Howard, John Tasker
Howard, John Tasker
Howard, John Tasker, eminent American writer on music; b. Brooklyn, Nov. 30, 1890; d. West Orange, N.Y., Nov. 20, 1964. He attended Williams Coll. in Williamstown, Mass., then studied composition with Howard Brockway and Mortimer Wilson. He was managing editor of the Musician (1919–22), and served as educational director of the Ampico Corp. (1922–28). He ed. the music section of McCalVs Magazine (1928–30) and Cue (1936–38), and then taught at Columbia Univ. (1950–54). From 1940 to 1956 he was the curator of the Americana Music Collection at the N.Y. Public Library, which he enriched to a great extent. His major achievement was the publication of several books and monographs on American music and musicians. He was also a composer of modest, but respectable, attainments. He wrote a piece for Piano and Orch., Fantasy on a Choral Theme (Orange, N.J., Feb. 20, 1929), Foster Sonatina for Violin and Piano, piano pieces, and some songs.
Writings
(all publ. in N.Y.): Our American Music (1931; 4th ed., rev., 1965); Stephen Foster, America’s Troubadour (1934; 2nd ed., rev., 1953); Ethelbert Nevin (1935); Our Contemporary Composers, American Music in the 20th Century (1941); This Modern Music (1942; new ed. by J. Lyons, 1957, as Modern Music); The World’s Great Operas (1948); with G. Bellows, A Short History of Music in America (1957).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire