “Well, okay, remember,
the ’60s and '’70s are all right on Friday night but not on Saturday night.”

SHAWNA STEWART. In closing, is there anything you would like to add about Dr.
Hirt?

WILLIAM HALL. If I think of something, I’ll contact you. I focused on my piano and I
got to study with two giants in piano and conducting I studied with Ingolf and Walter Ducloux
and so my time with Hirt was very valuable but it was limited because I just took the church
music classes and I sang in the large choir and he didn’t conduct that.

SHAWNA STEWART. Thank you so much for meeting with me.

245
APPENDIX L: INTERVIEW WITH DR. ROBERT G. HASTY, SR.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR.
November 28, 2012
1:00 p.m.
In-Person Interview, home of Robert Hasty

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. We thought that the USC Chamber Singers would no longer
be invited to be at the Disney Records, because Bob Jani, who had been the events coordinator at
USC, got hired as vice president of entertainment at Disneyland. At that time, he and Dr. Hirt had
a really strange relationship. Dr. Hirt had a tendency to treat some people very badly and Bob
Jani is one, but he did. That was the end of the Charles Hirt Chamber Singers. One of the issues
was, when we scheduled our Christmas concert over the auditorium, we had to go through by Bob
Jani’s office, but yet, we had to do it Dr. Hirt’s way.
That year, the Chamber Singers -- it’s my second year working on DMA and I had
become quite ill that summer after my first year back, and I had been back in Chamber Singers,
so then I had to be not in it anymore. I just happened to be home when they headed down to
Mexico for something. I got a call from Disneyland saying, and this is late November, “We need
to take care of those right away. We need them.” I said, “Well, they were never mine. It was
always Dr. Hirt and the invitation always goes to him.” “Yeah. We don’t have time for niceties.
We have to have them this late.” I said, “Well, I still had to contact Dr. Hirt.” He said, “Why?”
“We thought you weren’t going to call us. We thought that you didn’t want us anymore.” The guy
said, “Well, Mrs. Disney was out last Saturday.” This is what I’ve got on Monday. She always
had a tour guide escorting her and she said, “Oh! I can’t wait till the carolers come.” And he said,
“Oh, we’re not having the carolers this year.” Mrs. Disney said, “Oh! We are having caroling this
year.”
So it lasted a few more years, until it transitioned then to be a professional gig that people
auditioned for, but he was having some. It was always a fun thing to do. Before Disney died, his
modus operandi was, he would bring companies in to lease the space and open their shops. So it
was Carnation corner. It was Swift and Premium town store and Upjohn Pharmacy, and they were
called “The Leases.” Our primary job was to entertain the leases’ customers. He never owned
anything, except what he did was he gets these corporations to invest and lease the property. They
donate to build it and lease it back and then Disney would provide all the entertainment and bring
in the customers.
When he died, in the fall of ’69, within weeks the Disneyland Corporation started buying
out all the leases because they were the ones making the most money, and Disney was always in
[unintelligible] up to his ears. The whole idea of entertaining the leases was dropped, and that was
the reason why they could just say, “We’re not having the carolers anymore.” By that time, they
started having a parade everyday, entertainment. As a matter of fact, when I was a sophomore, I
was an alternate lead in baritone/bass to the original Dapper Dans of Disneyland. And there, at
the end, there was pressure that we’ll make a full-time, that union people to bring in the student,
part-time people, but eventually, they did. Those traditions have outlasted all of those painful
transitions. It’s an interesting time in history, but we’re here for other reasons.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, I don’t know how much I shared with you, I can’t
remember. I’ve talked to quite a few people, but I’m only writing on his contributions to USC,
and a little bit of his choral pedagogy as seen through the eyes of his students, his singers, and
246
then talking a little bit about his legacy that he leaves and that he’s left. Unfortunately, I’m not
writing at all about Europa Cantat and the Candlelight Singers and ACDA [American Choral
Directors Association]. It just kills me though because there’s so much great information. What
I’ve done is I prepared about eight questions and they’re meant to be just points of departure for
us. So feel free to contribute tangential information, as you see fit; take a right turn here or there. I
also certainly have follow-up questions.
I know you’re part of the 1964 tour group and there’s so much information there. I just
really enjoyed my conversation with Del and with Darlene. As an official opening to the
interview, if you would state your name and how you knew Dr. Hirt – in what capacities you
knew him.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. I’m Robert G. Hasty, Sr.; I say that because my son won’t use
“junior.”

SHAWNA STEWART. It’s Robert G.?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Yeah.

SHAWNA STEWART. You’re great!

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. I first knew Dr. Hirt as a high school student. I was a member
of the Southern California Honor Choir that performed for the MENC Convention at Shrine
Auditorium, with 650 high school students. When we went in for the performance (we were
dressed for the rehearsal on the stage to perform) is when we were told that Dr. Hirt had had a
gastric [unintelligible] that night before and could not be there. That made us even more
emotionally tied to it. He was such an inspiration.
One of the things he wanted to do with that concert was to show that 650 high school
students could sing with chamber-like quality. So we sang madrigals like the Bennet “Weep, O
Mine Eyes” and also have the agility to sing the “Kyrie” from the Lord Nelson Mass, and
Copland “Stomp Your Foot.” And, of course, we were the choir then for the performance of
Howard Hanson conducting Song of Democracy, which he had just expanded to full choir and
orchestra. Up to that time it was not an orchestral piece. I was a sophomore, and a couple of
months later, it’s announced that he’s going to be the guest conductor up at Idyllwild School of
Music and the Arts. So I’d never heard of that, but I talked my parents into letting me go to that. I
was a tuba player, so I had signed up for two weeks band camp. Dr. Hirt came up and conducted
the Fauré Requiem.
I got a scholarship to go to USC. I was asked when I got there if I was going to audition
for the Chamber Singers. I said, “Well, I don’t know. What is a Chamber Singer?” because I
really knew nothing about USC and Dr. Hirt. And there were a lot of instrumental students and
faculty that I got to know up at Idyllwild. So I auditioned and I was accepted. I was the first
freshman. There were twelve in the group and there were only two undergraduates; all the rest
were graduate students, and as a freshman they called me the Baby Madrigal.
So I was in the Chamber Singers. I was also in the band; I was also a tuba player in the
orchestra. They kept trying to get me to decide which I was going to do. I was having too much
fun that I was a music education major, and in those days you worked summer schools and you
got your degree in four years and your credential, which is what I did.
247
At the end of my junior year, the dean, partially because we had tried to get a trip to
South America, but we just couldn’t raise some money… By the way, one of the things about
those years was that, even after I auditioned, Dr. Hirt would audition every member of the
Concert Choir. There were just not that many students, not that many good singers. If you wanted
to go and study with Dr. Hirt, there was only the DMA in Church Music. So a lot of choral
conductors would kind of reluctantly major in Church Music because they wanted to study with
him, but that didn’t mean that they were going to sing under him because only a few of us… all
he conducted was the Chamber Singers.
I stayed. I didn’t go to summer school that year because it was my senior year. I worked
to prepare a proposal to the State Department in the People-to-People program. The dean was on
the committee, our dean at that time. So I worked with him and through the vice president’s
office to make sure it was really professional, but it had to come from me as to why I thought we
would be good representatives in this program.
My senior year, we would get through the dean, periodic reports that it looked like we
might get Priority II, because in those days, the world was divided up into sections, then
priorities. We were going to get a five-week concert tour of the Orient. It was called “The
Orient.” It was a big surprise when we wound up being the Priority I, which were eight European
countries. Dr. Hirt always had students assist in auditioning. It was always a group vote on each
student. He always wound up saying after we finished voting, “That’s the way I would have done
it too.” Somehow, we either felt very proud of ourselves or we felt highly manipulated.
[Laughter].
When we went to Europe, one of the things that we were doing was putting on lecture
demonstrations about the American choral art. The choral art in Europe, at that time, in 1964… I
think it had opera choruses, made up of opera singers, highly trained. The rest of the choruses
were just adult extensions of the boy choir tradition, kind of thin voices, not trained, and not a
great deal demanded of them in terms of interpretation or color. One of the things that was unique
was to articulate what the American choral art was, at least as interpreted by Charles Hirt. We
prepared the music that we were going to do. We also took multiple copies of certain
compositions to distribute among the students or whatever the audience was for that. Randall
Thompson’s “Glory to God in the Highest” and “Anthony O’Daly” by Samuel Barber were two
that were passed around.
One of the reasons that those were chosen was part of Hirt’s technique; also the method
was his firm belief that all music could be reduced to a basic tactus. And he likened it to
plainsong, that every part of the vocal sound had to have as much energy as the other part, that
you didn’t have an increase in energy in the middle of a phrase and then die away, and things like
that. Beyond the crescendo, decrescendo, there had to be that body support for every part of the
sound that you produced. One of the ways, if you do it, let’s say, in a piece of music, he would
say, “Okay, what’s the smallest unit that could still be sung in a staccato fashion?” You’ll start off
with the [singing] “Glory to God in the Highest. Glory to God in the Highest.” Like that, and
every part of the sound required that kind of energy. So part of the demonstration was to get all of
the audience involved in that. We had our first concert when we got there in Wuppertal,
Germany, in the Ruhr Valley.
Our second concert was in Essen. There was a school of music at which was scheduled
our first lecture demonstration. Dr. and Mrs. Hirt had gotten flu shots just before we left and
when we got there, they got violently [ill with] the flu. He could carry on like any trooper, but
there was no way he was going to make it, so it fell to me. Of course, the first thing I found out
was that the audience couldn’t speak English. So with my very bad German and with the help of
248
the translator, I had to really define it, to demonstrate what we meant by the blending of the
voices and then the balancing of the sections, the articulation of the consonants, the formation of
the vowels, breath support – and this is where that tactus element got into it, so the body… In my
own teaching, it’s what Bill Vennard always called the bouncing epigastrium; if your throat is
relaxed enough, you can take a breath after each one. In fact, you never have to take a breath
because in and out is equal. I will teach that with madrigals, each one of my student groups, all
the way up through adult church choir, as a way of getting everybody exercised and up for the
rehearsal and for the performance. We didn’t do vocal exercises. We didn’t do the things that I
was used to doing, arpeggios, “oo,” “ah,” working on those vowels. Everything was in the music.
I always wondered because he considered us advanced. But it definitely was not in the curriculum
that we spelled out and outlined.
What’s interesting is he never gave that lecture. Every time we were scheduled to do one,
he would ask our host, “Could they speak English?” He says, “Well, this is too sophisticated for
them.” He really surprised us; instead he would have us standing up there going, “One, two,
three, four, five, six, seven, eight,” things that we had never done before and never seen done
before. And then after about twenty minutes of that, we just get in the concert. He talked about
the music, the technique, never about methodology.
I wrote a letter to my colleagues, to the Chamber Singers of the European tour, and I
include this so that you can have this. What happened, Dr. Hirt was, in other people’s minds, a
very insecure artist. I don’t think So but I understand why people would use that term. I think he
was very protective of his own technique. In those days, nobody was an expert, and when you
become the choir director and the teacher, you’re the only expert. Dr. Hirt was used to being
called to do workshops. He helped organize the SCVA [Southern California Vocal Association],
and the adjudication sheets spelled out all of these various factors, but I’ll tell the story of this,
and again, tell me if you want to move on to another question. I was so excited. I know one of my
parents who knew when I got into this group, which I knew absolutely nothing about and all these
older people. I was seventeen. Also I passed the sight-reading and I don’t know why. In fact,
when I did my theory test, they asked if I wanted to go ahead and skip the first year. I said, “No,
because I don’t know what I’m doing.” I did not know. I didn’t know the names of the notes. I
didn’t know intervals. I didn’t know what the major third and the minor third was. Everybody
assumed that I was a marvelous musician because I was a tuba player and, also I grew up in a
Baptist church. I played piano by sight-reading hymns for my Sunday school class, by the time I
was in the sixth grade, but it was only by sight. I didn’t know anything about the theory.
So I brought in a big portable tape recorder, called a portable; it had a handle on it, but it
was huge, put it behind my seat and had the microphone set up, so when Dr. Hirt came in I taped
the whole rehearsal because I’m going to take it home and play it for my parents. He didn’t say
anything. I saw he noticed it eventually. At the conclusion of the two hours and fifteen minutes,
he asked me to stay afterwards, which I did. He said, “No, wait just a minute.” We went
downstairs. We were in room thirteen of Widney Hall. He brought back some papers for him to
work and he said, “I want you to… I’m going to sit here and I’m going to watch you erase that
entire tape.”

He explained, “My rehearsals are very private. I don’t want anybody misconstruing” because it
may not be perfect that day or something like that. “My rehearsals are private and I don’t want to
play it for anybody.” In those days, I had to go another two hours and fifteen minutes to erase that
tape. We sat there for two hours and fifteen minutes and he did his paperwork, but graded some
papers while the whole thing got erased.
249

SHAWNA STEWART. What a shame.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. When I prepared the presentation for our concert tour for
Europe, I could only find two existing tapes of the USC Chamber Singers. Nobody made records
in those days… He just never taped. Part of the methodology, for him, was he took pride in the
fact that he had opera singers, great opera singers that went on to have careers in Europe, singing
on with people like me at that time. I wound up being an opera singer, too, but not like them. He
could take the biggest voice and have it balance everyone else in a true ensemble, so that nobody
stuck out. That impressed me; from the very beginning, that impressed me. It’s not like he had a
choice of a lot of singers; he didn’t. Not everybody wanted to be in the USC Chamber Singers.
That’s why he auditioned everybody who was in the choir.
When I came back after teaching high school choral music for four years, up in
Bakersfield, I came back to work on my DMA. I got my master’s. In those days you could do it in
the summertime in music education. The plan was set up by Ralph Rush, who was my adviser,
and Bill Vennard and Dr. Hirt. In those days, everybody had to write a dissertation. You could
not do a project and you could not do performances; you had to write a dissertation. It had to be
basically manhandled by the Music History Department. You had people that never got their
doctorates because they could never get beyond… By the time they did the qualifying exams,
they were worn out and the idea of doing the kind of research demanded at USC anyway… At
that time, you could go to Ohio State; forgive me if you went East someplace…

SHAWNA STEWART. Eastman and I’m a Trojan; that’s it.

BOB HASTY. Okay. Jim Hanshumaker who took over after… His doctorate was a
cataloging of string quartet music. That wouldn’t have qualified for a master’s degree at USC
and, yet, that was a PhD.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh! Wow!

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. That was a PhD. The only PhD you can get at USC was if you
were a major in Music History and Literature. When I came back, I wanted to sing opera and so I
majored in voice. The plan was, between Hirt and Bernard and Rush, for me to get my doctorate
in voice because then… The music history got tired of reading all these bad dissertations, so they
agreed to let the performance majors just do recitals and performances and accompanying
research on those.
I wrote a master’s thesis, but I didn’t have to write a doctorate dissertation. Nobody has
been here. Brandon Mehrle, who was the associate dean, never got his doctorate; he never
finished his dissertation. That was happening to everybody. The definition, according to the
National Association of Schools of Music, is that a PhD was a scientific paper. So he got a PhD
in voice science, and that was my major. I was going to be the second one to receive it. So that’s
what I worked on. I was back in the Chamber Singers. Dr. Hirt had been elected president of
ACDA. He was going to have the first separate ACDA convention in Kansas City the next year.
Always before, it was a cousin attached to the MENC Conventions. This was going to be the first
stand-alone ACDA convention, and he was the president.

SHAWNA STEWART. That was ’71?
250

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Yeah.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. He asked me to be the program chairman for the convention
[unintelligible]. He knew he’d have to convince somebody else.
Anyway, in terms of technique and methodology, that became a crucial, pivotal time. He
was going to have his Chamber Singers perform at it. I was there right next to him as I saw what
was happening to him, in terms of everybody across the country trying to get their own way.
They wanted him as this big name, but he never was an organizational man. He never went to
meetings. He was the guest conductor. So nobody expected him to do anything except be a
figurehead, but all of a sudden, he wants to revamp the whole thing. He wants to do something
atrocious, like have wine receptions every evening for all the clinicians and the speakers,
spending ACDA money on wine? I got all of the flack for it, because they couldn’t aim it at him.
At the end of that first year, he asked me to tell three of the members of that group that
they could no longer be in because their voice is too big. I really had trouble with that. My first
impression was that was not a problem, but he was concerned about all these choral directors,
because nobody ever heard of the USC Chamber Singers, unless they came to Bovard
Auditorium. He was going to be completely out of his element. and they were all going to be
staring at him and tearing him apart and criticizing his music, his performance, and he no longer
wanted to take voices and mold them. He wanted the voices molded already.

SHAWNA STEWART. He said that? In so many words?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Yes. I recruited a tenor because… The year after I got my
DMA…Because Bill Vennard died, I was being groomed as his associate. I was promised an
associate professorship when I completed my DMA in voice. The December before the May that
I finished my DMA, he died. As soon as he did, the Music History Department just went in and
said, “No more PhDs.” So I had to switch to DMA.
I’m doing my written exams, and Dr. Hirt came up to me. I was walking upstairs to go
and write my music history qualifying exam. He said, “I finally got a DMA in choral music. I
want you to be my first DMA in choral music.” I became very ill after that first year. I didn’t
know why I was ill, but I was. Our oldest was a pre-teen. I had seen so many doctoral candidates
with their kids trying to get a degree, when they should’ve been home with their kids. I said, “I
promised my family it would just be these three years.” I finished. So I couldn’t do it. Then the
new dean fired all of us who were teaching all the undergraduate required courses because he
thought it was being too much inbreeding. Two of us, he finally consented to keep on, and the
conditions were that we never ask for a promotion or an increase of pay beyond across the board,
that we would be lecturers, that was it. I couldn’t see myself doing that. I took a position up at Cal
State, Sacramento; there’s a choral group up there, because the dean had said, “You need to get
out. Go make your name someplace else.”

SHAWNA STEWART. Who was the dean when that came around?

251
ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Frank McGuire. We didn’t have an actual dean for the School
of Music because at that time, when he came in, they combined music and cinema and drama and
called it School of Performing Arts, but he was the only real boss.

SHAWNA STEWART. Who was before him? Who was he replacing?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. He replaced Ray Kendall who brought in the waves of the
great artist-teachers. What happened was that, I told a friend of mine once that after that I was
kind of glad I wasn’t in there anymore because it was not the same. It was going after a different
product than what I’d always been a part of. While I was teaching, I kept my voice studio at USC.
I was assistant minister of music at First Congregation in LA, driving back and forth. But that
friend told Dr. Hirt that the reason I quit wasn’t because I became ill; it was because I didn’t like
it anymore. You don’t cross him. So we never worked together anymore after that.
I had my three degrees from USC. Bill Vennard died. I knew that about Dr. Hirt because
that friend called me up after I came back and said that Harold Decker (I don’t know if you ever
heard that name) had called Dr. Hirt and wanted Dr. Hirt to recommend one of his students for
Harold Decker to hire, to groom, to replace him. He did not want one of his students. He wanted
one of Charles Hirt’s students, and this friend called me and said, “Dr. Hirt and I thought about it
and we decided to recommend you as the only person for the job, but we told him that you had
been a troublemaker here and that you had lied to Dr. Hirt about the business about being ill, but
that we thought you probably matured by then.” Of course I never got a call.
The only other academic job in music that I got was I spent a year at Hope University
developing their music majors and their curriculum, because up until [unintelligible] theory of
music history across at Cal State Fullerton. Otherwise, I became a minister. After that, I went to a
seminary and got a post doc degree in religion and was ordained. I retired from pastoral industry
about seven years ago.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow! That’s quite a story.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. I have nothing but fond memories. I think that I understand,
and I think that you cannot say that the product that he came out with after 1971 was inferior,
because if you listen to the only other extent recording CD and you compare his 1971 group that
performed at the convention, after the ’64 group, was the ’71. So you cannot fault what he did. It
was just a phenomenon that is very interesting, which goes to the personality of the man who was
more protective and, at the same time, very creative.
One time he invited me to bring my Chamber Singers down when I was teaching high
school. Another choir director showed up the same time with his group. This is something you
never did but [unintelligible] just turn these kids away. Instead of a rehearsal that he invited us to,
it was we moved over to Hancock, which is now, the recital hall.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. Newman maybe?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Newman, and he just did a concert. He was not going to open
them up to doing the technical stuffs. He was never comfortable… He was not as comfortable
doing a demonstration of teaching techniques. That was not his style. Now what he would do, like
for an SVBA, he would do a workshop in adjudicating. So after a choir would perform, he would
demonstrate how he would adjudicate. His examples were always positive, constructive and
252
meaningful. There was never anything negative about this man, in terms of his methodology.
So that was the one quality I learned from him and tried to exemplify. I was fortunate to find
myself working closely with him in my college career. I wound up adjudicating a lot for SCVA
[Southern California Vocal Association] in later years. I hope that my adjudications were also
positive, constructive and meaningful.
But, I got in trouble with the SCVA board once. My old college roommate was the vice
president in charge of festivals, and so whenever an adjudicator cancelled out, I was always
available. One time, this poor guy, he had five different groups, five different festivals, he walks
in and there I am. I adjudicated each one of his groups. I said at the bottom, the same thing; I
would say, I was taught by Hirt to do it, “If they only do a cappella music then ask them to do
something accompanied, that you’d like to hear them do something with accompaniment, because
one of the reasons that they only do unaccompanied is they’re afraid of going flat to the piano. If
they only do accompanied, ask them to do something a cappella because they’re afraid to have
the choir on its own.” [Unintelligible]. I always said, “I’d like to hear something accompanied.”
After that year, every time I went to a festival, I would be told by the host, “Dr. Hasty,
you’re not going to be doing a tape recorder today. You’re doing the writing. I’m supposed to tell
you that an SCVA board member will be reviewing your adjudications.” I found out later, it’s
because of that comment. I didn’t say, “You shouldn’t have done…” I’d always say, “I’d like to
hear some…” I would always invite these directors to come up to my music camp because I still
was a choir director two weeks out of the year. I started a Wildwood Music Camp and then
Idyllwild invited me to come over to be director at Idyllwild of the festival choir. I’d always
invite directors to come up and this guy came up, so I took him to lunch. As he was leaving, as he
got to the corridor and standing in front, he said, “Bob, I have one question. Why did you criticize
me for not doing anything accompanied? Don’t you realize we can’t afford to hire an
accompanist. ‘Is it possible to do something accompanied?’ So why criticize me for it?” he said.
“Well, I didn’t mean to criticize you, but it’s just something that I’ve always responded to
with everybody. I was taught to do that; it’s an element of growth.” I said, “Besides that, every
time my choir performed at the festival, the next morning, those adjudication sheets were on my
principal’s desk. Did you ever show my comments to your principal?”
He said, “No. Why?”
I said, “Well, if you want an accompanist, wouldn’t that be a good way to approach your
principal in making a case for saying, ‘This is why we need an accompanist? Look, my
colleagues are criticizing me because I don’t have one.’”
“Oh, I never thought about that,” he said.
Those are the things I learned from Charles Hirt, and I value them tremendously.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow! Well, I want to step back a little bit. What year were you
in that MENC choir? Do you remember?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. It was 1958.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. Then Idyllwild was…?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Summer of ’58 and then every summer after that until 1968.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. Was it a Bachelor of Music that you received?

253
ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. I had a Bachelor of Music, but the major was in music
education.

SHAWNA STEWART. What year did you start? What were those years?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Those were ’59 to ’63.

SHAWNA STEWART. ’59 to ’63.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Bachelor’s in ’63.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. And then the master’s?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. In ’68.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. You went ’64 to ’68 for those semesters or did you take
some time off?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. So I totaled it and got it during the summer of ’64, ’65, and
’66. I finished the thesis in the summer of ’67 and even signed and printed my degree, but the
chair of my committee was on sabbatical. You couldn’t call her. She was on an island, on Salmon
Island out of Seattle. She had my thesis. So I had to wait until ’68. When I came down there to
start, I finally got her to sign it. The only thing is, nobody else was around, so everybody else’s
signatures on my diploma were fake.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh funny.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. That was in ’68 and then I got my DMA in voice performance
in ’71.

SHAWNA STEWART. Did I misunderstand you? I thought you were going for a PhD in
voice science?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. That’s right. But Bill Vennard died in December of ’70 and so
did the degree.

SHAWNA STEWART. So they changed it to a DMA?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. So they changed it to the DMA. I was Margaret Shaper’s first
doctoral qualifying exam. It was unbelievable.

SHAWNA STEWART. It was a master of music? Is that what they called it or master…

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Doctor of Musical Arts.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, for your master’s though?

254
ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Master of Music Education, but it was a master of music with
a major in music education.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. Do you know who the first DMA choral music grad was?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. It’s funny you should ask.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, while you’re thinking about it, see, I have all of the
programs during his years. They had the graduation programs, but people are listed twice with the
same degree, I wondered if that was you. In ’67 they thought you were going to graduate, but you
didn’t and so they have you in ’67. That happened for quite a few people, so I don’t really know
who the first DMA in choral music was.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. I can’t tell you his name. It’s too far in my past.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. That’s fine.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Dr. Hirt was very proud of him. He always came out and
substituted for Dr. Hirt when Dr. Hirt went on vacation at Hollywood Pres.

SHAWNA STEWART. That would have been what year?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Before I came there, so before 1959.

SHAWNA STEWART. DMA in choral music before 1959?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. No, I’m sorry. I thought you said church music. I don’t know
who the first DMA choral music was.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. Were you in school with Cecil Rhiney then?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. No.

SHAWNA STEWART. He must have been right before you.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Yeah. I thought he’s just before me.

SHAWNA STEWART. Did he recruit you to come to USC?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. My high school choir director got his degree and credential at
USC. So if I was going to major in music, that was definitely a pull. The biggest recruitment
though was Idyllwild, and Dr. Hirt got me to Idyllwild, just simply because I wanted to go up
there because he was a guest conductor. I knew nothing about it.

SHAWNA STEWART. Got you.

255
ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. In those days, all of the counselors and all of the coaches in
the band and orchestra camp were USC students or USC graduates. So it was basically USC. You
got indoctrinated very quickly.

SHAWNA STEWART. So once you were there, he was just sort of expected that you
would come?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. He still didn’t know me. He didn’t know who I was. If I was
recruited by anybody from USC, it was Ralph Rush.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. You were in Chamber Singers starting in ’59 through ’63?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. The Chamber Singers through the spring of ’64.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, of course. ’59 through the spring of ’64.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. For five years.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. And then it was in the year of ’6869.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. I didn’t know until I was fifty that I had a genetic disease,
which was my problem, but it went undiagnosed.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, when you were really ill? Oh ,wow!

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. I was treated like a hypochondriac until then. My doctors even
thought I was faking it. So I can’t blame Dr. Hirt for thinking that.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah, wow! You talked about the audition, when you auditioned
for him, but then you also talked about auditioning being by group vote. Do you remember what
the audition process was like when you first went in, and tell me a little bit more about the group
vote. How did that work?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. The initial audition was in his office. The student member was
Sharon Bliss, contralto. H. Royce Saltzman, who was a DMA candidate but not in Chamber
Singers, was at the piano, and Dr. Hirt was at the desk. They had me sight-read about three
different pieces of music. I sang part of a solo. I don’t remember what I sang. I was called back to
attend a rehearsal with other possible candidates, to sing with the existing members. He would
have the quartets sing. We were highly exposed. His tradition was always… He sat the middle
voices to the right and the highest-most voices to the left. So you have the altos and tenors and the
sopranos and basses. When I’d do an honor choir, sometimes, it was very strange to some
conductors, some of the teachers, but one of the reasons that he did it this way is for intonation.
Instead of having the men together in the middle and the women on the outside, in the chamber
256
group they were mixed up and you have the highest and lowest tuning. The altos and tenors had
to listen to tune to the highest and lowest voices.
Of course if it’s a large choral orchestral group then mezzo sopranos were over behind
the string basses in the traditional setting. So they were hearing the lowest instruments, rather
than the violins who were doubling their parts. So after two rehearsals, I was in. I don’t know
about the voting on that one, but after that, it was just simply a matter of putting up all the names
on the board and we basically… it was never real negative, but just erased some names.

SHAWNA STEWART. Was it everybody or was it like a council of students?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. It was everybody at that point.

SHAWNA STEWART. At most, you were usually auditioning or replacing how many
students?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. It varied. It depends upon how many graduated and there was
no fixed amount. I think there were eleven that first year. We had fourteen the next year. My wife
came as a graduate student. The very strange thing in those days, I was 18 and she was 22. We
got married. Then after I graduated, she already started teaching junior high choral music and
then came back. Dr. Hirt invited her to come back. So we got married on the day of National
Mourning, when Kennedy was buried, because we were back in and we were the one or two
married couples, Dar and Doug being the other. Like I said, there was a Svengali element to
Charles Hirt, so I could never be sure that we ever decided something that ever went in a
direction he didn’t want to go.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. That’s amazing.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. How he did it, I can’t say beyond that. I do know it was much
more intense for European Group. A couple of things happened. He wanted the best singers.
There were a couple of people that were in it, my fourth year, my senior year, including my old
high school girlfriend that he decided that he did not want to have go on the tour group, which is
bad because he had asked each of us if we were committed to go. We then had those auditions
before school started that year, and some graduate students like Barbara, my wife, and Paul Mayo
already had degrees and they came back to be in the group. He did audition a couple of my
friends from Occidental and when the dean heard about it, I think he put a stop to that. They were
well-known, very fine singers, professional grade, but the dean really didn’t want to go in that
direction. We wound up having a couple of freshman women in it and some graduate students,
but it was the first time that we had sixteen. It’s the first time that we really had positions to fill. It
was always “get the right people” and it was never sixteen; it was never that many. It was smaller.

SHAWNA STEWART. ’64 was the first time you know of them having sixteen?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. I can show you pictures of previous groups even smaller,
nine. So the largest in the history of the Chamber Singers and we actually had a seventeenth in
the instrumentalist, but he sat at the table and he sang along. He was a good enough musician.

257
SHAWNA STEWART. I’m just checking, to make sure they’re all going. That’s all. All
right, okay. Do you have pictures of Widney Hall? Is it Widney? W-I-D-N-E-Y?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Yes. Gosh.

SHAWNA STEWART. With him not letting things be recorded or documented, really,
it’s really hard to find anything that’s significant. I’ve got pictures of Europa Cantat and ACDA
and stuff like that, but I don’t have very much stuff from USC.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Again, he was very vain then. The fact is that, if he was not on
it, then he did not want to be seen or heard and there was no serendipity. You can go to the
Alumni Association offices because I’m sure they have old pictures of Widney Hall.

SHAWNA STEWART. I should do that. Okay. You don’t have of course any other,
besides what Doug Lawrence put together, video footage of him? Somebody mentioned, maybe
the Los Angeles Times had done some recording of him.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. I don’t.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. I often thought about trying to get that proposal that I made
because it had the most pictures, extent pictures of him and of the Chamber Singers, but it’s just
never occurred to me, and it may not even exist anymore.

SHAWNA STEWART. What was that again?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. Well, the proposal that I made, I wrote it, I worked for the
Vice President of Development’s Office, the Universities, in other words, the fundraiser.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. The whole idea was to make it as polished-looking as possible.

SHAWNA STEWART. This was for 1964. This is to apply to be…

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. To apply to be accepted. It came from me as a student, but it
had pictures from previous years.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. I might just give a call.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. We even have a photographer do some other on-campus
pictures, but I wouldn’t know since nobody’s around that’s alive, that was there then. It would
simply be a question of going and asking, looking back in the records, to see if they have it.

258
SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. I’ve got a pretty good relationship with the archivist from
the library, so maybe it could help. It would be a proposal for the People-to-People 1964 tour,
maybe? Is that what I’m going to ask for?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. It was for the State Department.

SHAWNA STEWART. State Department. That’s right.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. People-to-People Program…

SHAWNA STEWART. It would’ve been written in 1963, probably then?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. The summer of ’63.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. No. It was the summer of ’62, I’m sorry. Summer of ’62.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay. I’ll ask that then. Okay. So the second question I guess,
would be, what do you think are his significant contributions to USC?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. Well, I think that he’s certainly… As an educator and as a
conductor, he was nationally known and internationally known, and he did draw students through
his Church Music Department. He did recruit for that. I know the students came because he had
met them doing a workshop or something that drew him through to their areas, and he would
encourage them to come and try to find help with him.
When he got his mind set on something, you couldn’t stop him. He was able to work
wonders. When I lost my scholarship, I went to Rush. He gave me the paperwork to help me
transfer to Cal State, Long Beach. When I went to Dr. Hirt because I decided, “I can’t have my
parents pay for this,” he wouldn’t accept that. The first thing he did was to call the scholarship
people at USC to try to persuade them that they got my GPA calculated wrong. “I’m sure he got
higher grades than that.” It’s interesting; it was actually fun. He tried to go that way first and that
didn’t work, and the next thing I knew, he called a meeting of all the heads of departments and
got me a scholarship that wasn’t tied to grades.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. He could be very persuasive. There would be people who
would not want to see him coming. I think that’s why Bob Jani didn’t get along with him in those
days, because when he decided he wanted something…

SHAWNA STEWART. Whatever it took?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. He was always available to conduct an all-state choir or to do
these workshops. He was famous for the fact that he would go anyplace, but he always had to be
back in church Sunday morning. Whatever slight arrangement had to be made, he was not going
to miss Sunday morning at Hollywood Pres.
259

SHAWNA STEWART. Did he have a student conductor take over for him at the USC
then, for a chamber choir, if he was going to be gone during the week?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. He never was gone that long. He took a sabbatical. He was
gone my first year. He was gone that spring semester, and a graduate student, Maurice Allard,
was conducting a choir. In those days, it was a grad student of his that was conducting the
Concert Choir and the Trojan Men’s and Women’s Glee Clubs. Those are the grad students.
It wasn’t until Jim Vail was hired, primarily because Dr. Hirt needed help getting all
those dissertations through, and Jim was very skilled at that, that Jim became the conductor of
Concert Choir. He was the first real staff person that wasn’t a grad student.
But his spiritual as well as academic acumen brought something very unique to USC that
I don’t think existed in any other department, maybe Walter Ducloux, chairman of the Opera
Department, and John Crown.
John Crown, Walter Ducloux, and Charles Hirt– you get them in the same room together,
like the orientation drawn with all the students, at the beginning of the year. They would have
comments and wisecracks and jokes going. They would drive Ray Kendall crazy. I was always
amazed at how Ray Kendall kept his calm, because they never let anything get too serious. That
was really quite unique. I think that his contribution was what he did for the students more than
anything else.

SHAWNA STEWART. For the students?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. Yeah. He demanded a great deal but he inspired a great deal.
Very rarely did he have to just get serious and pound the desk.

SHAWNA STEWART. Can you talk a little bit more about his spiritual acumen?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. Doug kidded me when, at the beginning of our home concert, I
came out and introduced him. My final phrase was, “A Man of God.” Doug was really kidding
me about that afterwards.

SHAWNA STEWART. Lawrence did?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. Yeah.

SHAWNA STEWART. Doug Lawrence, who’s worked in the church much of his life?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. Okay. This is one story, when we were down in
[unintelligible]. One time a taxi cab almost ran us down, and Dr. Hirt said, “Shit.” One time later,
when Douglas had his pipe out, Dr. Hirt said, “Doug, I didn’t know you smoked.” Doug said,
“Dr. Hirt, I didn’t know you swore.”

SHAWNA STEWART. That’s funny.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. They always thought that if he had to choose between the jobs,
it would be Hollywood Pres.
260

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, interesting.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. He wound up leaving Hollywood Pres first, retiring from there
first. The only reason he retired when he did from USC was…I was up at Idyllwild and I heard he
had retired and I called him. It’s the only time I talked with him since the Hirt gala that I helped
Bob Jani put on in ’75. So a couple of years before then, ’74, I think ’73, when he retired and I
was up there and somebody told me about it, and I called him. I always had his number
memorized.
One of the reasons I wound up in Bakersfield was because Ralph Rush said, “You need
to get out of LA. You need to get out from under Charles Hirt.” I thought, “Bakersfield?” but I
did it. And I said, “Are you all right? I hear you retired.” He said, at the concert in Bovard, he
came off that night and took his blood pressure and it was like 180 over 126 or 130. Lucy said,
“You may think that your dream is to die on a stage performing, but that leaves me out of it and
that’s just not fair.” He said, “She’s right,” and so he retired.
And he still had lots of things to do until his back gave out on him, and he was at the
Olympics and did lots of other stuff, but that was a big surprise, that he would retire at such a
young age. He retired at age 65. Believe me, that was too young to be leaving his academic life. It
was something that he and Lucy decided together. He was such a performer. When we got
organized and, of course, we have to do all of the work, our costumes and stuff like that, our day
uniforms and things like that, we had to pay for it then. We had to arrange with them. My dad’s
friend at the church owned a men’s store here in Garden Grove. I had him help us with our
tuxedos and our sports coats and slacks. Doug and I came down to do our fitting for the tuxedos;
evidently it was just right after Hirt was in and this guy is a short Italian. He was just fit to be tied,
because what Dr. Hirt did was... he was so demanding that the padding had to be such that he
always looked like his shoulders were square and straight back, and then he looked like this. So
he said, “I need to have more padding. This isn’t right.” But that kind of person, with the store
owner fitting him for a suit, he could be overly demanding and not always considerate. He could
be very demanding and he could get snotty about it, and act like the prima donna.
We just stood and laughed, because we knew exactly what he went through. That’s the
side you never saw in Charles Hirt, except in rare instances and like that, and then we just had to
laugh at it. That was funny because a lot of it is for show, because he knows he can get it. He is a
master manipulator. He knew what to say and what to do to get what he wanted out of you.

SHAWNA STEWART. That sounds amazing.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. If he’s fitting his tuxedo, so he looked like the [unintelligible]
was square shoulder when he wasn’t, so it always looked perfect, fitted perfectly when he was
conducting like this, then he would do what he had to do to get it.

SHAWNA STEWART. Did you ever experience him caught off guard where he couldn’t
be prepared?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. No. I think he would never allow for that. When Kennedy died
and Bob Jani called and asked, they were thinking about setting up a memorial service there at
USC. Dr. Hirt refused. It just didn’t fit. He was so concentrated on getting us prepared. We
actually had rehearsals over that weekend.
261
He was shot on Friday. Dr. Hirt called a rehearsal on Saturday. Barbara had her hair
appointment… Our wedding was Monday night, the following Monday night. So she wasn’t
there. “Where’s Barbara?” I said, “Well.” He knew. It’s not like he didn’t know. He knew exactly
where she was. “Where’s Barbara?” he asked. I said, “At her hair appointment.” His comment
was “All these shoes look pretty.” I just wanted to kill him.
There’s one performance that we did in Caen, France. Now, this is provence Caen, not
Cannes. Caen is an unusual city because it was just inland from Omaha Beach. The Allied Forces
demolished the city because it was the highway east. The US Engineers, as a gift to the city for
their sacrifice, they designed and built a university on the American plan.
At least in 1964, the only place you could find outside the United States, a university
campus like you’d find in the United States was in Caen, France, because, otherwise, universities,
towns had schools all over the city. It was not a campus but here was this university campus
altogether.
They were very proud of that. When we went there to do the concert, it was great, maybe
one of the best going. But at intermission, we had to get our minds on other things. Well, we were
doing things because we were going to be doing a show for the USS Enterprise on the hanger
deck, on Easter. We had a quartet singing Graduation Day, the Four Freshmen arrangement, so
we were rehearsing that and then the girls were doing this, that and the other thing.
We even had a little barbershop going on, and we always tried to be away from
everybody because they would always have students who would come back and want to get
autographs and stuff. We just had to be by ourselves. When we lined up, ready to go back in, the
beginning of the second half was the “Agnus Dei” from the Persichetti Mass and I did the
intonation at the beginning. As I was walking up the steps to go onto the stage, he turns at us.
“Are you ready for the ‘Agnus Dei’?” How can you be ready for the ‘Agnus Dei’ with all that
secular stuff that you did back there?” I was just… We were just taken aback and we resented it,
and that second half was the worst concert we ever did. We all just glared at him and he could be
very demanding that way. Doug and I finally got to a point about halfway through, where, if it
wasn’t for Mrs. Hirt, we were still the buffer between the students because he’s still really
demanding. We’re doing concerts every year. We only had Tuesday off and it was just too much
pressure sometimes and he would be so demanding. Nina Hinson, she already had called her
mother and she had a plane ticket. She was leaving.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow!

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. Mrs. Hirt knew what was going on and she pulled her aside
and Nina would have to tell you what she said, but it was basically, “You have to understand the
pressure he’s under, and I want to assure you that he loves you and it would hurt him very badly
for you to leave.” There were times when we just really absorbed a lot because he was always on.
He never rested.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. Right.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. He played as hard as everything else. I’ve got pictures of him.
Some of the guys would have to do foot races. All of a sudden, somebody said, “I will race you
down to the corner” when we’re standing around on a touring trip or something, and they would
challenge him. He’d run in and do the foot race with them. He would never want to be shown up.
262
He was always in competition with us and with anybody else. He was a very, very, very prideful
man, but for me, that was the way his artistry came out.
I think he was a product of his time. He always thought the best. It’s one of the things
that I try to learn in my own teaching, rather than getting angry. It’s very rare that he would ever
confront a student and be angry. He would always try to think the best. It’s like if somebody was
late, usually, teachers sometimes have the tendency to kind of make everybody feel guilty
because of the guy who’s not there.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. So because he’s angry that somebody is not there, what Hirt
would do is, “Oh, I hope he’s not in an automobile accident.” He would persuade himself to be
concerned for him for being late. He never allowed himself to think that somebody was so
irresponsible.

SHAWNA STEWART. Very interesting.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. I remember when I was a freshman, there was a tenor in the
choir and he was in a country-western trio that performed on certain nights at Knott’s Berry Farm
in the Wagon Train Fire Ring. It was a professional gig and there was this performance that Dr.
Hirt was conducting and he didn’t come to it because he had this conflict. Dr. Hirt was so angry
at him but not in front of anybody else, but he was so angry at him, he went to the registrar’s
office and asked to see the guy’s transcript. They brought it out and showed him the transcript,
and in red ink, he wrote on the transcript “Totally irresponsible person. I’ll never recommend
him.” And he is the reason why you can never look at a transcript without it being under glass.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow, that’s amazing. That is an incredible story.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. Some people might not think that’s all that humorous. That
was rare.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. But it was possible.

SHAWNA STEWART. But it was possible and that sounds like that would be the reason
people would never want to cross him because of those stories that people knew. That’s
incredible. His philosophy of the power of music, did he ever speak to it? What’s your impression
of it?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. One of his stock, Doug would laugh if he heard me telling it,
one of his stock was of contextualizing a performance, especially at Christmas time. Mostly at
Christmas time is when he would liken music to a prism. Just like in a prism, when you drive the
shaft of light through it, the prison splits the light and out comes all the colors of the rainbow. He
picks music so the various color elements of a concert would be present. He was a performer. He
wasn’t just an intellectual. When I was out in my limited time as a professional choral conductor,
the chairman of the English Department at the high school said he happened to be at a cocktail
263
party where the choir director at Cal State, Fresno, was (it wasn’t called that in those days).
Somebody mentioned my name and he said, “Oh, Bob Hasty.” He said, “He and Charles Hirt are
just alike, except Charles Hirt’s all emotional and no technique and Bob Hasty’s all technique and
no emotion.”
He was a showman and so he programmed music so that it was entertaining and he would
cut music. Initially, this really bothered me. He would take a piece of music and if he didn’t like
the stage, he would just say, “Okay.” In the middle of rehearsal, he would be very creative. He
says, “Okay. Let’s cut from measure ten and go to measure twenty-three.” Then we’d wind up
with a performance that was not the published piece of music. And I thought, “No. You can’t do
that. You’re supposed to perform the published piece of music.” It took me a while to become
convinced it was really better. It was really better to make the piece more effective. He wouldn’t
do this with Bach; this would be somebody’s edition. He would always be thinking about the
audience being entertained and not just enlightened.
His approach to the carolers, when he asked me to be in charge of it, was just do the
rehearsals and recruit, do all of the work. He really thought that I would just simply use all of the
[songs] that they did for Christmas music at the Chamber Singers, because it would be perfectly
entertaining out on the mainstream of Disneyland.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. It wouldn’t at all. I got in trouble initially because I arranged
some music that was just strictly entertainment out there that we would never do with the
Chamber Singers. I did an arrangement of “Sleigh Ride” and [unintelligible] did an arrangement
of “White Christmas.” They were both very famous. I hear them all over. Nobody knows who
actually arranged them. When he found out about it, he got [unintelligible] in the privacy of his
office. “How dare you?” he would say. “Why aren’t we doing that in the set?” I said, “Dr. Hirt,
we can’t.”

SHAWNA STEWART. What was wrong with him? Why was he angry?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. I didn’t get his permission.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, to do something with his Chamber Singers that you had
arranged.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. And so Darlene was one of the ones who… She wanted us to
do them. We were getting ready to go down for the 5:00 retreat, the lowering of the flag with the
Disneyland band, we were back getting together, they wanted us to sing some of the music, and
Darlene said, “You oughta hear this really new arrangement of ‘Sleigh Ride.’ Come on, Bob…”
Finally, I relented and we did it and we did “White Christmas” for them, and then I just kind of
got over it, as long as Hirt wasn’t around.
We pulled a trick on one of our singers, somebody you might know, so I’m not going to
say who it was. His first year, he was out there and Doug went up to him and said, “Bob and I
talked about this and we’ve decided you should be the one.” He said, “The one what?” He said,
“Dr. Hirt likes to come out and [unintelligible], but he won’t do it unless you ask him. He wants
to be asked. So the next time Dr. Hirt is out visiting, you should go up and offer to have him
264
come and substitute for you, that you can’t be there tomorrow and would he mind coming out and
substituting for you?” It was a dirty trick.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, man!

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. It’s a dirty trick. It’s not anything I would have done on my
own, but Doug could.

SHAWNA STEWART. I didn’t know who I was talking to when I interviewed Doug. It
was great. That’s funny.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. I don’t think the guy ever forgave me.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, dear.

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. He was the president of the SCVA Board when I got in trouble
within that adjudication.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh yeah, sure. Oh, interesting. That’s an interesting connection.
Well, what of Hirt’s techniques and methods are you still doing today and how have they
changed in your hands?

ROBERT G. HASTY SR. The tactus. Every part of sound that you produce deserves just
as much support and concentration as every other part, so that even when I’m asked to substitute
at my church and they me choose what music to do, and one of the ones that I like to do is an
arrangement of “Poor Man Lazarus.” I start them out slowly. [Singing] So even an amateur choir,
without a whole lot of instruction, and I go around maybe punching them in the belly. I would
rather do something like that and have it relate immediately to the music. His philosophy was in
his selection of music to perform and his approach to it had to be involved with an organic unity
that begins with support, and so that’s the most important thing. Secondly is that even if it’s
Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, there is still an element of showmanship that needs to be there.
You have to think of the audience. I’ve seen some people come out of USC now, one
colleague of my wife, said, “Every performance that he does is basically pretty serious church
music.” It’s pretty serious music altogether. The concerts can be intense, but there’s not much
fun, and there has to be an element of fun. He always had what we called “programmed encores.”
In other words, we’re going to do them, but they’re not in the program, but as far as we’re
concerned, they are. As far as the audience is concerned, we’ve finished, this our final number
and then we come and we plan what we do… I was able to combine what I’ve learned in the
laboratory in my PhD studies with what I learned and heard at my summer camp in building
effective vocal-choral curriculum. I developed the concept of inter-relationship between the
individual singer’s solo skills that Dr. Hirt had defined as “the American Choral Art.” This is the
letter that I sent to my colleagues that reviewed his concept of our American Choral Art.
When the recording came out, I never listened to it after I heard it the first time, and this
will explain why. I never heard of it again until Doug distributed this to us. I never wanted to hear
it and you’ll understand why. It’s not a bad memory; it’s because it’s a bad recording. It totally
does not represent what we were and what we sounded like, and it was Charles Hirt’s fault and
that explains it.
265
I just wanted to share that with him after we had had this wonderful time together and it’s
the first time I had to settle some things in my mind. I just thought, “Somebody should know the
things and why.” Because then I got e-mails from somebody and saying, “I always wondered…
The record was kind of disappointing,” but nobody would ever say it. They always wondered
why, but this letter explains it. It goes into the psychotomy [sic] of Charles Hirt. He just did not
want anybody getting too close to his art that they could see the flaws. It had to be either obscure
or if it couldn’t be perfect… He would [not] even trust perfection. I learned the importance of the
tactus in music, the showmanship in programming to keep the performers as well as the audience
interested in what you’re doing, so you’re going to wind up doing some pieces of music that are
not really great, and you may chop them up to make them more presentable, but that’s okay.
You’re going to include, occasionally like maybe dancing, maybe a couple of performers
who are going to come out and dance, maybe badly, but they’re going to do it. That’s just all part
of doing more with the music. That third thing was that, no matter what you’re doing, you’re
always performing.
It rarely happened to me, but when I was conducting at Summerfest my first year, there
was a [woman], I knew she was a college music major and here she was in my rehearsal, and I
asked her to please leave. This is not an open rehearsal. That was a big shock. I didn’t get
emotional about it or anything, and then I explained to her. She wound up being on my staff
eventually. It was really stupid, but that was my orientation, and I regretted doing it afterwards,
but that was my first time. We’re not ready yet to be seen, to be heard. We’re in the process and
it’s nobody’s business but ours.

SHAWNA STEWART. So those three things would relate to his philosophy of teaching
choral music? Okay. What conducting techniques or rehearsal techniques still stand out to you
today?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. I learned to emulate his technique that always demanded
everyone’s attention. This was for economy of effort and the economy of time. This also comes
from the standpoint that I never (as opposed to Charles Hirt, but I’ve learned this from Charles
Hirt) I never sang along with my choirs because they watch my mouth more than they watch my
hands. I could be going [gesturing and singing], “My country ’tis of thee.” They’re not looking at
my conducting. They’re just watching my mouth. In the first semester of choral conducting, part
of the final exam was to conduct without your arms, so you have your hands behind your back
and not to sing. You’re conducting, “Glory to God in the highest.” You just do it with your
presence, not to bounce the beat with your body, but just do it with your presence. You did this
from the beginning; otherwise the performers would be score-bound. Their eyes would be on the
music; they wouldn’t be on you, and too many choral conductors would wind up having their
choirs teach them how to conduct and waste too much time.
Part of what I did with my summer camp is that in the first week, we’d do a whole
semester of repertoire, and each of my staff of ten people would conduct a number. I did this for
their training, but also for the choir to get used to following different conductors. I tried to match
the music to the conductor. I had a perfect-pitch guy. I never let him do something that wasn’t
accompanied because he’d spend the whole rehearsal on tuning. I always made sure he did
Brahms or something like that, so he could practice on the emotion of it because he was good at
that. I saw him… it is one of the two choirs I ever adjudicated that I would say was “A” all the
way, but he was only good, ever good, at Renaissance. I would never have him do anything other
than Renaissance. It’s a waste of time. A learning experience to have him do something else, but
266
it won’t mean any fun. That was training for them because they’d only have four or five minutes
to rehearse at any rehearsal, so they had to be in charge, rather than waiting. The tendency for a
choir conductor is just waiting for the singers to catch on, and you wind up over-conducting and
you wind up talking too much.
With Charles Hirt, it was always the music, and the rehearsals were never tiring because
it was always the music; it was never a lecture. Sometimes there would be accidents that would
just be absolutely charming. One of the most charming ones was one time he was trying to get a
kind of shimmering light. He had this, especially with Renaissance music, that you got kind of
above and you’re suspending the music. He said, “Make this just a shimmer, just like hanging
your balls on a Christmas tree.” I’m one of those where we…[Laughter]. I don’t think he knew it
at the time when he was singing because they are… Hanging Christmas tree ornaments – that’s
what he wanted to say. But that was just splendid. Sometimes he is very good at puns, so that
would be part of it.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, that is just too much. That’s so funny.

[Commentary unrelated to the interview has been omitted at the discretion of the interviewer.]

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Where were we?

SHAWNA STEWART. We were in rehearsal or conducting techniques, so you still
remember today and you were talking about how your presence matters.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. This is why I’m trying to encourage people to get away from
the piano, that the students really need to have you in front of them and that you need to get them
looking above the score to be able to read the music and see you at the same time. You’re going
to do things that will require their attention because if you don’t get it, then they’re going to wind
up singing in a rest or… I was conducting a community course up in Sacramento, part of my job
up there, one hundred and fifty singers and I had one blind alto. It was at one place where I was
conducting, and I can’t explain to you now how everybody knew this, but everybody knew, at a
certain point, she was the only one who followed at me. It’s not just visual; it is spiritual. It is
what I call… It’s my use of the term, “agape,” which is required in performance because we can
make the performers too mindful of the technique to where they lose sight of what’s really
important.
I learned that very quickly after one spring concert, my second year, my student
conductor… I said, “Wasn’t that a great concert?” She said, “Are you kidding?” The altos were
sharp and the tenors were terrible. I said, “I created a monster!” I made sure I never recorded a
performance. I only had recording sessions because I didn’t want anybody worrying about the
recording. I didn’t want anybody worrying about audience noise or making a mistake or
something like that. The creativity is the most important thing and it comes from what you feel
with each other. In terms of the ensemble, I believe it’s very true [unintelligible] where agape
comes in is that you are prepared to immediately forgive unconditionally. If somebody has made
a mistake, in fact, it’s an opportunity to practice agape. So that if somebody makes a mistake,
you’re more likely to smile instead of frown because it’s an opportunity, rather than an
impediment and that we are responsible for each other.
I was able to learn from Hirt to help people get beyond their… We didn’t have great
opera singers in that first year, second year or third year that I was in the Chamber Singers. We
267
had some pretty weak sisters and yet the way that everyone was treated in rehearsal, in
performance – no one was treated as being any lesser than or greater than and that was very
important to me.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. The agape though comes from you, not necessarily from
him then?

ROBERT G HASTY, SR. It is an empathetic response to the conductor. It’s conducting
without your hands. I would always, as soon as I could, get the students to memorize
something… I always explained this empathy as unconditional love and unasked for grace.
Chamber Singers never memorized anything; we always had music because that was never a big
deal with him, but I wanted to go beyond dependence on the musical score with my
choirs…when my choirs (school or church) had something like a motet memorized. I would get
them out in a big space like an auditorium, have them stand there four or five feet apart, and have
them sing with their eyes closed. So many musical problems can be resolved when each singer
must rely upon what they feel and hear from their fellow singers. That’s where they really learned
to reach out for each other and listen to each other; that becomes critical. I never had intonation
problems. That’s another thing. Hirt would never tell the choir that they were flat or sharp. No, he
just never would. Being flat is a condition of physical energy lacking and being sharp is not
having practiced the excitement of a performance. If all of a sudden they get into a performance
and they are trying, sopranos are always going to go sharp. When you get in a rehearsal you have
to create that performance situation, so they practice going sharp in rehearsal, so that doesn’t
become a problem in the performance.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, in closing, could you talk about his nonmusical impact on
you.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. I think he was the most giving. He could be the most giving.
He always thought the best of people. He didn’t have favorites, in my estimation, but he managed
to make every person feel special and that was not just in performance. We made music together,
but everything that we did, especially when we were on a tour or when we gave a concert, there
was this great feeling of mutual respect and a mutual desire to create and be creative. That’s why
Doug’s wife made a wise crack when I called him, “a man of God.” In our relationship, as a
teacher, it’s not like he was an overly spiritual person. It’s not like he talked about his faith or
anything like that.

[Commentary unrelated to the interview has been omitted at the discretion of the interviewer.]

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. So Charles Hirt, it’s not that he was overly religious to us. He
wasn’t. But he had certain quirks. My freshman year was the first that he wasn’t a conductor of
the Concert Choir. So we had heard about the year before when they went on a little trip, a little
concert tour for a few days in Palm Springs and they had dinner together. Their student manager
had arranged a dinner at the Chi Chi Club in Palm Springs. The Chi Chi Club, Dr. Hirt really
didn’t know what kind of restaurant it was and so they all sat down to eat, and they did what they
always did with Dr. Hirt – they sang the “Doxology.” As soon as they finished singing the
“Doxology,” this voice came out from the speakers, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, let me
268
introduce to you Frou Frou la Touche and her bubbling balloons.” It was an exotic dancer
[Laughter].

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh my goodness. That’s a kick. I bet there are countless stories
like that. I just love the stories. I love them.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Yeah. One Christmas season we were performing for a
women’s group at L.A.’s First Congregational Church. As Dr. Hirt introduced the English carol,
“I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In,” the soprano soloist, who happened to be sitting next to me,
got her pitch from our “perfect pitch-er.” Now the soloist was a good musician, but she was not a
very confident singer. Standing to sing, the soloist looked down at me and softly hummed the two
notes she had been holding in her head, needing assurance that she was still on pitch. She was, so
I responded in the affirmative, “Um-hm.” Lifting her head confidently, she launched into the
carol, not from the correct pitch, but from the pitch of my “um-hm,” about an interval of a sixth
lower than where she was supposed to be. Dr. Hirt tried to keep going, but he couldn’t. But this
time he got tickled, and when Dr. Hirt got tickled, you could forget about going on. He got so
tickled.

SHAWNA STEWART. That’s great.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. That’s wonderful. If to orchestral or band conductors
something like that would have happened, they would blow a fuse, they would get so mad. He
would just crack up. That’s wonderful.

SHAWNA STEWART. It is.

ROBERT G HASTY, SR. It breaks the tension.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. You talked about having some of those pictures from
maybe your tour.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. They’re in storage.

[Commentary unrelated to the interview has been omitted at the discretion of the interviewer.]

SHAWNA STEWART. It’s been fun to look at some of Dr. Hirt’s scores. So it shows
what he was thinking at least on paper.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. He was quite a technician. When he was conducting the…
What’s the title of it? The Dallapicolla, the prisoner’s prayer, “Preghierre.”
Twelve-tone and a bit of variety of percussion in various individual instruments, and he
conducted it. He was so gifted; he would easily conduct three against four, one hand against the
other. One of the things I’ve learned from him was that to give a number to each pitch of the scale
and then a hand sign, so that “1-3-5-8-5-3-1,” five is the most stable, one, eight and then two goes
to one, four goes to three, five to six, seven and eight. I trained a choir, including an honor choir,
teach them right away, the kids pick it up right away, so that I could say [gesturing], “Okay
basses, sopranos, tenors, altos,” and then while they’re doing it, then I would raise one section,
269
lower another one, and by hand signals, I could create different sounds, teach them to hear, as
well as watch and think at the same time. I’d learned that from him.

[Commentary unrelated to the interview has been omitted at the discretion of the interviewer.]

SHAWNA STEWART. He was such a consummate educator. It’s just incredible.

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. When he was conducting, I would never go this far, to where
the flute on one particular piece had to follow this pinkie because it was like in 9/2, molto adagio.
[Unintelligible]… and then maybe the piccolo will be playing whole note triplets. So he had it all
calculated in his mind when the piccolo should play, apart from everybody else, and so he always
wanted to make sure the piccolo watched this pinkie. It’s the kind of thing I would never…

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. That’s incredible. His scores don’t look that technical, but
gosh, I’m hoping I could just find one snippet of him conducting somewhere, video…

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. He has certain idiosyncrasies that I know Doug and I both
would do, and if we ever did it in front of each other, it would make us howl. Sometimes, either a
cut-off or a downbeat that he wanted to be really… it would be the whip crack in a swift flicking
motion over the ear.

SHAWNA STEWART. This is kind of an off-the-record question, but did you ever get
tired of it? Did you get tired of the showmanship?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. No, not a bit. That’s what kept this all interesting. Not that I
didn’t think that sometimes I wouldn’t go in that direction, but then later on I did. When you wind
up getting in that position, I’m going to start off being more sophisticated all the time and that’s
why I said, every now and then when I see something like Barbara’s colleague doing such serious
programming, I would say, “Lighten up. These kids had only one performance this semester.
There’s got to be something else besides a whole concert of Monteverdi and not Madrigals.”

SHAWNA STEWART. This is college?

ROBERT G. HASTY, SR. Yeah, junior college. He is a great musician. He’s a great guy.
If he came through under Hirt, he would not program that way; he would learn not to program
that way. Why? Not anything that I would ever want to tell him; that’s just something that we feel
and it comes from how we were trained.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. That’s interesting. Well, thank you so much for your time!

270
APPENDIX M: INTERVIEW WITH DARLENE HATCHER

DARLENE HATCHER
October 18, 2012
3:00 p.m.
In-person Interview, home of Darlene Hatcher

DARLENE HATCHER. … maybe because I was struck again on how important this
reunion was to these people. Most of them had gone on to huge careers. I mean Nina Hinson sang
all over Europe. Del had a big career with Disney. Doug had a singing career. Rosy had an
operatic career. Even the ones who didn’t have big performing careers are teachers or conductors,
so almost all except Charlie Parker who’s a priest, everybody went into music in some form or
another. They all said that those years, the year building up to that tour and the four and a half
months of that tour was an artistic pinnacle, highlight musically. It meant a great deal to them
artistically, intellectually and, of course, emotionally, because you get to know each other
intimately in four and a half months of living right next to each other. Some of them came from
many, many miles and paid a lot of money for airline tickets and hotels and everything else; it
was a tribute to how much that tour meant to everybody. It was pretty amazing.

SHAWNA STEWART. What did the evening consist of or the weekend?

DARLENE HATCHER. Well, I planned a two-day thing and I started very structured. It
was at our house in Escondido. I started with a very structured couple of hours because I knew
that we wouldn’t all get to hear each other’s stories if we just were loose. So we came into the
living room and we sat around and just went around the circle, “What have you been doing for
the last 48 years?” “What has your life been like”? That’s kind of a dangerous situation because
it’s an open mic. Some of them took five minutes and some of them took thirty-five, but that’s all
right. We got around to everybody and we heard everybody’s story. From that point, it got loser
and there were twenty-one of us all together including spouses and significant others. Then we
had dinner, and then came in. We had all sent pictures to Doug who is very into videos these
days.

SHAWNA STEWART. He sent it to me.
DARLENE HATCHER. Did he? Yeah. Most of that video consists of a video that Paul
Mayo made, one of the guys who died while he was on the trip, and Doug used that as the basis
and then that was interspersed with some slides that we sent. So we all filed in the house and
watched that video, and did we sing in the afternoon? Yes, I had picked about five or six numbers
that I thought we could all still sing and that maybe I could still play, and then I listened to the
recording, the original recording and I thought, “How the hell did I ever play those pieces at that
tempo? How in the world?” And of course, their singing was magnificent and all that and here we
all are, seventy years old, some were older than… so who was the youngest of us? I think we all
went all the way up to seventy-eight years old, seventy-seven years old and seventy-eight years
old. So our voices sounded, of course, nothing like they did back then. We were a finely honed
choral instrument back then, and now all these great big voices have gone on to sing opera. Let’s
just say the tempo is really low-key, but through all of the stuff with piano that I had picked. Then
after the video and after dessert, we came back in and sang a little bit more. Then the next day,
271
we met for a brunch at The Beach House at Cardiff by the Sea right on the water, with our own
private little room that was reserved, and we had brunch and we sang some more. The folks
outside of the restaurant were so entranced by this group of old fogies sitting in there singing
these arcane (to them) songs. So we had to go outside and do a command performance of a happy
birthday for an eighteen-year-old. You know, with all the (singing) “Happy Birthday.”
Then, the evening was not obligatory; you could either go or not because some people
had to get back, some people didn’t want to spend money, some blah, blah, blah. But about half
of us met for dinner at The Prado in Balboa Park and then walked over to the Globe Theater and
saw Richard III at the old club. So that was the end of the weekend.

SHAWNA STEWART. Were there some memories that just came to the top, that people
went right to in sharing?

DARLENE HATCHER. People were mostly talking about what they had done since they
left the group, but lots of funny stuff came up. Well Bob Hasty, for instance. Is he on your list, by
the way?

SHAWNA STEWART. He is now after talking to Del.

DARLENE HATCHER. Good, because he has a phenomenal photographic memory. He
can tell you every detail of everything that ever happened to him in his whole life. My poor brain
is a mass of Jell-o by this time. I can remember very little. Mostly, people talked about their
experiences, but things would come up like… Bob was the president and Doug was the business
manager. So between the two of them, they were the more grown-up. We were married. We were
both married. Bob and Barbara had just gotten married, and I just had Steven a few months
before. I had Steven in October then we left on the trip in January. I knew way back that it was
going to be this way.
So right after we had him, we moved in with my mom so that he would have no operating
and I knew he would be taken cared of for four months like I would have taken care of him. I
know a lot of women would not have done that, and I still wonder at the fact that I did and was
able to, but I never have regretted a second of it. This was a life-changing experience. I was
twenty-three years old and to see seven, eight countries in Europe and Israel, seventy-eight
different cities, one hundred and four different concerts, something like that. We’re singing on the
USS Enterprise on Easter Sunday morning; we sang a private Palm Sunday service with Princess
Grace and Prince Rainier.
We had an audience with the Pope. We had access on entrée because it was conducted by
the State Department, and we were accompanied by the State Department liaison and his wife.
We had entrée to the city councils and mayoral receptions and we sang in the finest halls. It was
just an unrepeatable experience and not only free, not only all expenses paid, but a very generous
premium. I was sending home fabulous lederhosen and silverware and pictures, and it is amazing.
It was really.

SHAWNA STEWART. Was all that support from the school?

DARLENE HATCHER. No, it was from the government. The government footed the
bill. This was part of the United States Information Agency, which was a propaganda agency
back then to win the hearts and minds of people who weren’t Americans. Of course, there was a
272
budget for it back then and it was all building good relationships culturally with others. We had
several exchange opportunities to sing with and for other groups, too. So it was all of the
government’s tab.

SHAWNA STEWART. Amazing! On a trip like that, were you talking about USC? Were
you representing USC?

DARLENE HATCHER. No. Well, of course, we were. It was the USC Chamber Singers.
Of course, it was a good advertisement for our school, no doubt, but that wasn’t the message. The
message was a cultural… we were representing the United States. That was the message.
Building good will, blah, blah, blah.

SHAWNA STEWART. When did they stop having those programs? Do you know?

DARLENE HATCHER. I don’t know. That’s an interesting question. United States
Information Agency.

SHAWNA STEWART. I’m really sorry that my information sheet wasn’t clear. First
time around researcher or item, I thought I should include it. So I do have ten questions. They’re
meant to be a starting point and they can get answered or not get answered directly. Feel free to
say anything that you think will contribute to the topic of Dr. Hirt. I know that’s a lot.
My focus is of course on USC. I’m not going to comment so much on ACDA or Europa
Cantat or anything like that. Can you state just for the record in what capacity you knew him, and
during what years?

DARLENE HATCHER. Okay. I met him in 1957 when I entered USC for my bachelor’s
degree and I played, I think, at that time for University Choir. I wasn’t in Chamber Singers my
first year. When I actually got in, I can’t remember. Doug and I were not married then. I
graduated in ’61 and went to teach junior high choral music, and Charles came and adjudicated
some of my festivals, and then I only taught for two years though because I got pregnant with
Steven. Of course, by this time Douglas and I were married. So as they were planning the tour
and setting up personnel and everything, I technically wouldn’t have been involved but Ella Lou
Schlegel was a key member of the group at the time, a pianist and perfect pitch also and a violist I
think she was, and she couldn’t go. I can’t remember why, but Charles was looking for someone
to take her place and she said, “You need to think about Darlene, blah, blah, blah.” So he invited
me back and I was part of the audition process, and it was understood that I would be the pitch
giver and the accompanist, as well as sing in the group.
By this time, had we gone to Hollywood? No, we went to Hollywood right after we got
back from the tour, I think. I was a soloist at Our Savior’s Lutheran and Doug was still at Beverly
Hills Pres where we were married and then Charles wanted him to come over and be the soloist at
Hollywood. By this time, we had Steven and I thought I needed to give up my soloist job and go
to be part of Hollywood Pres. So we joined Hollywood Pres in ’64, right after we got back, I
think, from the trip, but that could be wrong. You have to ask Doug about that.
I began to know Charles; not only did I get to know him on the trip intimately but I began
to know him in that capacity at Hollywood as well. During my time there, I played, conducted the
hand bells, conducted a couple of groups over the years. When I went back for my master’s in
’69, in accompanying this time, Charles was still there but I didn’t sing in any choral ensembles
273
after that. We had become very good close, personal friends by this time, which was an
interesting transition. Those in the group, Del probably included, must have talked to you about
the awkwardness of learning not to call him Dr. Hirt, because we all joked that Lucy would say,
“Dr. Hirt dear, time to get up.” We were sure she called him Dr. Hirt. Doug and I were in the pool
over there one afternoon. Here we are with our feet up around rubber duckies. One of us said
something: “Dr. Hirt (something or other).” He says, “Don’t you think it’s time for you to start
calling me Charles?” It took a long time.

SHAWNA STEWART. Del even said one time Dr. Hirt told him to call him Chuck.

DARLENE HATCHER. We never went that far. He very carefully cultivated this image.
He was very conscious of it and even made fun of it at times. When Nina tells you about her
wedding, he gave her away at her wedding, and at the reception, he’s standing in the line and
people are coming through. He leans over to me and he says, “I hope they stop coming through
here pretty soon. I can’t stand up this straight. I can’t keep this up higher any longer.” He was
very conscious at that whole thing. You can see that in the posted pictures that he did every year
for that, very theatrical, very conscious of his image.
So it was hard for any of us to break through that – to get to know him on a more
personal level. He was kind of a god to everybody. He really was, especially if you were young
then – and the younger ones were even more affected I think. He kind of liked that and cultivated
at his… He would stride down Widney Hall, make it from the back door to his office in five big
strides. He was just enormous, his persona, his everything. He loved that kind of god-like role, I
think.

SHAWNA STEWART. How tall was he, do you know?

DARLENE HATCHER. 6'5" or 6'4"; I don’t know, maybe 6'8". Huge. No, he was very
tall and had long legs. He had a short waist and very, very long legs.

SHAWNA STEWART. Was he a part of the reason at all that you came to USC in the
first place?

DARLENE HATCHER. No. I went to USC quite by accident. The person who taught
piano at my high school, piano classes – even though by that time, I was studying with Sergei
Tarnowsky, but he was a friend. Well, Don Fontana, you might have heard of him too? One day,
Don Fontana brings me a sheaf of papers and says, “You need to fill this out,” and I said, “What
is it?” “It’s a scholarship to USC.” I would never have dreamed of going there – way too
expensive. He said, “You need to do this,” So I did it and got a two-thirds scholarship for my
undergraduate.
At that time, I was a music education major and had been talked out of being a piano
major by a guidance counselor in high school. “Oh no, you don’t want to do that.” I’m not
making up this stuff. “You’ll be a lonely old maid.” “You’ll be surrounded by nobody.” “ At
Christmas, you won’t have any children.” “Your life will be hotel rooms. You don’t want to do
that.” I’m going, well I guess you’re right. I don’t want to do that.
So I went into music education sort of by default, which was fine. So I went to USC on a
two-thirds scholarship. During my first year. even though I was a choral music education major, I
started falling in love with art song and I studied with Gwen Koldofsky even back then. So by the
274
time Doug’s solo career had taken off and I was more and more interested in accompanying an art
song, my next two degrees were in accompanying. Gwen Koldofsky was ultimately the reason
why I hung around. I thought about going to other places but she was the best. So why go
anyplace else?
It’s hard to describe the school at that time actually. There were giants in every single
field. Ralph Rush was able to do things that you couldn’t do today. You’ve got to go through
committees. You’ve got to do blah, blah, blah. He would literally pick up the phone, some
promising young guy, (well, women too) that he had heard of, young, untried. “Why don’t you
come on over here and teach?” John Crown and Halsey Stevens and Ingolf Dahl, Ralph himself
and Charles and [unintelligible] just on and on, just a whole field full of giants in every single
field. That was amazing to be around in those days.
Maybe I was just naïve, but I didn’t sense a lot of politicking or backbiting or animosity
in the faculty. I think when you’re that good, you don’t need to be insecure and watching your
back all the time. That was really a wonderful place to be back then.

SHAWNA STEWART. William Vennard was there at that time?

DARLENE HATCHER. Yeah, that was Doug’s first voice teacher. He never really
pushed him like, in retrospect, he should have, I think, to open up his top, but he sure as heck
didn’t do him any harm. He gave him a really good basic foundation; yeah, because that’s a good
place to start.

SHAWNA STEWART. Koldofsky – is that right?

DARLENE HATCHER. Is what?

SHAWNA STEWART. Koldofsky?

DARLENE HATCHER. Gwendolyn Koldofsky.

SHAWNA STEWART. She worked with a particular voice?

DARLENE HATCHER. No, she was a coach/accompanist. She taught accompanying
and she coached voices and she taught song lit. I modeled my song lit classes at the University of
Iowa after her. We did a lot of live performances. It was DMA candidates. I taught a two-year
course for DMA that was required for a vocal DMA at the university. I did one semester of
German, one semester of French, one semester of English-American, and one semester of all
other. They would do reports and they would do presentations themselves. We would do some
recordings. We would do a lot of live performance. And that was kind of Gwen’s way of doing
things, rather than just stand up and lecture about it.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, I’d like to get your perception on Dr. Hirt’s philosophy…

DARLENE HATCHER. I’ve been thinking about that. Bob recalled in an email just
recently that at one of the places we were supposed to perform in Europe, they specifically asked
for him to include vocalises. Bob remembers he trotted out some things that none of us had ever
seen. He was not big on that at all. He was big on choosing the right voice to begin with and then
275
he was huge on the placement of the voices. We would spend hours. You sit over here. Now you
sit here. Now you sit here. Now think about this – lots and lots of time about putting people
together that is going to maximize its sound.
Unfortunately, you’ll probably hear this from more than one person too. The recording
that was made when we first got back from the trip was, I mean, that group was good when they
left. They were perfect. It was just locked in everybody’s stimulus by that time. It was really an
amazing concert. When Dr. Hirt went to the mastering session of the recording, it was a good
recording, he said, “It has too much treble. It’s too much presence. It’s too much…it’s too live.
It’s too blah, blah, blah,” and he cranked up the reverb and he cranked up the bass and that’s why
you hear a lot of, even on the remastered thing that Don Brinegar put out, when you hear the ’64
group on there, it sounds like we’re singing in a bath tub. It’s all dark and it’s all full of reverb.
He didn’t like the bright, recorded sound. He was really a master at picking the voices.
He didn’t spend a lot of time talking about technique. The technique came in how you perfected
his vision. Every single piece that we ever sat down to do with him, he had it completely; it was
like Mozart with music all in his head. It was complete, right down to the last detail what he
wanted it to sound like and he knew it, and he had it in his head before we started. That’s the
ideal that we perfected. His conception of perfection was really astounding, I think.
But you can’t talk about a traditional choral technique with him. It was so organic. It was
so part of his own personality, I guess. I don’t know. You can hardly divorce… I think he would
never have put it into words, but one of the things that he very much believed in, “If it doesn’t
work, make it work.” He would change things. He had a lot of artistic license to fiddle around
with things until they fit his idea of how it should be. He played it safe always. He didn’t tackle
major works much at all. He felt very at home as a miniaturist. He repeated a lot of the same
repertoire. You would hear “Won’t You Buy My Sweet Blooming Lavender” every single year
for twenty years in a row. Well, it worked. It was phenomenally successful. He repeated a lot of
repertoire, but he cranked out an incredible product. And the verbiage – that was another thing.
He would talk frequently in concerts between numbers and just spin out this incredible silvery
wording even if the product hadn’t been any good. You would’ve thought it was magnificent just
listening to these words. He knew how to wrap the whole package of it and make it quite
spectacular.

SHAWNA STEWART. Off the record then, even though we record it, regarding Dr.
Dehning’s book called Chorus Confidential. Have you read it? He gives quite a bit of credit to
Dr. Hirt for his choral concepts and he lists six.

DARLENE HATCHER. Oh, well, of course: blend, balance, diction.

SHAWNA STEWART. Intonation, rhythmic precision. When you say he didn’t talk
about technique, did he talk about those things like…

DARLENE HATCHER. Not overtly. Oh sure, in choral classes and things like that.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh sure, sure. At rehearsal?

DARLENE HATCHER. No. I mean, to my recollection, no. It was honing this vision of
this piece that he had in his mind in getting it there. I don’t think he ever stopped in
philosophizing much.
276

SHAWNA STEWART. So I wonder how Dr. Dehning came up with those things, maybe
just from those classes.

DARLENE HATCHER. No, probably for the class. I mean it’s pretty standard stuff:
blend, balance, intonation, diction. As I remember anyway and like I said, I have no memory
anymore; he really didn’t spend a lot of time talking about stuff like that. He just did it.

SHAWNA STEWART. Were you ever with him when he prepared a score or practiced?
That seems to be a mystery; that’s a common mystery to all the people I’ve talked to so far.
Nobody has been in that process to know what he did.

DARLENE HATCHER. I think this was very smart too, rather than just keep us
comfortable doing the same… We had a much larger repertoire for the tour. We would pick
different parts of it for the afternoon concerts. It all depended on where we were. So it wasn’t that
we had this one program that we did over and over and over again, but rather that keep us just in
the parameters of those pieces. We rehearsed rigorously the Byrd five-part mass for the return
concert. We were going to do a concert up at Belmont College right after we got back. So we
were putting together from the ground up something that we had not worked on. At the same
time, we were perfecting these things that we knew very, very well. I think that was very smart of
him to keep us focused.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right. Going a little bit back to the philosophy question, are you
aware of anything emotionally or spiritually that he felt about music, the power of music,
something that drove in his career? Did he ever share anything like that?

DARLENE HATCHER. No, not that I can remember. His passion was obvious, but he
didn’t have to talk about it.

[Technical difficulties. Lapse in conversation]

She [Lucy] of course, you know about her contribution at the church with the children’s choirs
and the graded music program and all. That was all Lucy; all he did was show up and conduct.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow, yeah, that’s amazing, that’s amazing.

DARLENE HATCHER. There was a lot of thwarted energy there, I think, because she
was an incredibly intelligent, sophisticated, competent woman who because of the generational
thing for one thing, which is who they both were, subsumed any personal ambition she ever had
really. She did a few arrangements that survived, one of which was done at his memorial service
actually, and then the children’s choir program, and the hand bells that she built up at the church.
And furthering his career, doing what she could to further his career and support him. But she
subsumed, is that the right word? She subverted any career desire she might have had. I don’t
know if she ever said to me, “Gee, I wish I could have been,” or, “I wish my life had been
different.” She never stated that but…
I’m more of a modern woman. Can’t help asking yourself why somebody that capable
was content just being in a shadow like that. She was an incredible seamstress; she could make all
277
her own clothes. Good musician too, really; not a very good conductor though. Bless her heart.
When he’d go away and she’d have to conduct, I always felt so sorry for her.
It probably goes without saying that all this god image and all that kind of stuff would
have been completely ridiculous and useless and all that without the excellence behind, without
the product. This was not who he was. It was the image that he projected, but who he was, was
the excellence he brought [unintelligible]. He was awfully good projecting that image too. When
he stood up in front of a thousand voices or gave speeches in concerts to dignitaries from other
countries, his command of the language, his intelligence, his aptness, the things he would say, he
was very good at filling up that image. Very much larger than life and able to do that – which is
why I guess it would always come as a surprise that his human side would show because he was
so good at seeming to be god.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right. Did he ever talk about the product versus the process? Do
you think he loved one more than the other?

DARLENE HATCHER. I think he loved the process. The product generated the process,
I mean, here he was with his perfected ideal in his head that was the genesis of the process: here’s
what we want to get, here’s where you are, here’s how, not how we got here, so in a way they’re
inseparable but I know that he loved the process. I know that he loved watching this take shape,
take the form that he had in his mind the whole time. That was very evident. When I say I don’t
ever remember being bored in a rehearsal, he was never bored either. A lot of conductors show
up, phone it in, put in their time, half of them wishing they’re someplace else and it’s obvious to
everybody that he loved it. He lived and breathed it. I’m trying to remember if he had perfect
pitch. I don’t think he did – very, very good ear, so how it drove me crazy over in Europe – the
pianos were 444.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, I’m sorry for you.

DARLENE HATCHER. This was particularly a problem when he had to give pitches out
of the blue. Let’s say I just played something on a 444 piano, now here you come back. Do you
give the pitch for a contemporary piece that they’ve learned that they’ve got most muscle
memory in their voices for 440? Do you give it at 444? Do you fudge? Invariably when I would
give it at 444 like the piano just was, it would slide back to where they had learned by the end of
the piece, because especially the contemporary things. The only reason I asked was I was
thinking to myself what a really good musician he was. I don’t think he had perfect pitch. He sure
had an ear, boy.

SHAWNA STEWART. As we sort of wrap up, I’d love to hear maybe your favorite
stories, if you haven’t already told them, and if you have five of them, I’ll take five of them.

DARLENE HATCHER. Well, the only things I would have that would be unique
memories are just the personal ones that probably wouldn’t be of interest to people. People want
to know what you’re trying to get at which is what made him the great conductor that he was,
what made his music so good. I’m very happy that nobody else is able to come up with a specific
list either.
Those are the kinds of things people want to know, and I don’t frankly know how to
quantify those things, how to separate one part of his art from another. Even to talk about the ten
278
basic principles is to sort of demean his approach, to me. To make any list about him or to try to
come up with specific reasons for why he was and what he was, I think it’s impossible for one
thing and goes against what his art was all about really. His art was totally organic, I think. It
sprang from some genius conception.
Come to think of it, I think he assiduously avoided – in fact, he even may have voiced
this at one time or another, talking about specific techniques in rehearsals. That’s why he relied
on the imagery; that’s why he went at it in any other way. I think he resisted deconstructing it or
making a pedantic thing out of it. I think he wanted it always to be sort of mysterious, and
organic, and alive, and not subject to rules or he may think again. How do you quantify this? How
do you describe it?
That recollection of thoughts that he trotted out, those vocalises that we had never seen
before. I had forgotten that, but I do remember, Bob will be a group member but it was in one of
the venues where they asked – oh, I’ll tell you one neat story about the tour. We took with us
about, oh I don’t know, half a dozen encores or something like that and it was in Belgium I think
at a music college; I’m pretty sure. Tiers and tiers of students were in a big audience, and by the
end of the concert, they were on their feet waving their white handkerchiefs and we went through
literally every encore that we had. We did encore after encore and they wouldn’t sit down and
they wouldn’t stop waving and so we went back stage. What are we going to do now? “Okay we
can go (singing) ‘Doo, doo, doo’ and somebody has said, ‘Yeah, we can snap’ and there’s a
break. Dar, why don’t you do one of those things?” We honest-to-God manufactured this thing.

SHAWNA STEWART. No way.

DARLENE HATCHER. I walked out there and he’s singing, “Who will be a witness for
my Lord?” We made this up. We were harmonizing it. They kept it in. We changed it and we
wrote it down kind of, but we kept it in and it was part of the – in fact, it might even be on the
recording.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh that was fab.

DARLENE HATCHER. That was a totally made-up arrangement.

SHAWNA STEWART. It has nothing to do with Charles Hirt?

DARLENE HATCHER. He was just kind of going, yeah, go ahead.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh my goodness. That’s amazing.

DARLENE HATCHER. There were lots of moments like that where you could tell that
the audience had really never heard anything like this before. If you’d be interested, you probably
don’t want to concentrate on ’64 that much. I’ve got two great big, old scrapbooks that I kept
from all the places that we sang and that have reviews in them and pictures and all of that. A lot
of the reviews said at the time that this choral sound was like nothing that was being done
certainly in academia in Europe, but even professionally that this rich warm choral sound is like
nothing the Europeans have heard. You could tell the effect it was having on these audiences. It
was pretty amazing.
Was Joel in the ’71 or ’73 group?
279

SHAWNA STEWART. ’73.

DARLENE HATCHER. Who else was in that group?

SHAWNA STEWART. I have no idea.

DARLENE HATCHER. That was the first time that I remember Charles was really being
excited about the group and about the prospect, and it was kind of well almost like ra ebirth for
him. Did he also do an ACDA in ’71?

SHAWNA STEWART. He may have, but I don’t have all my dates on that.

DARLENE HATCHER. It seemed like that was when it started, the early ’70s, that he
finally got into a whole bunch of new repertoire and got into some taped music as well and just
opened so many doors for himself. He evidently had the singers to bring it off. I’ve got lots of
silly pictures of him too on the trip.

SHAWNA STEWART. You do? Do you have them here?

DARLENE HATCHER. They haven’t been digitized yet. They’re still in slide form, but I
want to have that done just for me. Now that I know I can go to Costco and do it for sixty-five
cents apiece or something like that, I will send you some.

SHAWNA STEWART. I would love it because I’ll include pictures for sure --

DARLENE HATCHER. I got some pretty silly ones.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah, definitely.

DARLENE HATCHER. Of him and Douglas racing along one of the canals -- both of
these tall, tall guys with his giant long legs and their ties flapping, and their coats, flapping.
[Unintelligible]. There he is playing shepherd’s horn by the village that bears its name. He loved
playing roles. I’ll send you some pictures.

SHAWNA STEWART. I would love that. The funniest moment that stands out?

DARLENE HATCHER. Oh, Lord, he made me laugh so many times. He knew exactly
what button to push just to get me over the top. He felt more free to lose it at church I think
because people had just known him forever and ever and ever, and they’re with him every single
Thursday and every single Sunday. Their kids have been in their kids’ choir and then it was like
one big family. He didn’t have to worry about anybody firing him or losing tenure or anything
like that. So he was a little freer to let his sense of humor show at church. You lined up in the
shoots back there and then followed people into the pew, and somebody followed the wrong bald
head into the wrong row and a tenor wound up in the middle of the wrong row. Dr. Hirt looks up
in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer or whatever it was, and sees this guy standing in the total
280
wrong place and starts to lose it. His shoulders are going up and down, just hysterical. He
couldn’t get himself together for five minutes.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh my goodness. Well I’m really looking forward to seeing the
video. I’m assuming we’ll see a little of his conducting gesture?

DARLENE HATCHER. Not much. The video as I remember was just kids, us,
interacting with each other. I don’t think there was any live concert.

SHAWNA STEWART. Are you aware of any footage that exists?

DARLENE HATCHER. No, in fact, Bob has a memory of wanting to tape one of the
rehearsals for something and he remembers that Charles didn’t want his rehearsals taped all. He
and Bob destroyed it and sat there while he erased over the tape. He was very protective of his
process for some reason. I never understood that either. Surely someone must have done a video
within the…

SHAWNA STEWART. I know that Paul May did get some things. He got some footage I
think that might even exist.

DARLENE HATCHER. Well, that’s the basis of Doug’s video.

SHAWNA STEWART. But beyond that, I heard. I don’t know if that’s true.

DARLENE HATCHER. Paul actually got some shots of us singing?

SHAWNA STEWART. Well maybe it’s possible, but I’m not sure.

DARLENE HATCHER. I hope so because that one recording that survived. Bob tells the
story of the guy who made the original master going and destroying it because the version that
Charles came up with was so different that he didn’t want any part of it, so he destroyed the
original master. So the real record of how we sounded is gone.

SHAWNA STEWART. I’m sorry; that’s the recording you were talking about?

DARLENE HATCHER. That Charles went in and tweaked and added reverb and turned
up the bass and turned down the treble. That’s the sound of the ’64 group that survives, because
the real recording of our return concert was destroyed by the guy that made the recording,
because Charles tweaked it so badly that the guy didn’t want his name associated with the final
sound.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, my goodness.

DARLENE HATCHER. It’s true; the sound is dreadful. It’s too much reverb and too
base and too… When did he actually start at USC?

281
SHAWNA STEWART. He started, I think, officially in 1941 and 1942, but he was doing
some summer workshops there already in 1940, in terms of teaching, but you know that he was
also getting his degrees, so it was a long, long career.

DARLENE HATCHER. At the church too.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah, definitely; well thank you so much for your time.

DARLENE HATCHER. Oh, it’s been fun. Sorry, my head is so full of Jell-o to begin
with, but I’m very gratified that other people can come up with some specific things either
because he wasn’t about specific things. He really wasn’t. I think that was his uniqueness, or part
of it anyway. I’ll be very interested to see; maybe you’ll have to shift the focus.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, I can tell you there are three techniques and that was it. It’s
not about anything specific; Oh no, I’ve gotten so much material. It’s actually interesting. You
always mention the formation of the DMA degree, and he was the first person at USC to do it. So
I’ll talk a little bit about that and what was happening at USC, the development of the choral
music department. Then, we’ll talk a little bit about the Madrigal/Chamber Singers and just share
a lot of stories about how it’s living through them and --

DARLENE HATCHER. When did he shift away from the madrigal emphasis?

SHAWNA STEWART. That I don’t remember. I want to say it was like ’50; I think
that’s too early.

DARLENE HATCHER. Yeah, because we were still doing it in ’64.

SHAWNA STEWART. You were still Madrigals?

DARLENE HATCHER. Yeah, well we were called the Chamber Singers, but we were
sitting behind it, the decorated table.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh no, he actually switched from Madrigal. I’m sorry, I thought
you meant the shift in the name. I don’t know, did he?

DARLENE HATCHER. Well, I don’t think the ’73 group at ACDA sat behind this table.

SHAWNA STEWART. Thank you; it’s a good question.

DARLENE HATCHER. He must have evolved out. I wonder if that was concomitant
with his kind of shedding the memories of the ’64 group. I wonder if the shift away from being
the madrigal group into a chamber choir – or whatever he called the ’71 and the ’73 groups – I
wonder if that was part of the reason he was able to shift out to change the concept, because what
can you do sitting behind the table, smiling and passing fruit around?

SHAWNA STEWART. You were really passing fruit?

282
DARLENE HATCHER. We weren’t supposed to be, of course, but it worked.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh that’s so great. Were you all involved with the audience at
all?

DARLENE HATCHER. Sure.

SHAWNA STEWART. How?

DARLENE HATCHER. Depends on what number you were doing, of course, but very
often you’d look out and you’d relate to each other; you’d look to the audience, and in the
spirituals and things like that and you were (singing) “In dat great gettin’ up mornin’.” A lot of
audience involvement – and again I can’t say if he ever set out to do that; you just did it.

SHAWNA STEWART. Right. That’s amazing. It is a total mystery with little pieces here
and there. I mean, he has such a profound influence on so many people, we think of how he has
just influenced the concepts --

DARLENE HATCHER. I’m sure there are people who don’t remember him fondly at all.
I’m sure there are people who have real animosity toward him for one reason or another, but he
inspired conversely such intense adoration, such loyalty, and when you sing for somebody, you
sort of surrender your soul to them; that’s a given. So there’s got to be a lot of that in any good
choral organization. There’s a connection there that’s missing, I think, maybe in instrumental
music, I don’t know because it’s part of the vocal. That’s yourself you’re giving away when you
sing for somebody. So that’s got to be true in a lot of cases, but look at the people, look at Del,
look at the people who still adore him. I don’t know if that’s how usual that is.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. Can I ask you in what nonmusical way he influenced you?
I’d love to know that; I’m sorry.

DARLENE HATCHER. I don’t know that he did. I wouldn’t call him a personal hero
outside of music. That wasn’t what our relationship was about, really.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yet, it’s such a deep connection for you. That’s so interesting to
me, it is. I was a psychology minor. It’s really interesting to me. Gosh, I think of my own
students. At least at Biola, when teachers win teacher of the year, the first thing the students say
is, “He was such a mentor to me. It meant so much to me that he invited me to his house for
dinner.” It’s like, “I get it,” but that doesn’t sound like that was Dr. Hirt. That might have been for
a few people, but it wasn’t that real personal mentorship or leadership in their lives. It was a
musical leadership that reached to the depths still.

DARLENE HATCHER. I think that wasn’t part of his image of himself as mentoring. I
mean, indirectly of course you do, you learn from the man just by singing with him. Evidently
that’s the only way you’ve learned from me, because you don’t hear the people who didn’t sing
and Chamber Singers talk about him that way. The people who only were his church music
students for instance and never really sang with him. You don’t talk about him in that way.

283
SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah, don’t talk about him in the affectionate --

DARLENE HATCHER. Reverential, a very special relationship, “one of the greatest
choral conductors in” blah, blah. I think you only learn that if you sing for him, which is strange
in itself, because I think Howard Swan was able to inspire people who didn’t sing for him as well.
Whatever Charles had, it was so intimately bound up with the music that it’s just very hard to
separate anything out from that. It’s really incredible music-making.

SHAWNA STEWART. How was the music-making different from anything you’ve
heard. People use the word “perfect.” What was perfect?

DARLENE HATCHER. If you analyze it in terms of the choral fundamentals (the
diction, the balance) – all that was there, but what makes him really great goes beyond that and
that’s again practically impossible to quantify. What makes Joshua Bell’s playing better than
somebody else’s? For me, it’s very spiritual – that extra whatever it is – but he would never have
put it in those terms. He may have believed it but he wouldn’t have talked about it that way. I
think it was the ability for one thing to always be in the music. It was never the same twice,
really. There would be something different about it every time, and he was never not in the music
at the moment and you couldn’t not be in a moment. You had to be there too. It was a recreative
process every single time.

SHAWNA STEWART. I just can’t even imagine his mind.

DARLENE HATCHER. There was something different about every one of them. A
slight shift, a pause, and by that time we were reading him so well that any subtle gesture, we
could modify on the spirit in a moment. It was a new creation every concert.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. That’s amazing.

DARLENE HATCHER. It was kind of like we were his instrument that he would play at
the recital, and we were what he used. We were the clay that he molded every single time. It was
never formulaic, and some people would say that he took too many liberties; maybe he did, I
don’t know, but he sure wasn’t boring. He was never boring. If I think of any more stories… and
I will get those pictures done. This is a good impetus to get on it and do it. I was so Chamber-
Singered-out after the reunion and we moved two days later. I didn’t want to think about it for a
while, and of course I have plenty to do here, but I think we’ve got this well enough organized,
now that I can take a step back and revisit some Chamber Singers stuff. I’ll see if I can pull out
some good slides for you.

SHAWNA STEWART. That would be great. What were the dates of the reunion?

DARLENE HATCHER. July 14 and July 15.

SHAWNA STEWART. 2012?

DARLENE HATCHER. We moved it on the 17, 2012.

284
SHAWNA STEWART. All right. It’s great. Well, thank you.

DARLENE HATCHER. You’ve surely seen that State Department brochure.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah, but you know what? I’m going to just take some photos of
the choir.

DARLENE HATCHER. Okay, sure.

SHAWNA STEWART. I’m going to go and turn this off, if it’s okay.

285
APPENDIX N: INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS LAWRENCE

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE
October 20, 2012
1:00 p.m.
Telephone Interview

SHAWNA STEWART. Thank you for your time and I watched the video; very beautiful.
I have a series of ten questions that I have prepared as a starting point. Feel free to share any
stories you want that you think the world needs to know about Dr. Hirt and go in any direction
that you want to. I’m not looking for anything specific. Please don’t feel constrained by anything.

Please state your name. How did you know Dr. Hirt and for how long?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. This is Doug Lawrence. I knew Dr. Hirt from 1958 until his
death. I originally saw him at the MENC convention where he was a conductor in 1958, but he
got ill during that time and had some emergency surgery. He had ulcers and a bowel obstruction,
and there were other things going on. At the time it was a very dangerous procedure and I think
he lost two-thirds of his colon from that surgery. So I didn’t have much contact with him at that
event. But the next time I met him was in 1960 when I auditioned for the USC Chamber Singers.
I was bold to do that because in history with the Chamber Singers, the first freshman that got in
there was Marilyn Horne. So it was a scary thing to audition, but I passed the audition, which was
a miracle in itself. I made it into the Chamber Singers and that sort of changed my direction,
because I was a Music Education major under Ralph Rush at USC and I had gotten into USC
because of the Idyllwild Arts Foundation where I went in 1959 to be part of that wonderful
encampment where we did incredible things and the faculty from USC that taught at that camp
were quick to say that, “You should be at USC,” but I don’t think I had enough to typically get
into USC. But they were very encouraging and got me in there. I’m grateful for that because I
eventually lived up to their trust.
It was sort of a miracle that that happened. No one in my family had graduated from
college. I came from a little town, El Segundo, California, out by LAX, and there was
nothing in my background that had an emphasis on academia at all. Nobody in the
family talked about college, but it was certainly talked about when I was in high
school. But it was the annual arts foundation which was at the time being run by USC
that really sparked my interest in music. So I came into USC under Ralph Rush, who
was the head of the Music Education Department, and Dr. Rush invited me to be a
MUED major with an instrumental emphasis because I played trombone. I was
studying right off the bat with Robert Marsteller who was the principal trombonist
with the LA Philharmonic and a wonderful teacher. He was a real straight-talking
guy. So in my little eighteen-year-old heart (I had just turned eighteen), I was thrilled
and sometimes scandalized by things he said. But it was wonderful and I treasure that
experience of being with him.
Then I made it into the Chamber Singers and that sort of changed everything up. I
continued to study trombone with Bob for a year, but I also had to start studying voice because it
was a requirement for being in that select ensemble, that you had to have voice lessons. So I
286
needed to change my emphasis from instrumental to voice because I wouldn’t be able to
participate in instrumental ensembles. So I started studying with William Vennard, and that was a
real big deal because he was also Marilyn Horne’s teacher. So the ties with Dr. Hirt were strong
from the beginning. So I was a student with him through my college years at USC. I finished my
bachelor’s in ’66 and master’s in ’73.
In 1964, Charles and Lucy Hirt invited me to come to Hollywood Pres and be the
baritone soloist, which was a big deal because Harve Presnell was the baritone that preceded me
and had a big reputation because of The Unsinkable Molly Brown. So he was a big deal and a
hotshot in Hollywood, and I think name value made a difference to the people at Hollywood
Presbyterian. I think Charles was somewhat fascinated with that as well. So they put me on a
temporary basis at Hollywood Pres, and I was working on pink checks for I don’t know how
many years; it was maybe three or four years before my checks turned green and then I knew I
had the job. Very strange really – it was probably only two years; I can’t remember now. My
connection with him was wonderful there because I got to see him up close and personal every
week, and we forged a very close relationship, which we essentially already had because of the
State Department tour.
It kind of went from being that wonderful “State Department tour afterglow” to a
personal friendship, and Darlene [Lawrence] Hatcher (my then wife) and I were close friends of
the Hirts and frequently had dinner with them and stayed up all hours talking, laughing and
having a good time. So my relationship with him lasted over a long stretch of time and even after
I graduated, and after he was no longer at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, we still continued to
have a relationship. It got less and less as he got more ill because he frankly didn’t want to see
people. He saw some; he saw Del Shilling a lot. I would call and ask if I could come visit and
Lucy would say, “Oh, Doug, today is not a good day,” and that probably happened twenty or
thirty times. I sort of got the message that he just… Charles Hirt was a very proud man and he
held himself well. He was a little bigger than life, but it was difficult for him when he wasn’t at
his physical best.
So that’s sort of the short, long history of our acquaintanceship, our friendship.

SHAWNA STEWART. How would you describe the friendship that you had with him?
Was it a mutual friendship?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Yeah, I mean no. We were at a swimming pool behind the
house one night and the sun was sort of going down and we’d had a glass of wine and we were
laughing and splashing in the pool and I think he was hugging a plastic dinosaur – maybe it was a
rubber duck, I don’t know, and he said, “Doug, you should really call me Charles,” and I said,
“I’m not absolutely sure I could do that,” and he said, “Well, you’re going to have to if you want
to continue being my friend.” And I said, “Okay!” “The relationship has to change because I need
it and I think it’s appropriate; you’re a colleague now.” I am like everyone else who was ever
asked to call him Charles; it was very difficult. We’re actually not even sure if Lucy called him
Charles. We were pretty sure when she woke him up in the morning she said, “Dr. Hirt, time to
get up!”
But I found him very warm. He was a great storyteller and so we, as I said, would sit
around well into the evening having had three glasses of superb French wine and then followed
by liqueur, let’s see, Drambuie I think. I think we had a glass of Courvoisier, but it would go
long and Lucy would serve up these incredible French meals that she had slaved over all day and
they were beautiful. They were exquisite. And you know there’s something about food and eating
287
together with a little wine mixed in that really bonded us in a friendship that I thought was very
open. There was very little we didn’t talk about, and I think that as I talk with friends and
acquaintances of Charles Hirt’s, that was a fairly rare relationship.

SHAWNA STEWART. I’ve interviewed Joel Pressman. Do you know Joel?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Very well

SHAWNA STEWART. I know they had a close relationship as well. Why do you think
Dr. Hirt chose you? What was it about you that he connected with?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Well, I think he was very committed to me in personal ways
because I came in as a freshman so I was with him a long time. And I think our State Department
tour absolutely bonded all of us that went in a way that was impossible any other way. Because if
you’re living with someone 24/7, and we were, you see and hear and feel a lot of dirty laundry
and occasionally smell it. It’s just a very close situation. You’re on buses, you’re on airplanes,
you’re in little hotels, you’re on stage together and it’s a bond that you can only have with that
kind of sort of tenacious togetherness. I don’t know how else to describe it. It was incessant. So I
think that’s why.
He was also committed to Darlene. I mean he valued her. Darlene is by far the superior
musician to me, and he admired her from the time she came to USC, which was three years prior
to my coming there. She was a brilliant pianist, IS a brilliant pianist and absolute pitch,
phenomenal singer. So he loved her to death and heaven knows she loved him. I think that
probably the biggest crush she ever had on any man in her life was Charles. I always knew that.
But really, I think the fact that we got married, and we got married very young – I was twenty and
when our son was born I was twenty-one – I think Darlene at the time was twenty-two or twenty-
three, and so because he loved her so much and of course he was bonded to me, I think that made
for a very trusting relationship. I think trust is the keyword. He respected the gifts; he always was
very good about respecting the gifts and talents of people, but he also respected this sort of
mutual “thing” that comes from people who share the same physical tastes. Of course, he formed
and shaped many of mine as he did with Darlene. So we were people he could trust because we
were products, in part, of his genius.

SHAWNA STEWART. As you sat around the pool or wherever and had these
conversations, what were some of your favorite topics of conversation?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. He loved to talk about food and France because they were
such Francophiles. Everything in their house was reminiscent of one or another of their famous
trips to France every year. He loved to speak French – they both did. They studied French (I think
Glendale College is where they took a lot of their French classes), so they were always practicing
in front of us. Everything that we said, practically, he would turn it and translate it into French.
“Oh you mean…” and he would spew out some French but it just tripped over his tongue
beautifully because he was such a good mimic. He looked and sounded like a Frenchman when
he spoke French. So that was always fun. It was delightful to hear his stories, their stories, of their
trips to France where they would buy these little folding chairs and folding table and put it in the
back of their rented Citroën and they would take it out on the countryside with their baguette and
their cheese and bottle of wine and they would sit in some meadow somewhere. And you could
288
only imagine the thousands of stories of little adventures on country roads in Provence, or
wherever they went, and he delighted in us delighting in these stories.
And he was the star. I mean there was a sense in which we sat at the feet of the star and
he was the star. And I completely get that having had some celebrity of my own and having
people admire you, you know; you think you’ve got to fill the air with your talk and he was quite
good at doing that. But Lucy in those social situations was extremely good at doing combat with
him on the stories. If he didn’t get it quite right she would say, “Charles, that is not what
happened,” and she would give her version of the story and he would say, “I’m sorry, dear, that’s
not exactly the way it happened” and he would give his version over again. So really, and I think
Darlene would say too, that our experiences with them were blissfully about that.
But they were very kind, very generous, to always care about our son, Steven, who had
been born when I was practically a Charles – we were raised together by Darlene. They would
talk about Steven and how he was doing and talk about aspects of our lives, our musical lives. I
started teaching at El Camino College, taking over for Jane Hardester who went on sabbatical
leave in order to teach at Long Beach State for Frank Pooler. She went to take his place and I
took her place, and then they decided to keep me on there. So I always had lots of stories. But
really, I think predominantly I had questions. “What do you do when…” “How do you handle
this?” So his mentoring role with me never stopped. The fact that he’d had a glass of wine while
he was mentoring me certainly made it a lot more fun, and we certainly laughed a lot more. It was
not the same as going into his office and having him mentor me, I assure you.

SHAWNA STEWART. I’d love to talk about his philosophy and your perception on his
philosophy on music and teaching.

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Well, I think he was very spontaneous in his teaching
technique. I’m sure that at one point in his life he made lesson plans, and I think he was very well
organized. He certainly came into a rehearsal knowing what he was going to do. But his best stuff
came out of just spontaneous reaction to what he heard. He was a tremendous listener – choral
listener. He heard everything. The only person I ever knew that was even better at hearing every
little detail was Jane Hardester. Jane could – I mean she heard every detail of every sound that
came out of her ensemble. When she stopped she had thirty things to say. And I think that was
great but she didn’t have, unfortunately for Jane, she did not have his charm and finesse. So he
could do the same material and he was the king of the metaphor. He defined my style to this day.
I use metaphors all of the time to describe things that I want musically because I think that if
you’re just teaching technique and it gets into that cold, icy, bare-bones addressing of certain
vocal issues, for example, or artistic issues, it is a crushing bore and he had a way of talking about
music in such florid ways. In fact, people used to mimic him and mock him. He had colleagues
that I’m sure were lovingly mocking him, but they would say, “Oh, how are those purple tones?”
So it was like Rod Eichenberger’s hand position.
Charles was known for his florid language and being able to make things different just
because of the way he talked about them. I did a video series called “101 Things to Say to Your
Choir to Improve Their Sound 100%” way back in the early ’80s, and it was based frankly upon
everything I ever heard him say. He talked about things like “liquid image,” like a flowing stream
if he wanted to get a nice connected line so that people weren’t chopping it up or singing too
vertically. He used liquid images like a pebble in a pond if you wanted things to sort of blossom,
if you wanted a sound to blossom, and it worked. All he had to do was say, “It’s like a pebble in a
pond, the ripples go da-da-da; now start the sound and let it blossom like that.” Or something like
289
that. I’m making it up a little bit, but it was imagery like that that allowed everyone to go, “Oh,
okay.”
Everyone had the physical chops to do what they were doing and what they were
expected to do. I mean they read, they knew music well, they could sing in tune and they had
good voices. So he didn’t have to do a lot of teaching of those things. He could do a lot of
interpretation, and I think his teaching technique was to describe things in rather practical terms
but still using rather florid language, a language that people could get. I don’t think I ever took a
class from him. I was in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of rehearsals but never any classes,
but people who took a conducting class with him, they said to me – anyway, I don’t know if it
was true – they would say, “He’s not a very good teacher.” I would press the issue a little bit and
ask, “What do you mean?” “Well, he doesn’t come in with an outline of what he’s going to say.”
And I said, “You’re sitting at the feet of a master of choral music and especially the choral
miniature, and your job is to just sit there and bask in it because most of what you learn from him
you’ll learn by osmosis.” I think I was probably a bit more privileged than some because I got to
actually make music with him and have that teaching sort of happen to be by osmosis. I think
sitting in an actual class where you’re expecting to get outlines and quizzes and tests, it might
have been a disappointment in that setting. But as I said, I didn’t take a class from him so I don’t
know what that was like.

SHAWNA STEWART. So if he or someone were to write a book on his choral methods,
what would be in it?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. That’s a very good question, and I’m not sure I have an
answer. Well, because I have sort of ended up… I am such a product of Charles Hirt. I am not the
genius that Charles was; I’m just a product of the way he thought. I would from my own
perspective, that you would… There are people in music, clarinetists, usually, particularly, who
are warm-up artists. You listen to them backstage and you say, “Holy cow! I have to audition
with that guy? He’s incredible!” Because he’s back there going up and down scales and is just
incredible. He’s a warm-up artist. But he goes onstage and he’s okay; he didn’t play great. I think
in that scenario Charles is a guy who would say, the vocalises are lovely and nice, and yes you
can accomplish a great deal with that. The rubber hits the road when you’re making music. And
the things that you learn about music and about how to make music and how to sing and how to
conduct, for that matter, come out of the music more than they come out of the technique that it
takes to do music.
Now that is right flying in the face of his very, very dear friend, Robert Shaw. I mean
Bob Shaw was the fussiest of conductors when he was working with an ensemble, and he would
hammer and pound and work at rhythms for hours before they would get into singing something
like the Verdi Requiem or the B minor Mass or the St. Matthew. And I worked with him many
times and as a soloist, and right next to him you can feel his sweat; his score feels his sweat
because it’s crumpled pages. But I mean he would control every detail of every musical
performance because he knew exactly what he wanted.
And by the way, he made incredible music, no question about it. He’s one of the great
masters of all time. But Charles would be, I think, the complete opposite. He would say, “Let’s
start this,” and then he would shape it. But he didn’t compose himself on it. He taught in the
things that he wanted to be there. But when you started to actually make the music, he let it
happen and then he would shape what was there. I think that’s the school of choral conducting
that exists still, but I think more people have been thrust into this sort of rhythmic accuracy, tonal
290
accuracy thing that is primarily a product of learning so much contemporary music which is
atonal and difficult. I mean you either get the technique or the details down perfectly or it doesn’t
come off, at least not how the composer wanted it.
You have to remember what Charles was dealing with; I think the most contemporary
thing I ever did with him was the Three Prisoners of Dallapiccola. That was the most
contemporary, atonal kind of piece I ever did with him. He was dealing with masterpieces,
madrigals, and motets and lovely Randall Thompson things and Cecil Effinger, and a lot of
people who were contemporary composers but were still writing very lyrically and romantically
in some ways. It accommodated his style very well because he could start something and make
these flowing gestures with his exceptionally long arms, and you just sort of followed his arms
around and made music to go with those shapes.
So if you were pressed to write a pedagogical book, to your question, I think it would
have been difficult for him. He didn’t like writing assignments, by the way. I think it would have
been difficult for him to write the book and I think that if I read the book, I wouldn’t recognize
Charles Hirt in it. He was a brilliant talker so it’s not that he couldn’t wax eloquent on the subject
of choral repertoire, choral conducting. I think he would have been able to write it quite well. But
the difference in his writing and the way he actually did it would be quite different.

SHAWNA STEWART. Of course as I write this paper and put all of this information to
paper, I would love to be able to comment on that. I mean the paper will probably be reflective of
what you all say which will be filled with lots of stories and images. I’d love to see your video,
“101 Things to Say to Your Choir to Improve Their Sound 100%.”

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Oh. Let me see. Contact Vern Sanders, publisher of Creator
Magazine online, and his email is svsthp@aol.com.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, here’s maybe a piece of fun information for you. When he
died, he had what appears to be a complete outline of his choral methods book that he was
writing. But it’s not complete. But there is so much information and I’ve not had time to pore
through it. Would you like me to send you what I have?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. I’d love it. And I’ll test my theory that I wouldn’t recognize
it. No, I’m sure I would recognize it. But I did read an article by him some time back and I
thought, he had to be the academician and you have to talk different when you’re the
academician. I get that. But I thought, “Goodness, that very thoughtful detailed way of speaking
just doesn’t even begin to match his personality.”

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. Well, really interesting, because all I’ve been able to do is
read his writings that were in the Choral Journal so that’s a really interesting comment. And by
the way, I wasn’t setting up because I haven’t read what’s in the book yet. I just have all of the
information, took photocopies in the ACDA library, so I don’t have any idea if there are actual
techniques in there.

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. I’m sure there are because he wasn’t just a genius in the way
he made music; he was just a genius period. And I’m sure he was exceptionally articulate about
the craft. I’m sure he was. I have no doubt about that; it’s just that we never talked about it
because we were too busy making music.
291

SHAWNA STEWART. Right, which is so interesting. That’s what everybody has said,
and this wonderful use of imagery and that’s how he got it. Really interesting.
Well, going back to his philosophy and thinking, and what motivated him, are you aware
of any defining moments in his younger life that motivated him to be the teacher and man that he
was?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. I don’t have them off the top of my head… Who was the LA
conductor who… Roger Wagner? No. Howard Swan? No. Further back into the ’20s. Father Finn
– yes and there was someone else too… Those were huge... His love of choral music – and
Howard was a huge influence on him, make no mistake – but they were huge influences on his
understanding of two things: the sheer beauty of the choral art and how it is separate from
everything else because it emanates from the human spirit, soul and body. And I also think the
other thing that came out of it (and other people taught about it but he was actually able to pull it
off) was the huge, vast array of potential color in choral music. I mean he was never satisfied with
creating “a” sound for a piece of choral music, because every piece of choral music, no matter
when it was written, has a variety of colors in it. I mean he would never use this, but I would
liken it to Der Erlkönig. You know you can’t do Der Erlkönig unless you’re able to make all four
of the voices. You have to be the child, you have to be the father, you have to be the Erlkönig and
you have to be a narrator occasionally in that piece. And it goes like a bat out of heaven; I mean,
it’s an incredibly difficult piece. But those voices have to be very, very clear or there’s no story.
There’s nothing to that piece if there’s no drama and story. Well, I think he felt that way about
every little octavo that he came across. Every page had more than one color. You had to underline
things in a way that really told stories well. I think he was a million miles away from the old
elocution style of choral singing where you double-consonanted everything because he wanted
people to understand the text so he would go for flow of text. You know that old school of
double-consonanting everything really comes out of cathedrals where the sounds would bounce
around so you really had to overdo diction to make it understandable at all. But most of us never
work in that kind of environment – sometimes, but rarely. So he was very practical about how
that sound came out. I just got away from your question.
But I think that he was influenced by those people for their love of choral music, and that
love just permeated every cell in his body. But I also think he probably looked at it and judged it
a little bit. My guess is, just based on my understanding of other conductors and maybe even
Howard Swan, I think he took that further. Howard used to talk about it all the time, about how
you can’t do Brahms like you do Bach, and you can’t do Bach how you do Hassler and, you
know… and I think every choral conductor needs to talk about that. But Charles was a guy who
really gave distinctive sounds. Now some would think that his Bach and other early composers
was too romantic, but you know, to this day there are people like Helmuth Rilling who is
incredibly precise, but his readings are incredibly romantic because they are so on fire, so
theatrical and I will compare favorably Helmuth and Charles in that way because they really
brought every performance alive. Helmuth still, but they brought every performance alive. It was
a theatrical experience. So I think that even though he comes out of that very theatrical, sort of
melodramatic period of choral music, I think he took it somewhere else. I mean that was in the
inception but I think it grew out of those things and grew quite different.

292
SHAWNA STEWART. He says that Williamson, Shaw, Father Finn, the Chris Johnsons
and his own students contributed to his composite view of his choral viewpoint, and I was just
wondering if you were aware of anything specific that came from any of those gentlemen?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Well, I think that he took from that St Olaf sound which was
unique and belonged to one era and one person, and I think he took from that the very tight nature
of ensemble, you know that sort of St Olaf leaning against each other as you’re singing and the
arms never stop touching, and I think that, probably in some ways, inspired his sense of how an
ensemble sings, that sort of swaying, lyrical, seaweed in the ocean feel. Everything moves
together. I think he got that from Chris Johnsons, quite frankly, I don’t think he used the sound so
much. I don’t know about the Father Finn – I don’t know about those years. I think his sense of
choral pride comes from the Howard Swan Glee Club days.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh, interesting. Can you tell me more about that? I’m unfamiliar
with it.

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Howard Swan, at Occidental College, had glee clubs – men
glee clubs and women glee clubs – and they would often combine. But the glee club tradition had
been sort of rich in places like Yale and Harvard, and Howard took it to Occidental and made it
into an art form because his glee clubs were phenomenal. And I think the whole graded choir
program idea in church that Charles and Lucy did, I think the whole idea in pride in their choral
ensemble they used as a vehicle as recruitment and for enhancement of the name of the university
really came from what Howard had. Howard’s glee clubs were known countrywide; I mean
everyone knew about the Howard Swan Glee Clubs. And I think Charles took his pride, interest
and love of that into USC. I think that one of the reasons why the Chamber Singers had their birth
was because he wanted an ensemble that could show off like that.
Who were the other conductors that you named?

SHAWNA STEWART. Robert Shaw and the Christiansens; you already talked about
Olaf. John Finley Williamson.

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Yes, and there was a big influence but I don’t know why. It
would have to come from someone else. He never talked about. He did talk about Robert Shaw
and with a great deal of respect. I was going to say with a grudging respect, but that would be
inaccurate. I think he really, really respected Robert Shaw. I think he thought they were really
two different animals, and I think that the thing he respected about Shaw was that he was able to
capitalize on his love of choral music and make it so available to the record-buying world and it
was of such high quality. I think when Charles went for big sounds, I think the sound in his head
was sort of a Robert Shaw sound. Well, you heard in the video, the men sang [sings in German];
that’s eight guys. It’s just this full-throated, lovely, lush sound, and I do believe, because he
would occasionally say something about, “I need that big Robert Shaw sound” because Rob Shaw
really did make a huge choral sound. Huge and mellifluous; it was rich, like cream. So I do think
those people influenced. I think even Roger Wagner had some influence with Charles because
Roger was such a master of chant; you know he could do plainchants as well as anyone in the
world, and when he would line up those little beautiful, lacey chant lines, there was nothing like
it. And I think Charles knew his work well; they were certainly friends, and I think that made a
difference in his life.
293
But I also think there is a missing piece, maybe you’re not missing it from other people,
but Charles did like the fact that he had done some stuff in Hollywood and he had conducted a
couple of choruses in movies and things and he knew movie stars. He knew Dennis Morgan who
was a famous movie star who sang tenor in these sort of hokey, corny musicals in Hollywood, but
Dennis Morgan was a huge star. They were very close friends. And he knew the new Ralph Blain
who wrote “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis,” and he wrote a lot of pieces, and the Hirts and the
Blains were close friends. He liked his Hollywood ties and as an influence issue I think a lot of
his theatrical sense – the way the audiences reacted to his performances, the way he came on
stage, the way he programmed, it was extremely cinematic – and even to this day I think of all
music as being cinematic. To me, music has to be full of images that are going on in my head and
that absolutely comes from Charles. He saw performance – I don’t think he talked about this but
it was very clear – he saw movies and he made those movies happen and that’s why audiences
just loved everything. The timing – there were no unnecessary pauses. There were no pauses
while he turned his music over. There was no pause while he thought about what to say. Those
programs just went seamlessly from beginning to end and like a good movie, you couldn’t stop
watching it.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow. Can you talk a bit more about his program – what was his
philosophy of programming?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. I think he generally was a chronological programmer in
concerts. He believe that the open structure of early music should be done early because you
shouldn’t build a sonority early in the concert that you then walk away from. It’s like having the
richness of cheesecake and going back to a salad. It just didn’t – it was too sparse, the salad was
too…[trying to think of a Charles term] lettucey. It didn’t have the same structure and consistency
of the more romantic things that came later. So you don’t start with cheesecake; you save
cheesecake for the end after a good meat course with a very nice French sauce, incidentally, in
the middle and you do an appetizer that whets your appetite for what is to come. So his
chronological programming was absolutely in that vein. Lovely, lovely things in the beginning.
When they were singing that early music, you think, “Well, this is what choral music is. It’s
lovely, gorgeous, and phenomenal. How beautiful this is.” But then as it kept going on into other
periods where the writing becomes more complex, the sonorities are more complex, then you
think, “THIS is what choral music is like.” And then when you’re totally, completely sated on
good choral music, he’d throw in a spiritual in a concert or an encore that was fun, and people
would get a rest from the meal. It was like having a little cup of sherbet after you ate an over-self-
indulgent meal. He programmed it like a foodie and it was cinematic.

SHAWNA STEWART. Are you aware of any other footage besides what’s in your video
that would exist of him either in daily life or conducting?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. I wish I had that. You know I had probably 100 pictures of
Charles and Chamber Singers and I wish I had my iPhone back – it would be a lot easier. I mean I
had a lot of pictures, but they’re just gone. When Darlene and I divorced, some stuff got lost in
that process. I don’t know if she had some images of Charles that I didn’t have, but I asked the
Chamber Singers of anything they might have and they sent me next to nothing. I don’t know if
any footage. I mentioned to you that he had done several things at a television station in Los
Angeles, the public television station. But I’m sure those things are long gone because nobody
294
saves anything like that. I wish some documentarian would have decided to film him because it
would have been special. I would like for you to just have seen his elbows. [laugh] His elbows,
well, actually you could see me conduct somewhere, but I don’t do it and I try to avoid using my
elbows like he did. He used them in syncopation a lot and he’d use them if there was a dead beat
– like at the beginning of a phrase if there was an eighth note rest. So he’d do and his elbow
always was the eighth note. It was spectacular. It was mocked and mimicked by everyone who
ever watched him work.

SHAWNA STEWART. Is his style like any of his influences?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Well, I certainly never saw it in Shaw, never saw it in
Howard Swan. Howard had his own absolutely unique, sort of center-of-the-body, sort of Hanan
Yaqub – do you know Hanan? It’s sort of how Hanan works in the center of her body all the
time. And Howard worked a lot in the middle of his body. But Charles wasn’t afraid to look like a
scarecrow. In fact, if he got really enthused about something, he’d look like the Headless
Horseman. It’s like compared to another conductor’s conducting – Leonard Bernstein when he
conducted. He conducted for the orchestra certainly, but he also conducted for the audience. He
wanted the audience to get either a preview that something was about to happen or he wanted
them to just fully enjoy what was happening and he was very balletic in his conducting. I’m sure
you’ve seen hundreds of tapes of him, but he was just all over the place. Kenneth Schermerhorn,
now gone, formerly Milwaukee Symphony, was like that too – extremely balletic. And there have
been other conductors. Helmuth Rilling was not one of them.
But Charles had a big, big style so it was his. It belonged to him.

SHAWNA STEWART. I’m going to go way back for a second. I’ve got a couple
of bland questions, I guess. What degrees did you complete? I know BA and MM, but
what were they in?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. My bachelor’s was in music education and then my
MM was in music performance.

SHAWNA STEWART. Going back to your audition, what was your audition like
with him?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. I was trying to remember what that audition was like
and I honestly thought someone like Robert Hasty would remember every detail of the
audition. But I don’t really remember. I know we had to do some sight-reading, but as I
recall, sight-reading was not the primary goal of determining whether you were worthy of
Chamber Singers. I think it had to do with how you sounded within a quartet. And I
remember not being in just one quartet, but two or three quartets. He would change you
around to see how you sounded when you had to balance and listen to other voices. And I
think as a critical skill for being in Chamber Singers, that was one of the highest of them.
Certainly you would have time to learn the music. If you were not the world’s fastest
reader, you could learn it, but being able to listen well and balance your voice with others
– that was something he really prized. So I think he heard something in those auditions. I
295
mean Bob Hasty was a freshman too when he got into Chamber Singers, and Bob had a
lovely voice and I’m sure he heard things like that in Bob. Bob could be a chameleon. I
could be a chameleon. I sort of had a natural voice that I suppose had some personality in
it, but I was a choral guy. I’d cut my teeth in high school by doing madrigals and things,
and I understood the game. You had to find yourself inside the sound somewhere. So I
think that was the primary value for Charles. And I don’t think it was whether you had a
glorious solo voice, although I think we had to sing a little solo piece – he wanted to hear
your solo voice, so I don’t remember what I sang. It was probably some competition
piece that I’d used in high school.
Incidentally my first high school vocal competition was judged by H. Royce
Saltzman. So my link with Helmuth goes way back. Do you know Royce? Because I’m
sure he has a wonderful, ancient point of view on Charles that none of us have. He knew
him a long time before I knew him. But Royce, as you know, is at the University of
Oregon and the head of the Music Department and the founder of the Oregon Bach
Festival, which is an incredible festival that has a marvelous reputation. Have you been
there? Is Helmuth going to do one more year? Yeah – working with Helmuth would be
the grand prize.
As a side bar, my wife, Margie, and I met at the Oregon Bach Festival. We have
deep affection for it. We’ve been married for 28 years and the Oregon Bach Festival
played a big part of that.

SHAWNA STEWART. My MM is from Eastman and Helmuth did come and work with
us for a solid week. Seven of us sat around a table for three hours and just talked about the
Magnificat. So if I don’t make it, at least I’ve had a bit of a taste, but I’d love to have two weeks.

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Oh, that’s a good taste. You had a good taste. I toured all over
the world with Helmuth and another one of those guys like Charles. My gosh, you’re in the
presence of this outrageously smart, musical person, but you’re having beer and pizza. It’s
wonderful.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, in retrospect I wish I had been thirty-two or forty-two and
not twenty-two. I didn’t even know what to ask. I was just too darn young.
Score prep. Are you aware of anything he did? I know you said he didn’t come in with a
lesson plan, but do you have any idea what he did to prepare a score?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. I don’t really have a memory of sitting with him while he
prepared a score. I’m trying to think of things he would do on a bus. Now Helmuth always
conducts everything from memory but he always has a miniature score when he’s traveling, so
when he’s on a train or a bus and he’ll have this miniature score and he’ll leaf through pages and
look at something and say, “Hmm… I’ll need to close it up.” He might make a note.
I do remember that Charles marked things in his score with pencil and I think they were
things… because I learned everything that I know about score prep from him, but again it was by
osmosis. He would mark things in a score that didn’t go well but he didn’t want to stop and fix.
He would come back to them. And that’s the only marking I ever saw him do. He did do score
analysis, because when he would introduce a new piece he would say, “Of course as you can see,
296
this is in D Major. We’re headed towards D-Flat minor…” and he would know the structure piece
and he would not fly blind. Me, on the other hand, have flown blind most of my life. But he knew
where it was going before he would ever introduce it to us. I don’t think he ever had us read
through something so he could read through it. So score preparation I’m sure at least consisted of
some analysis before he ever got something out. He also was one of those guys who knew
historically a tremendous amount about music. He knew the era. I would say that learning from
him in a choral rehearsal was as good as learning from a professor of music history. I’m sure a
music historian would say, “Are you kidding me?” But Charles at least had a good solid grasp of
performance practices, of the idiosyncrasies of a style, and could talk about them well. And sure
enough, when later in graduate school I took those music history classes I found myself knowing
a great deal on the basis of what Charles had taught in his choral rehearsals.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, I’d love for you to talk about the 1964 tour – whatever you
want to say.

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. It was a tremendous opportunity, we all understood. All of us
who went knew that we were going to experience something that we would never be able to
match in our lifetime and that is absolutely true. To have that concentrated time to perform in
front of audiences all over Europe and Israel was huge. It was a university degree all by itself. We
knew we were privileged to go. Darlene had just given birth to Steven four months before we
went, and we walked away from him and left him with Darlene’s mom for four months. That was
really, really tough. Tough for Darlene, tough for me. And I remember Lucy and Charles sitting
down and saying, “We understand all of the things that you’re thinking and feeling because we
have children of our own (although they were adopted); we completely get that but we need to
say (this was before we’d made our decision), that you will never have this opportunity again.
There won’t be anything like this especially since it’s paid for by the U.S. Government. This will
never happen again.” And they were, of course, right. So I think we just sucked it up and decided
we were going to go for the adventure. And I don’t think – I won’t speak for Darlene – we’ve
talked so many times even recently – I don’t think we have one regret about that. We came back
and picked up Steven and we raised him and he turned into a good kid, so… We didn’t get to see
some things we would have liked to have seen, but the tour itself was manageable; it was work,
hard work. We had these humongous steamer trunks that had our daytime costumes in them, our
evening costumes in them, had our scores in them and hundreds and hundreds of rolls of toilet
paper, because in Europe at that time, a nice, fine sandpaper would have worked just as well, so
part of it was a big deal. So we ran out of it too soon, but to haul those trunks around, to get them
on and off busses, to get them out of airports and back into airports and on trains, I mean, it was a
big deal. I was the business manager for the Chamber Singers, Robert Hasty was the president,
and we were sort of co-leads for the tour in terms of all of the logistics of concerts and personnel.
We had an escort from the State Department Fred Lyon who had been the Consul General in
Paris, but Fred was well into his old age, so he did some very good diplomatic things for us; he
made some things happen that we couldn’t have made happen because he had contacts around the
world, so that was wonderful. And Charles and Lucy certainly felt the pressure of running
everything. Charles felt very, very possessive of his kids. I mean we were half grad, half under-
grad so our ages ranged from twenty to forty-five. But he felt protective and he made himself
clear that he wanted behavior to be reflective of the university and the quality and excellence of
making music. But surprisingly he didn’t have to do much policing, if any, because we were a
good bunch of folks trying to do well. Bob and Barbara Hasty were young and married so we
297
were sort of the brother/sister act for the younger members of the group, and we were more
responsible in some ways because we were married. So it was a very tame tour in regards to
discipline or acting out. But, nevertheless it was arduous to be packing and unpacking constantly,
to be setting up on strange stages, constantly, to be singing even when you didn’t feel well, and
putting up with idiosyncrasies of members, like if they didn’t do their laundry in a timely manner.
Those are problems of living together.
But I would say there’s nobody in that group that wouldn’t say – and I know they
wouldn’t because we had that reunion and they all said the same thing – that everything was
superseded by the adrenalin rush you got by giving the concerts and getting the immediate
feedback on this great repertoire. And I don’t think we ever got bored with the repertoire because
Charles insisted on sort of recreating it every night. It could be exactly the same as it was the
night before but you never felt that way. You always felt like it was just happening. It was in the
ether, and every night we would take the lid off the ether and there would be this concert and it
would permeate the room. It wasn’t like a boxed set. I don’t think any of us felt like that ever.
That’s true of other conductors, but very rarely. When I did things with Bob Shaw, they were
pretty predictable. With Helmuth Rilling, for example, every evening I did thirteen B Minor
masses across the United States night after night; no two were the same. They were beautiful;
they were much the same. There are conductors like Charles who can infuse every evening with
something new, some little surprise, some little nuance that surprises the performers enough to
refresh it. I think we look back on the Chamber Singers tour as a perfect model of what it means
to never let your repertoire decay and slip away. It’s always fresh. And I think that’s – I mean
besides the camaraderie and the fun we had and the joviality and the crashed bus on the first day
off the plane, which is how could you start a tour better than to crash the bus at Gatwick Airport.
It doesn’t get better than that. But besides that, I think the takeaway for everybody was that –
wow, you could sing the same music every night but every night is like new.
And we had critics in Vienna, which is, of course, one of the most jaded music cities in
the world; we had critics there talk about how incredible it was, and I think they thought that
because it was like the performers that night felt like we’d performed it for the first time we’d
ever stepped on a stage with that repertoire. And it was like that every night, given that there were
some horrible venues and there were some divine venues. But every night had the same integrity
in the performance and nobody bellyached about where we were, what we were doing – Charles
never bellyached about it. You know he could be temperamental about something that distracted
him. He thought he’d lost the traveler’s checks one night. They were gone and he made a little
scene because he thought he’d lost them – he hadn’t, but he thought he had. So it’s not like we
had short tempers – we all had our moments, but as you look back on it you think it’s kind of a
God thing. I mean only God could make a tour so perfect.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow. It sounds like that. Do you recall learning something new
about him on that trip that you hadn’t known before?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Yeah. I think that there was a greater degree of intimacy. I
would say that there was even a certain amount of disillusionment because when you live with
somebody you see their wrinkles. But I’m a person who believes that one of the things that you
do in life is become disillusioned, and that is the best thing that can happen to you. You need to
get rid of illusions; you need to deal with what actually is because if you’re only dealing with
illusions you’re living in a fairy tale that doesn’t exist. And I think all of us going on that tour
were slightly disillusioned with the persona of Charles Hirt, but we learned to love the actual
298
person. The actual person actually laughed a lot, and made mistakes once in a while (not in
concert); he wasn’t always perfect, he wasn’t always turning, his chest wasn’t always up… You
know he was the sternum-high man of all time. He wasn’t like that every second of every day,
and I (and I think others would tell you) found that endearing. We knew a Charles Hirt that
nobody back home knew because we lived on it in that intimacy. So I think that was the biggest
learning thing for me – that great artists can appear to be great artists, can have the persona of a
great artist, but every artist is real. Every artist has down times, every artist struggles with
something. And what it did for me personally and professionally is that I never went into
rehearsals with famous conductors, and I worked with everybody – we’re celebrating Solti’s 100
th

birthday this week – that I never went into a rehearsal thinking that I needed to be nervous
because this person was so famous and they were so perfect and so wonderful. Solti had 31
Grammys – the most Grammys of anybody ever, 100s of recordings, but I don’t think I felt
nervous – I felt respect. So it was a life lesson for how you proceed with you artistic career so it
was really great. There was one guy who I was a little nervous about and that was Leonard
Bernstein because he was iconic – all of those conductors were iconic – but he more than others
because I had watched his music television shows when I was a kid. I worshiped television for a
lot of years and I felt that way about Bob Hope. I felt that way about Bing Crosby because they
were absolutely iconic. But in general there was this life lesson that happened on that tour and
that was you can go on stage and do something spectacular and still be a regular person. When
you go back to the green room and back to your hotel you can be satisfied and eat a Twinkie and
drink a Diet Coke. Your life doesn’t have to be glamorous. Darlene and I used to call it (and
Margie and I still call it) after a performance and you go back to your hotel we call it “Happy
Fizzies Parties” because that’s when we eat a bunch of junk food to come off your high.

SHAWNA STEWART. What’s your perception of how the Chamber Singers were
different than other groups in the States?
DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Well, it’s hard to say exactly, but I certainly think we were
elitist. (Laughter) I think we thought we were better than everybody else but that’s sort of an
immature, youthful preoccupation with where you happen to be located. I do think that they were
different in that his melding of graduate and undergraduate voices was sort of unusual. The fact
that you had old voices and older voices gave the sound a very mature sheen, you know; it had a
patina that you wouldn’t have if it was just all-college ensemble. And I think most of the other
well-known ensembles in the country at the time that were appearing at ACDA conventions and
so forth were primarily undergraduate ensembles, although some of them were mixed. But you
never had the refinement in larger ensembles. There were never that many Chamber Singers that
had that refinement. So he had essentially, without a paycheck, he had a professional choir. We
never turned out anything in that choir, at least during that tour year particularly, and that was
certainly true of most of the other years, we never turned out anything that was less than
professional sounding. You never came away saying, “Aren’t those voices just beautiful or so
lovely,” or, “For young people they really… ” I mean it was really just a professional product and
the expectation when we would go out and sing at a country club or some big fundraiser in
Beverly Hills was that it was going to be a professional ensemble, it was going to sound as good
as you can sound; it always sounded that good. And Charles also used to say… I took the
Chamber Singers once when he did a Ford Foundation tour in Russia, so I had them for three
months in the fall, and my job was to prepare them for Christmas. I said to him when he came
back, “I hope this goes well, this Christmas tune, because I’ve done plenty of those with you now;
299
I’ve done a lot, and I just don’t think the ensemble sounds as well this year.” And he said to me,
with some disdain, but lovingly, “Ensembles sound like their conductors.” End of subject.
(Laughter). And they sounded fine with me, but he was absolutely right and that was a lesson I
also needed to learn. Conductors make the sound of their ensemble. It’s not the name of their
group. The Jackson County Madrigals is not bad; it’s whoever is conducting that makes them
sound like they sound. And he believed that of himself. There’s a sense in which, going back to
the technique thing, that Charles imposed his will on the Chamber Singers. It was an imposition
of his will and because we admired and respected him and liked him and trusted him, we
submitted. And I think that’s probably true of every good choral ensemble. There is someone who
imposes their will on someone and they take it on. And that’s how you get great ensembles and I
think that was a distinctive of the Chamber Singers, if we’re looking of the exact distinctive, it
was the imposition of Charles Hirt’s will. We were not like other ensembles because we only had
Charles Hirt’s will and we had some arrogance and prided ourselves in that.

SHAWNA STEWART. Can you talk a little bit about his nonmusical influences on you?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Oh, my gosh. I would say that no person on Earth influenced
more than Charles Hirt. And probably in some bad ways too. I think in the beginning of my
choral performance career I probably took myself too seriously. And that was a by-product of
having come out of the Chamber Singers, for Pete’s sake! I was somebody! But I think I took
myself too seriously. I was too legalistic with my choirs. I demanded things of them that I thought
that’s how you do choral ensemble. That’s how you do church – by commanding/demanding the
people follow a certain regimen and don’t ever miss rehearsals. There are four people in the
Cathedral Choir at Hollywood Presbyterian Church where Charles worked for 30 years who to
this day (they started in the early-to-mid-’50s) who are still in that choir and they still haven’t
missed a rehearsal or a Sunday. Absolutely perfect attendance except for a baby. It is amazing to
me that his choir program there had the kind of machine-like, systematic commitment that I’ve
never seen anywhere else. But if I impose that, it could backfire on me.
So I learned over time the things that I admired about that grandness about Charles Hirt
had some value, but they were not the most valuable things. It was the excellence value that was
important; it was the sizzle in performance that counted. It wasn’t even preparation; it was the
sizzle. Did it work? Did it sell? Those influences on my musical sense were vital. But in the way I
carry myself when I’m conducting, when I’m performing, it’s absolutely Charles Hirt; it’s
impeccably Charles Hirt because it worked for him and I learned how to do it and I do it. The
way I talk in front of people, in front of classes, if I do a master class, I can see myself channeling
Charles Hirt – what he would say, how he would act in front of them, only I’ve tempered it now
with my own stuff and I’m less pompous than Charles was in front of people. But when you
retire, being hurt – I saw him get hurt because people didn’t take him seriously enough in a
couple of situations and it hurt him. And I talked about it with him and he said, “Yes, it hurt; what
the hell did you think?” And I heard myself saying, “Okay – what the hell – you can hurt!” I
don’t think there’s any part of my emotional life in music that hasn’t been influenced by the way I
perceived him to be in his professional life. It’s remarkable, frankly; I don’t know if other people
felt that way. Maybe Joel did, maybe Del did, I don’t know, but there was no part of my
professional life that didn’t have Charles Hirt in the middle of it somewhere. Absolutely no part.

SHAWNA STEWART. When you think of his contributions to USC overall, what did he
contribute?
300

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Well he was, of course, traveling with the gods. I mean the
staff, the faculty was primetime staff. William Vennard wrote the book on vocal pedagogy, and
Gwen Koldofsky was one of the first and most masterful teachers of art song and song lit. We had
Ingolf Dahl and Halsey Stevens. It was like Eastman; we just had this faculty that are up in the
stars somewhere, and it was particularly true of the time when Charles was there. So the
reputation of the school was based on the fact that they had all of these performers and all of
these incredibly well-known faculty members who were drawing people like Piatagorsky in his
retirement and Heifetz for awhile, and Charles was just part of that ring of stars. But I think what
he brought to it was sort of Tommy Trojan pride. I mean the Chamber Singers far outshone any
of the performing ensembles. We had a wonderful orchestra, a wonderful wind ensemble, a
wonderful marching band (but not as famous as it is as the moment). But he brought an ensemble
that was absolutely pure USC, and a lot of reputation of the School of Music was based on the
fact that people had heard the Chamber Singers in performance. It’s like the author of a book.
You write a book and you have to go on tour; people have to shake your hand and have you sign
their book before that book takes off. The Chamber Singers were the sort of the personification of
quality at USC. You couldn’t say that to William Bernard who wrote a book or to the top
students, and you couldn’t say that to any of the other ensembles, although they were very highly
respected. But the Chamber Singers and Charles Hirt brought that excellence way out front at
USC. Also his starting of the Church Music Department was not a small thing. You combine his
performance reputation with this high level of well-observed and great choir program that he and
Lucy had at Hollywood Pres(byterian) – huge deal – and so that reputation was a first for USC.
They’d never had a Church Music Department and he suddenly was drawing graduate students
from all over the country. So I think his contribution in that one area alone was vast. I still run
into people who got degrees at USC long after he was gone but who came there because of the
reputation that he built, so that was a big deal. Church music was a big deal.

SHAWNA STEWART. And just to recap, your decision to attend USC was not because
of Hirt.

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. You know, I certainly knew about him and I certainly was
excited about the fact that he was at USC but I think I went because I was so complimented that
these professors from USC thought I would be a good candidate to go there. I think that’s what
got me there. And I knew people like Jane Hardester before I went to USC – Jane was a graduate
under Charles. So yes, I knew a lot of people, but I don’t think it was Charles Hirt that drew me
there. It certainly was Charles Hirt that got me through it – without question.

SHAWNA STEWART. Do you think he has the kind of national status that Howard
Swan did or Robert Shaw, or even Roger Wagner?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. That’s a good question. I would have said just unhesitatingly,
yes – of course he did, but I don’t know. I mean he did all-state choirs; it seemed to me like every
week he was out doing all-states. And he did a lot of conventions. He was a founding member of
ACDA. I think he enjoyed a reputation, like Howard, at a level equal to Howard’s. I think the
place where there might be some class distinction would be with Robert Shaw, who enjoyed a
much broader professional reputation, tons of recordings, a lot of airtime on television. I think
that’s true of Roger Wagner to some degree because he founded the Master Chorale, I think
301
because he was touring with his ensemble around the world. Roger didn’t have a huge reputation
nationally, although they did tour nationally. I think Ray Conniff was a bigger name than Roger
Wagner. Mitch, who was the guy that had a television show? Phenomenal musician? He had that
kind of group chorus thing…Mitch…anyway, it’s gone. Fred Waring. I mean that was a huge
reputation across America in the choral field, and Fred Waring did a lot of wonderful things to
promote choral music. So Charles was not in that class, but on the academic circuit he was a big
thing. But I would say it was kind of limited to the academic circuit.

SHAWNA STEWART. Did he ever tell you any stories about his childhood or his family
life?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. He didn’t talk a lot about his childhood. He used to have that
saying, “My grandfather was the burgermeister of this village.” His grandfather was always a
high mucky-muck in this town or that town – never mattered where we were. “This is where my
grandfather came from. He was the chief of the legislature…” whatever. I think his real story
though, and I don’t have a ton of information, except that I do recall that he was sort of a musical
break-out, that if you were to look at his family you would not have predicted that he would have
gone in the direction that he went in, but pretty vaguely. If I could go back and talk to him, I
would love to know more about what made him tick. Because my sense is that the good things
and the traumas that happen to us in childhood do in fact define where we end up and how we act,
and I would love to know what that influence was on him. Because as much as I pretend to know
about him – oh my God, enigmatic at best. I mean this was a guy who I watched, who I saw cry,
who I had enough wine with to get pretty personal, but there’s a great mystery in that man.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. And you can imagine that you’re not alone in that, and
everybody has in a lot of ways said the same things. And yet I find it interesting in talking with
Darlene just that as a teacher right now, students say they love you when they come over to your
house and they hang out and get to know you and of course that’s not what we do as conductors,
directors, and teachers. But it’s interesting to me that you all felt so incredibly close to him and
loved by him with so much mystery still.

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Yeah – and that is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? How can you
pull off both of those things? Good for him. All I want to know, Shawna, did Darlene talk as
much about me as I talked about her? Llaughter) I think that both of us took out of that
relationship that we were getting to step inside the holy of holies, that that social arrangement that
we had with them that we were dealing with some primetime and we were dealing with a very
important period in their history or ours; we never left their house without talking about it all the
way home and it was a half-hour drive, and we never stopped talking about it once we got home.
We would talk sometime until three in the morning about those evenings – dissecting every little
moment, every little word. And that’s the mystery part. We felt like we were close; they certainly
felt that we were close to them.
We loved Lucy – no pun intended – desperately – we learned to just love. And Lucy
could be rather stand-offish, and she had horrible vision, so you weren’t quite sure if she was
ignoring you or just couldn’t see you. We forged excellent, beautiful relationships with Lucy. I
treasure that. But I do think that we always understood that we were stepping into something that
we would never be able to fully appreciate. Part of it was different eras – we were born in
different eras – so we weren’t going to completely understand him like I’m sure lots of thirty or
302
forty year olds can’t appreciate who I am now. They don’t get who I am. So it wasn’t just
enigmatic and difficult to know. I think there was a generational difference there. But I also think
a part of a way that he protected his artistic stuff was to have a private thought life that nobody
else could have. That’s what separated him in some way.

SHAWNA STEWART. Very insightful. Well, what do you perceive to be his living
legacy right now?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Well, you know, to whatever extent his students – and I have
to look at Joel who is still plugging along in wonderful ways and every other person whoever had
personal contact with him, but also any student who comes in contact with us who had come in
contact with him – are certainly carrying on things that they wouldn’t readily define as being
Charles Hirt. But it is Charles Hirt. I mean there are generations of people, I believe, that continue
a pace, doing things that Charles Hirt gave the values to, that he submitted the values to them. I
think much of the choral world that we live in currently – and I’m including everybody and
certainly you – in that we live in an era that was defined by people like Charles Hirt. I mean just
the membership of ACDA. Just look at the membership of ACDA. It is huge. And it is huge in a
field that many people say is dying. I hear people all the time say, “Choral music is dead.” So was
Charles Hirt the Eric Whitaker of his time? I don’t think so, but at some level he was. At some
level he was one of those people who said, “This is the most beautiful thing that can happen to a
human being,” and that thing that started in academia stimulated and stirred that pot and that pot
continues to be stirred.
Interkulture and Europa – everything has been influenced by the vibrancy of the choral
art, I think, in America. And that’s why choral groups from America can tour when their
cathedrals at home are empty and perform and that influence continues to be there. I conducted a
500-voice Chinese church choir. It was choirs from all over the United States and Asia in Kuala
Lampur (this was several years ago) and there were three of us conducting. Jing Ling Tam (I love
her) and her daughter was with her, we shopped, we had a wonderful time. But this was
phenomenal to deal with all of these choirs in a ballroom, impossible to conduct, really. But we
made music and we had a beautiful time. And I just look at how the choral culture kinda goes all
over the world. And you don’t have to say it emanates from that one legacy, but you have to say
that part of the seasoning, part of what makes that taste so good is Charles Hirt. It’s Howard
Swan. It’s Anton Armstrong, for Pete’s sake, bringing his sort of children’s chorus point of view
to adult music. And you have to look at all those people there and say, “This tastes good because
all of these people added their special seasoning to it.” Charles Hirt didn’t make it all happen, but
he certainly helped make it, and even you who aren’t influenced by him directly and you’re
writing this paper – this glorious thing. So he had influence in ways that he could never have
dreamed of. Never.

SHAWNA STEWART. My goodness. As an aside, you know, I feel a somber
responsibility to do justice to him and his contributions at USC and to the world because of how
special he has been to so many people and to our art form. It’s a real privilege to be writing it.

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Well, I really appreciate that you have the industry to do this
because I understand how many hundreds of hours of work it’s going to take to finish the project.
But again, you are writing for a man that in some ways (and defiantly so) you are writing on
behalf of the Chris Johnsons and the Howard Swans, you are writing for all those guys too.
303
Because they were giants as well and you are simply reflecting what giants do when they’re put
in the land.

SHAWNA STEWART. It is a special time in my life. That’s for sure… Let me review
my notes. So I think in closing, I would love it if you could share some of your sweetest or best
stories about him.

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Sure. That would be a privilege. Ummm… You know, during
the days that we were swimming in the pool, I was young. I was in my twenties and then into my
thirties, I looked better in bathing suits than he did. (Laughter). And this is the sweet part. And
here’s the sweet part, in case you were waiting for it. The sweet part is that he was willing to let
me see him in a bathing suit. He was Charles Hirt. And that level of trust and confidence and
intimacy I thought was really important. The hugs that we had at the house, when we came in,
when we left– those were friendship hugs. They weren’t impersonal, they weren’t professional,
they weren’t puffed-up-chest hugs. They were deeply personal hugs. They were hugs that were
affectionate. And if I went to Hollywood Pres(byterian) when I was singing as a soloist up there, I
would tell you that I sat in his office, he had this cherry-wood-lined office that someone had
finished for him – beautiful dark wood and stained glass windows and a big desk that he was
rarely at, and I can remember having coffee in there with him between services many times. He
would regularly have influential people come in and have coffee with him, but I would go and we
always had incredible glazed donuts. And I could go in and talk to him. Darlene and I did that
together; sometimes I did it by myself. I can tell you that sitting in that office with him being
sweaty and tired from the first service, and probably having just flown in the night before from
some all-state choir and having seven dissertations to read, to see him exhausted, to see him
slump in his chair and eat one of those incredible donuts, for me that was like a little offering, a
little communion that we had. That was brokenness. That was fatigue. That was humanness. It
informed the way I act when I’m tired with people that I love and respect. I just consider that a
level of intimacy that you shouldn’t get to have with Zeus. Zeus is pretty powerful and I got to be
around Zeus in circumstances like that and that’s the best stuff that ever happened to me.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow. Thinking about those moments that you’re describing with
him and you, do you have anything duplicated like that in your life?

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. I will tell you anecdotally something that someone said to me.
Ralph Osborne was a very dear friend of mine at Hollywood Presbyterian Church. He is ninety-
five now and I just visited him not too long ago in Pennsylvania, but I left Hollywood, and
Darlene and I were divorcing and Ralph formed a small group around me; he brought in a group
of other degenerates, and we had a wonderful small group: an astronaut, a newscaster, a sports
announcer, a high-level advertising guy - just incredible guys – all broken, all messed up and we
had this incredible group. And I moved to Northern California at some point, 1984, and I went to
Ralph with tears in my eyes and said, “Ralph, I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. I
don’t know what my life is going to be like if I can’t be with our group and you.” And he said, “If
I am so damn important to you, I guess you’re just going to have to go and be me.” It makes me
cry to think of it. It was the most profound thing he could have possibly said. In other words,
everything I admired in him I had to go be to someone else or to other people. And I had to take
that stuff with me and act that stuff with them in ways that impacted them equally. And if I were
to look at the Charles Hirt legacy – he didn’t say it to me, but that’s what he said to me. You’re
304
going to leave me now because that’s what happens to birds in the nest. You’re going to leave
now, and if I’m so damn important to you, you’re just going to have to go and be me. And I think
I’ve lived my whole life trying desperately, failing miserably, but trying to be like Charles Hirt.
Because I couldn’t attain to anything higher to that musically and impactfully. There’s nothing
higher than that. I never made it and I’m seventy, and I’m not going to make it now.

SHAWNA STEWART. It is beautiful and it makes me teary to hear about that type of
beautiful relationship. Did it feel too much, like too much pressure? Was that a hard cross to bear
or a joyful cross to bear? Or a cross at all?

DOUG LAWRENCE. It was a cross. It was sometimes a cross. Don’t misunderstand me;
I loved it. It was wonderful. But I said to Darlene when Charles had left Hollywood Presbyterian
and we were just social friends when it was sort of waning a little bit, we weren’t seeing each
other quite as often, I have to admit that it was kinda nice to not be under the thumb of Charles
Hirt. I think all of us who are mentored by somebody sigh with relief when the shadow, the huge,
long shadow of our mentors starts to fade a little bit so we can figure out who the hell we are.
You know it’s really hard when you’re under that thumb. And I felt like I was under his thumb
because I was there by choice and I also was there because I understood very well that I was not
Charles Hirt. Like on Dateline, “I knew Jack Kennedy and you are no Jack Kennedy.” I knew
who I was and I was not Charles Hirt. And when the pressure was released a little bit, boy, I
could breathe. So it was a blessing and it was only occasionally a mild curse.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, I can’t thank you enough for spending almost two hours on
the phone with me. Thanks for being so candid and thoughtful and patient. I really appreciate it.

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE. Well, I appreciate you asking me because obviously this is a
subject I care a lot about. At age seventy I am in that very reflective place so it feels real good to
talk about something I love that much.

SHAWNA STEWART. That’s so neat. I will start writing in three weeks, and if this
conversation comes up to you in the next few weeks, please feel free to send information to me.
Thank you.

305
APPENDIX O: EMAILED INTERVIEW RESPONSES, DR. JOHN LILLEY

JOHN LILLEY
January 2, 2013
Interview Responses Submitted via Email

Please state your full name.

In what capacity did you know Dr. Hirt at USC and during what years?

He was chair of my doctoral committee 1964–71. I sang in Chamber Singers with him in 1965–
66. After being a doctoral student for two years full-time, the impending birth of my second child
forced me to finish part-time 1966–71 including 12 credit hours, exams, and dissertation. I was
fortunate to have a full-time appointment at Claremont for ten years, beginning in 1966.

What did Charles Hirt bring to the University of Southern California?
Sophistication to this young man who had been raised in modest circumstances in the South. LA
and USC at that time were magical.
What is your impression of the philosophy he held that underlay his teaching of
choral music?
How is that philosophy exhibited in your teaching?
What choral techniques used by Dr. Hirt still stand out to you?
At this late date, what stands out is his great musicality. His conducting technique was not at all
clear, but his spoken ideas were insightful. He also chose exquisitely difficult music for the spring
concert, but all of us could read quite easily and loved tackling the most challenging music. His
Christmas music was quite traditional.
In what ways did Dr. Hirt’s teaching methods influence how you teach?
In what nonmusical ways did Dr. Hirt influence you?
A quick story: I was on my way out to the Claremont Colleges to interview for a position. After
only two years in LA, I made the mistake of still using colloquial speech. I told Dr. Hirt that I was
“fixing to go” to Claremont. He promptly “had a nervous breakdown” and started screaming at
me. He said, “You’re not fixing to go to Claremont or any other expletive place in this world.” I
have never used that expression since that day, and the experience caused me to consider
carefully other regional speech patterns that would not serve me well. That was a great gift from
Dr. Hirt.
In what ways do you see Charles Hirt’s legacy living today?
306
APPENDIX P: INTERVIEW WITH DR. DOYLE PREHEIM

DOYLE PREHEIM
October 17, 2012
11:00 a.m.
Telephone Interview

DOYLE PREHEIM. Hello?

SHAWNA STEWART. Hello Dr. Preheim, this is Shawna Stewart.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Hi, Shawna. How are you today?

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, I’m good. Looking forward to this.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Good, so am I.

SHAWNA STEWART. How is the audio quality for you right now?

DOYLE PREHEIM. I’m hearing you clearly.

SHAWNA STEWART. Fantastic.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Very good.

SHAWNA STEWART. Fantastic, and it looks like I have three recording devices going
on right now. So information is valuable and they all look like they’re picking them up.

DOYLE PREHEIM. I hope they all work for you, so you’ve got some backups.

SHAWNA STEWART. Thank you. Well, thank you again for agreeing to participate in
this study. I just really appreciate your willingness to answer these questions and just to share
your knowledge and experience regarding both his influence on you professionally and
personally. If you were able to look at the information sheet, the interview is expected to last
about forty-five minutes. As I ask these questions, anytime you feel like you want to take a
tangent or a right turn and add information that you think is valuable to the study, please feel free
to do so.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Okay, very good. I will say at the offset, it wasn’t clear what the
direction of the second question was. If you want to speak to that now or a little later when we get
to this matter, what your definition of psychological underpinnings might be?

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh sure, you know what? I’m sorry for the confusion on that.
The questions that you saw are the five research questions that my paper will answer, but I have
actually got a set of ten questions that will hopefully cultivate information that I will be able to
use to answer those questions, but my interview questions are different than those.

307
DOYLE PREHEIM. Okay, okay, well, that’s fine. So we’ll just proceed and see where it
leads us.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wonderful. Are you ready to begin?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Sure.

SHAWNA STEWART. Great. Question number one. In what capacity did you know Dr.
Hirt at USC and during what years?

DOYLE PREHEIM. I met Dr. Hirt mostly through my experience as a member of the
USC Chamber Singers and in the classroom. I had several courses with him in the Church Music
Department. I went to USC in the 1963-1964 school year for a master’s degree in church music. I
received that degree in 1966 and then I returned to USC for a doctor’s degree in the fall of 1969
and received that degree in 1973.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay, wonderful.

DOYLE PREHEIM. I sang with Dr. Hirt in the 1963–64 Chamber Singers and that was
the group that toured Europe for three and a half months under the auspices of the U.S. State
Department. So that was an intense experience with him both as a conductor and also
[unintelligible] with the choirs. Then I had courses in church music and choral conducting with
him.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wonderful. Question number two, what do you think Charles
Hirt brought to the University of Southern California?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Oh my. One could go on for a long time answering that question.
Well, first of all, he personally established the departments of church music and choral music, and
it was one of the first universities in the nation to offer advanced degrees in these two disciplines,
and I think that’s the most significant. Also important, in my estimation, would be that he raised
the profile of the University by all of his appearances nationwide in church music festivals and in
choral music festivals, and it really made church music and choral music legitimate as academic
pursuits. And other schools rather quickly followed suit and established departments. A third
thing that I think is really important is that he mentored literally hundreds of MM and DMA
students, master’s and doctoral students who then became leaders in church music and in
academia.
It was kind of the golden age of choral music, and he made USC really be a leader in the
whole establishment of academic programs in those two areas. I think that’s really, really
important. Furthermore, he really brought a lot of attention to USC through his international,
national and international exposures. I mean he did his own doctoral dissertation in Russian
church music and then became known here as somewhat of an expert in Russian church music
back in the ’40s and ’50s. When few people knew anything about it, he learned Russian, lived in
Russia, and I think that was quite amazing for the time. And then he directed a chorus at the
opening and closing events of the 1984 Olympics; that brought exposure to USC and at the
inaugural Disney World, he was in charge of music. And the list goes on and on, and as a choral
conductor with a lot of national exposure, he directed all-state choral festivals in most states of
308
the union, I think. By the end of his life he had been like in forty-seven or forty-eight of fifty
states, directing all-state choirs. So I think that all reflected really well on USC and particularly
the choral music and church music programs.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure, thank you so much. Question number three. Would you tell
me your impression of the philosophy that he held that underlaid his teaching of choral music?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Well, it’s interesting that he very seldom talked about his
philosophy of choral music, but he lived it and exemplified it in his approach to music, I think.
His philosophy was that the music itself informs a conductor’s approach. He always went directly
to the music. For example, he never did vocal exercises in his choral rehearsals. He went straight
to the music and extracted from the music what the voice needed to do. I thought that was kind of
his philosophy: let the music inform you as a conductor the matters of interpretation and also the
approach to the rehearsal itself. I think that his philosophy also was interesting and somewhat
unique in that for him, it was a marriage between text and music. Language was incredibly
important to him and though he didn’t talk about it a lot, I always thought his choir sang with
such dramatic diction, and diction appropriate to the style, to the dramatic impact of music itself.
So his choirs had an energy in the performance that grew out of the diction as well as the
tonal quality of the singers. During the years that I sang with him, I also felt he had an interesting
philosophy about blend and balance. In the choirs that I sang in and the choirs I have observed, he
always had an interesting mix of very strong solo voices, voices that participated in the opera
program at USC. Some of the strongest solo voices on campus, were also in the sixteen-voice
Chamber Singers. And it was a mixture of its huge voices and what I would call just good choral
voices. I would say that I was one of those choral voices. I did some solo work, but I certainly
wasn’t a big opera voice. And then he worked in the rehearsal situation in his own, I think it was
his genius, to bring blend and balance to this unique mixture of solo voices and choral singers.
And the ultimate product was that he had such vitality in his choral sound, and the solo voices
helped to bring that, to heighten that, but never did the solo voices take over; it was always a
beautiful blend and a good balance. So those are some of the things that I remember being so
impressed with in his kind of approach or his philosophy to choral music.

SHAWNA STEWART. If you feel that it has, how is or was his philosophy exhibited in
your teaching?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Well, I’m now retired. I directed a community chorus up until last
May, but clearly I was very much influenced by that approach. In my own study of choral music,
I mean, I always started with a text, and what is the text saying and how can it best communicate
that. And I always took it as a highest compliment when an audience member would say, “I
understood the diction. I understood the words.” And I know that was a direct influence of Dr.
Hirt. I don’t think I achieved the kind of intensity of diction that he achieved with his Chamber
Singers, but I was also working with less experienced vocalists than he was. But it was always a
goal of mine. Also his emphasis on balance and blend – I stressed that a lot through choirs that I
had worked with. So he was almost an overpowering personality in many ways, both in just his
physical presence, but also the way in which he passed off his strong convictions about choral
music to his students. I think I picked up a lot of it.

309
SHAWNA STEWART. Wonderful. Can you give a specific example of him helping you
to understand the text since that was such an important part of your music-making? Any
particular moment in a rehearsal that you still remember?

DOYLE PREHEIM. You know, it’s hard for me to remember specific moments because
it just infused everything he did. I just remember one comment. He used a lot of what I would call
imagery. He didn’t talk technical; he didn’t say, “Give me more explosive consonants.” For
example, a comment to the sopranos, “Sopranos, sing that line like a scarf blowing in the wind.”
And I thought, “Oh my gosh!” you know? What a nice image for a lovely lyrical line. That was
just one of many gems of communication, verbal communication that would come out of the
rehearsal situation. I do remember working on a Samuel Barber piece, Anthony O’Daly, which is
extremely dramatic and powerful and he would go back again and again and say, “Read the
words. What are they saying? How would you convey those words in the sung phrase?” And he
just heightened our awareness of what the words were saying and almost like magic, the
consonants would become cleaner and crisper and more explosive in the appropriate places and
dynamics would fall into line, and he would just keep directing our attention back to the text.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

DOYLE PREHEIM. That’s about as specific as I can get.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah, that’s wonderful. It also reminds me of another question
that’s not one of my official ten, but something that I’ve been curious about as I have read on him
that he really wanted the students to self-discover.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Exactly.

SHAWNA STEWART. I was wondering if you could elaborate on that idea a bit.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Well, I think everything that I’ve said in terms of the choral context
would underscore that. He didn’t say, “Give me more crescendo on the third beat of measure two,
top of page ten.” You know he wasn’t that specific. I draw from a comment that he made in one
of his choral methods classes. He said, “You have two ways to approach music. One way is the
umbrella. You look at the totality of it and work from the outside in.” And that was definitely his
approach. You get an overview of the piece; you work toward the details. The other approach:
you begin with the details and work out toward the totality of it, and his philosophy was always,
“You have to understand the larger picture before you can make any sense of details.”

So that was one thing. Can you rephrase the question for me?

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. Do you have any further examples on his assisting you as a
student to discover for yourself the essence of the music?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Yes, yes. I was going to take us to his conducting courses. I never
felt like he was dictating to the students – you must do it this way. Yet every student was really
encouraged to find their own conducting style. It wasn’t, you know, you have to do this kind of a
beat, or you have to have conduct in this way. I think that was another example of how he really
310
encouraged us to kind of find our own style of conducting, but he did always hold us accountable
too: “How does it inform the music or how does a music inform what you are doing, gesture-
wise?” You had to have a rationale for it, even though it may be different than he himself would
have done. I think he was not an orthodox conductor. He had a very unique conducting style, and
it was not so much based on conducting patterns as it was choreography of the music. Again, he
had such good singers in his groups. He didn’t have to worry about the patterns. He could have
done it that way, but he was able to really choreograph the music through his hand gestures and
his body language, and I think that was, in some respect, the secret of his incredible music-
making.

SHAWNA STEWART. Could you further describe his actual conducting gestures?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Well, I would say that his gestures were very amorphic; it was not
circular and the beat was there, but it was extremely rounded, smooth. He did a lot with his body,
subtle body movements… it was very hard to describe in words. I wonder if there are any
interviews available for you to see; I’m sure there would be. But his gestures were not angular
and his gestures encourage a lot of line and shape and much less beat and accent.

SHAWNA STEWART. What if it was a rhythm-driven piece. Would that still be true?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Of course there was a latitude, a range, and he would be angular if a
piece called for it, but not the extreme that many conductors are.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

DOYLE PREHEIM. In my experience.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. Were you at the 1964 Chamber Singers’ reunion?

DOYLE PREHEIM. The one that was held just this past summer?

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh was it?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Yeah, this past July. Yeah, I was there.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh wonderful and I think…

DOYLE PREHEIM. In San Diego.

SHAWNA STEWART. Doug Lawrence would put together a video.

DOYLE PREHEIM. That’s right. There’s maybe something there.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Do you have a copy of that?

311
SHAWNA STEWART. He gave me a link to it yesterday, and I just haven’t had the time
yet to go look at it.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Oh good.

SHAWNA STEWART. But I’m really excited too. Yeah, it was neat to think of a…

DOYLE PREHEIM. Yeah.

SHAWNA STEWART. …being able to see something from that time.

DOYLE PREHEIM. I’m glad you’ve talked to Doug because he was closer to Dr. Hirt
than I was because he was an undergraduate as well, and I was just there for my master’s and
doctorate degrees.

SHAWNA STEWART. What choral techniques used by Dr. Hirt still stand out to you
today?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Well, one of the things we haven’t talked about is, I think that Dr.
Hirt had an interesting, wonderful sense of drama. He had a way of taking a piece of music, a
particular edition, often improving on it. Sometimes for the sake of flow of the whole program, he
would shorten a piece. He would repeat a section that wasn’t always called for. He had a sense of
what an audience would respond to. I think that was another part of his genius, technique really,
but he had a way of building a program and presenting a piece that just hooked the audience, and
he would use, in the Chamber Singers format at least, he would use movement. For example, we
would process at a concert or we would exit singing. In the Chamber Singers, we sat behind a
table; there was a table cloth on it, there were flowers, there were lutes, old instruments, and most
of the time everybody sat, but they would occasionally, if a particular piece was highlighted as a
solo, the sopranos would stand or a soloist individually would stand. So there was always
something visual going on in this choral program. It was long before the age of show choirs. In a
sense, he predated the show choir idea with his Chamber Singers and classical repertoire, if you
will.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow.

DOYLE PREHEIM. It was a sense of the dramatic, and I guess I always respected him
for that. You can’t do that with a larger choir; only the Chamber Singers did that. Then he would
really reedit some pieces to make them maybe more acceptable to the audience or edit it in such a
way that they would transition better into the next piece that the choir was doing and he created
an hour and thirty minutes of musical drama.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow. When you say he would reedit the music, can you give a
couple of examples of what that might look like?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Very often it was actually shortening the length of a piece. For
example, if it was a da capo piece, maybe he would not do the repeat and transition immediately
into the next piece. That’s one example that comes to mind. And another example that comes to
312
mind was a processional that we did, and the piece was too long but the first part of it really
worked well for a processional. So we just did the A section and let the rest of the piece go. It was
that sort of thing. More than that I can’t recall.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. It’s very interesting. I hadn’t read that or come across that
at all.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Yeah.

SHAWNA STEWART. At the end of our interview, I’m going to ask an open-ended
question for you to be able to contribute anything else you would think would be valuable for
people to know.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Okay, okay.

SHAWNA STEWART. My next question is in what nonmusical ways did Dr. Hirt
influenced you?

DOYLE PREHEIM. I think the most startling thing that has stayed with me all this time,
and I don’t think I necessarily modeled my own professional career after it, but Dr. Hirt was the
kind of person who you both adored because we respected him so much for his knowledge and
his success, and on the other hand, you totally feared. He had such a demeanor, such an imposing
figure. He kept a professional distance from his students. He was not a friend, a buddy-buddy.
And I think that if anything, in my own interactions with students, I probably tried not to have so
much distance as I observed him having. But for whatever reason, I think he was also a very
private person in a way, and so he needed his own space, but when he came to the class or when
he came to rehearsal, I mean he gave it his all. But there wasn’t much socializing with his
students and you all have this feeling that, “Oh, I have to really be on my toes with Dr. Hirt,” both
in terms when I’m in rehearsal, not to make any mistakes, but even in personally relating to him.
You have to choose your words carefully and really be careful. So that’s the kind of a nonmusical
observation, and I’ve often pondered it in my own professional life. Being a friend to your student
may be okay up to a point, but you have to remember that you are also their mentor, and perhaps
a little professional distance is a good thing.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

DOYLE PREHEIM. I thought in Dr. Hirt’s case, it was quite extreme.

SHAWNA STEWART. I found a quote from him that said, “If you sit on a bus, fly in a
plane, sit in a dressing room waiting for a performance, go back to the hotel or go out after a
concert. You don’t have to try to know your singers, you just do.” And you talked about the
distance that he had with his singers. How well do you feel that he actually knew you?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Well, I think that’s a really good question, and I think he knew
every singer very well. He knew their capabilities musically. He knew their personalities. He
knew their quirks. He knew what comments would elicit a positive response, what
encouragement a person needed to have, maybe what correction a person needed. He was very
313
tuned in emotionally, psychologically to his students. But he did not promote a lot of informal…
yeah, he wouldn’t invite them out to dinner.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

DOYLE PREHEIM. I had other professors at the university who’d say, “Well, you want
to go to lunch?” We’ll go to the faculty lounge. Well, students wouldn’t be allowed, but if they’re
invited by the professors to have lunch they could go to the faculty lounge. Dr. James Vail for
example, you may know that name.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yes.

DOYLE PREHEIM. He did that a lot after class, “You want to go to lunch?” And then he
would continue the discussions. That never happened with Dr. Hirt.

SHAWNA STEWART. Very interesting. I have an opportunity to interview Dr. Vail next
week.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Oh, good. He will have so much information for you.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yes. In what ways do you see Hirt’s legacy living today?

DOYLE PREHEIM. You know, I’ve thought about that question a lot, and I’ve thought it
was very interesting that Dr. Hirt, as successful a career as he had and all that he was in the choral
music scene, never wrote a book that I know of. There is not a Dr. Hirt book about “My Choral
Philosophy” or “My Choral Methodologies” or “My Choral Methods,” you know? Maybe an
article here or there. So I think his greatest contribution is through hundreds, literally hundreds of
people who are out there carrying on his legacy in the church choirs that they conduct, in the
school choirs that they conduct, in the administrative positions – many, many of his graduates
going on to become deans of schools of music or departments chairs of schools of music. These
people are carrying on his methods, his ideas, and I think that’s his greatest legacy that many,
many people came through.
My college choir director and voice teacher was a graduate of USC. One of the first
graduates of the master’s program in church music, and he was the one who encouraged me to
consider going to USC because he had such a good experience there. That has repeated itself all
over the country many, many times.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. You spoke just about him being private. In some of things
that I’ve read in ACDA archives and things that people have shared, he seemed to have a faith. Of
course, he was at Hollywood Presbyterian for many years. One thing I have written down from
him is, “Music performance should reflect a discrimination which recognizes the profundity with
which a composition relates to man and man to God.” Do you remember his spirituality appearing
in rehearsal? Do you remember that being a part of what he talked about or his life?

DOYLE PREHEIM. He was very open about his faith, and it was kind of a natural
outgrowth of the fact that he was both responsible for a church music curriculum and a choral
curriculum. And so in the church music curriculum, we were studying hymnology, and we were
314
talking about issues of faith and studying texts and how they are set to music, and why is one
study better than another – this sort of thing. So there was that kind of natural flow between
Hollywood Pres and USC for Dr. Hirt. And a lot of us actually sang with him in his Hollywood
Presbyterian Church choir. I substituted every once in a while, actually for Doug Lawrence who
was a regular soloist, and when Doug couldn’t sing, I would go. And so there was this kind of a
natural dialogue between church and state if you will, or between church and academia.
He did not at the University usually talk much about spiritual things, even if we were
doing the sacred songs, but I thought it was very interesting that on our tour, on our 1964 tour, he
would ask one of the choir members to offer a word of prayer before every concert.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow.

DOYLE PREHEIM. So that was a very open, obvious gesture of his feeling that invoking
the blessing of God on a concert was a very positive thing. But he himself never prayed. He
would always ask one of the students. I was one of them because I had been in church music and
he knew that I was a religious person, and there were few others who were asked. He knew who
would be comfortable with it and who was not. Going back to your previous question, “How well
did he know his students?” you know he knew well enough that some were atheist or agnostic
and wouldn’t be interested in participating in this but he knew that of all of us, those several
would be.
He also had a way of wearing his faith that was pretty much on his sleeve, not verbally
but in other ways, in other subtle ways. He was a spiritual person.

SHAWNA STEWART. Could you tell me about your 1964 tour and your impressions of
that tour, perhaps some things that you learned about Dr. Hirt that nobody else could have known
because of your three and a half months together? Was it three and a half or two and a half?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Yeah, three and a half months.

SHAWNA STEWART. Three and a half months together.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Three and a half months, one hundred and forty concerts and or
workshops. Well, one of the things that stand out is that he and his wife, Lucy, really stayed quite
aloof. You would think that living three and a half months together, you’d really become good
friends.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

DOYLE PREHEIM. But that didn’t happen.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yes.

DOYLE PREHEIM. In some respects, my respect for Dr. Hirt grew even more through
that three and a half months because of the wide variety of repertoire we did. We did a total of
three different repertoires on that tour. The repertoire was chosen by him to be appropriate for the
country or for the situation. For example, we sang a Good Friday mass, you know, for the royal
315
family of Monaco, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, and we learned a Byrd five-part mass just
for that concert.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh my.

DOYLE PREHEIM. It was wonderful, but we didn’t use it again in any other of the other
one hundred and thirty-nine concerts we did.

SHAWNA STEWART. Oh my goodness.

DOYLE PREHEIM. So he had a great sense again of what was appropriate for any given
situation. And that’s something that has stuck with me from the tour: that you should always
respect your audience and try to do for them what you can. I think “respect for your audience”
would be the best way to describe that. The other thing that I know (I don’t want to be negative),
but there was a certain… I think Dr. Hirt in a way was insecure. That’s a strange thing to say, but
he would always question. I mean he was so good at doing what I’ve just described, but then he
would step back and ask, “Was that the right thing? Was that good enough? Was that the right
thing?” He had sensitivity for doing the appropriate thing. Sometimes he lost his temper. In three
and a half months, there were some unpleasant confrontations with the powers that be in the
places that we performed. He would expose his disapproval, his frustration. I saw that more on
the tour and I think it was related to the stress of travel. You know traveling in 1964 was not quite
as easy as now. So I saw that side of him. There were some other things that stand out, but mostly
it was just the level of music-making after three and a half months of singing together, it was just
indescribable. I mean it was the mountaintop experience with my performing life.

SHAWNA STEWART. My goodness. I think of two questions. I was wondering since he
wasn’t very close to you at all, how did you know that he would question himself? Was he verbal
about it?

DOYLE PREHEIM. That’s a good question. He would share that with his closest
confidents in the choir, and that would have been the president of the choir and the business
manager. The president was Robert Hasty, and the business manager was Doug Lawrence. So he
would kind of confide in them, but not in the rest of us. Some of the questioning that I was just
referring to has been reported by Doug or Bob, and I myself have really never heard it. I thought
it was fascinating that in public he comes across so sure, so confident, and to hear that, after the
fact, maybe he had some self-doubt was kind of shocking.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yes. Before I forget, I wanted to tell you that he had indeed
started a book. He has a very solid outline and a rough draft of the book outline is in the archives
and I’m sure somebody (if I had the time I would have tried to put it all together), but somebody
will do it someday, I’m sure, you know?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Oh good. I hope so because it deserves to be known more widely.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yes.

DOYLE PREHEIM. That would be very interesting and helpful.
316

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah. What is your perception of his philosophy on
programming? You have alluded to it a little bit, but I was wondering if you wanted to elaborate
on that more.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Well, his philosophy of programming – in the case of the 1964 tour,
he felt very strongly that this was an opportunity to share with the European audiences American
music. So we did some of the European classics, of course, but a lot of American music of the
mid-20th century, early 20th century. We did some pieces by Halsey Stevens, USC composer; by
Ingolf Dahl, USC composer; Samuel Barber; Daniel Pinkham; and those sorts of composers were
liberally represented on our programs. We also did the traditional Brahms and Schubert and other
European composers.
In general, I think his philosophy was that he tried to make a point that collegiate choirs
are capable of singing any style in any language as well as any professional choir could. So he
challenged his choirs to sing in a variety of languages, all historical eras; most programs would
have included at least a baroque, classic, romantic, contemporary piece so that all of the eras were
represented. The programs weren’t always planned chronologically, but there would be examples
of all the historical eras in the program somewhere.
He was also willing to do for reasons of maybe audience appeal, folk-based music, and
we did quite a bit of that on our tour – American folk as well as European folk-based music. So
he was very eclectic in his choice for a repertoire, but he chose the best of each era, each period,
and each stop. I really respected his certain taste in choral repertoire.

SHAWNA STEWART. You know we’re all supposed to choose music we love, but
could you ever tell if he had a particular affinity for a piece?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Well, I think he was a romantic at heart, I had thought that if he
could choose music of one composer it probably would have been Brahms. He had a real affinity
for music of the romantic period, Mendelssohn and Brahms, but particularly Brahms.

SHAWNA STEWART. Well, is there anything else that you’d like to share?

DOYLE PREHEIM. You know, I’m just looking through my notes here. As we talk I’m
aware of the fact that I look at him as a genius. But as all geniuses, I think he was a very complex
person with incredible gifts – complex, but well, what a giant.

SHAWNA STEWART. What does “complex” mean with regards to him?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Well, I guess for me it’s more psychologically.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

DOYLE PREHEIM. You know, I really don’t know who the real Charles Hirt was, other
than an incredibly creative, gifted musician, but I don’t really know what made him tick more
psychologically than anything else. Does that make sense?

SHAWNA STEWART. It does, yeah.
317

DOYLE PREHEIM. You know?

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

DOYLE PREHEIM. I mean his music-making – that was clear to me. He was really,
really a master at it, but personally and psychologically, I think he was very complex, and I don’t
know if there were any demons. You know a lot of people of genius have other struggles, and he
may have had more than any of us were aware of, but he didn’t bring them to the choir; he didn’t
bring them to classrooms. That remains a mystery to me.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow.

DOYLE PREHEIM. I think to sum up my inspiration from him was that he actually was
able to will through gesture and demeanor and somewhat through the language, whatever group
he was working with, to acquire or to achieve much greater than was even reasonable to expect. I
saw him work. I had him come to Goshen College where I taught for thirty years, to conduct a
performance of the Mozart Requiem. In one weekend, he had those singers eating out of the palm
of his hands and they just sang way better than they were capable of.
And I think that is a tribute to this kind of indescribable quality that he had to just draw
music out through his gestures, through his demeanor and a careful choice of, you know,
descriptive language, but I think that’s for me the genius of this person.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow.

DOYLE PREHEIM. I owe him my career in music. This is just a personal anecdote, not
part of your questions at all, but I was a senior in college, and I was a kid off a farm in South
Dakota and the college invited Dr. Hirt to come and direct the Brahms Requiem and I was
selected to do the baritone solos, and he came and worked with us for a weekend. We did the
performance on a Sunday afternoon, and after the performance, he asked me, “Doyle, what are
your plans for next year? You’re graduating?” And I said, “Well, I’m going to go back to
Freeman, South Dakota and take over the family farm.” There was a moment of silence. He said,
“Well, you know, farming… that’s a really honorable profession. We need people to grow us
some food. But if you’re interested,” and that “but if you’re interested” changed my life.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Because he said, “If you’re interested, I have one scholarship left in
my Church Music Department at the University of Southern California. If you want to come and
study with us, the scholarship could be yours.”

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow.

DOYLE PREHEIM. And I thought about that for five seconds, literally and I said, “You
know that’s an open door that I cannot ignore.” I have to walk through that. I don’t know where
it’s going to take me. So that’s how I got to USC. So I’m forever eternally grateful for that
318
opportunity that he gave me and then when I got to USC – all the incredible experience that he
made possible.

SHAWNA STEWART. Wow, wow!

DOYLE PREHEIM. So that’s just my personal story.

SHAWNA STEWART. I love it. You know, at the beginning of my interviews I say any
personal stories or anecdotes are welcome. My intent in the paper is to somehow piece together, if
it’s possible, the real Charles Hirt, you know? Go ahead.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Another thing that I must say, and this I think is applicable to your
question, I found him (all that I said about him keeping a professional business) I found him
intensely loyal to the profession, of course, choral music, but I found him intensely loyal to his
graduate students. So after I was out of USC and at Goshen College, if I had a dilemma, a
question (I didn’t do this often), but occasionally I would write him a letter and say, “Do you
have any advice?” He always answered. He always answered very often in just long hand, a
written response and I always felt that he was extremely proud but really, really supportive of his
graduates.

SHAWNA STEWART. Interesting. It is evident that he really cared even though he kept
himself at a distance.

DOYLE PREHEIM. I think he cared.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

DOYLE PREHEIM. I really think he cared, and so I’m not sure why the distance. What
he was trying to protect himself from… that’s part of my answer to your question about
psychologically. You know, “What’s this guy like?” It seems like a dichotomy to me. He kept in
touch. If you reached out, he would always respond. He would not reach out first usually, but he
had so many graduates, you know?

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure.

DOYLE PREHEIM. And he lived a very busy, busy life. Incredibly active life.

SHAWNA STEWART. Did you ever meet his children?

DOYLE PREHEIM. His children? I met his daughter one time, just one time. Yeah.

SHAWNA STEWART. And was Lucy anymore engaged with the students than Dr. Hirt
was?

DOYLE PREHEIM. On tour I would say yes, she was more interested than he. She was a
sweetheart. She put up with a whole lot. She was a walking medicine chest. He had a lot of
ailments that he was taking care of already at that time. He had some medical issues. She was a
319
great support and a lifelong musical companion, of course. My wife and I stopped to see her in
2006, just about two years before she died, and she was just sharp as a tack. We reminisced about
that ’64 tour, and she knew the names of every person on the tour, and it was just wonderful. So
that’s the last time I saw her.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. Well, is there anything else you’d like to contribute?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Shawna, I think I have covered my reflections, my recollections.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay.

DOYLE PREHEIM. And thank you for encouraging me to go back and think about some
of these things which I hadn’t thought about a lot in the last couple of years.

SHAWNA STEWART. Sure. Well, I thank you for your candor.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Overall, you know Dr. Hirt is a giant in my estimation, and I owe so
much to him.

SHAWNA STEWART. Yeah.

DOYLE PREHEIM. I’m glad you’re doing this study.

SHAWNA STEWART. Thank you.

DOYLE PREHEIM. I wish you well on the interviews and your final dissertation.

SHAWNA STEWART. Thank you so much, and if I have any questions, once I’ve done
the transcriptions, could I contact you again via email or on the phone?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Absolutely.

SHAWNA STEWART. That’s great.

DOYLE PREHEIM. That is fine.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay and also just for formality’s sake, is it okay that you are
named in my dissertation if that would be fitting?

DOYLE PREHEIM. Yes.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay.

DOYLE PREHEIM. I would not mind that all.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay, great. Well, thank you so much for your time and for
being my very first interview. I very much appreciate it.
320

DOYLE PREHEIM. Well, good luck. I hope we’re off to a good start.

SHAWNA STEWART. It sounds like it. I love it. All right, have a wonderful day.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Thank you.

SHAWNA STEWART. Thank you.

DOYLE PREHEIM. Bye now.

SHAWNA STEWART. Bye.

321
APPENDIX Q: INTERVIEW WITH JOEL PRESSMAN

JOEL PRESSMAN
October 17, 2012
6:00 p.m.
In-Person Interview, home of Joel Pressman.

SHAWNA STEWART. Okay, would you please state your name, where you work and
how long you have been there.

JOEL PRESSMAN. I am still Joel Pressman. I teach at Beverly Hills High School. This
is my thirty-eighth year there.

SHAWNA STEWART. This interview – first of all, thanks a lot for doing it. I know it’s a
lot in all of our time.

JOEL PRESSMAN. You’re welcome.

SHAWNA STEWART. The interview is supposed to last forty-five minutes. I’ll start
wrapping up around forty minutes. It goes very, very fast.

JOEL PRESSMAN. Okay.

SHAWNA STEWART. I’ve constructed ten questions that I hope are sort of a jumping-
off point for us. Feel free to add anything else that you think is relevant; it doesn’t have to answer
the question directly.

JOEL PRESSMAN. Okay, like no debates?

SHAWNA STEWART. Very much so. All right, in what capacity did you know Dr. Hirt
and for how long or during what years?

JOEL PRESSMAN. Who?

SHAWNA STEWART. Or wrong person.

JOEL PRESSMAN. Just kidding, yeah, sorry. I sang in Chamber Singers for four years;
three years as an undergrad and first year as a master’s student. Then I was away for a couple of
years and I came back to finish my master’s and I sang with him again. I was told I would never
last in Chamber Singers because he always liked to have the last word, and he said something
funny one day and I laughed, and he said, “You know, I just say these things to amuse myself,
and you haven’t missed one of them.” And we bonded there and we realized our personalities
were very similar. He allowe