Musician
Centurion, 1921–1951
Born 20 July 1871 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Died 9 February 1951 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Buried Sandwich, Massachusetts
Proposed by Walter L. Bogert and Arthur Whiting
Elected 5 February 1921 at age forty-nine
Century Memorial
Ernest Hutcheson was probably the premier pianist of America. He had been playing the instrument so long that he often said he could not recall when he began. He remarked that he had “the happiest recollection of playing the piano when I was three.”
He was equally celebrated as a teacher, and headed the piano department at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore from 1900 to 1912. He became Dean of the Juilliard Graduate School in 1927, and in 1937 he was elected President of the Juilliard School of Music. As President his contribution as a wise and sagacious administrator is outstanding; and the public, always prone to put a man in a pigeon hole, thinks of him in this capacity rather than of his extraordinary ability as a performer and interpretative artist.
His technique was ample and easy; and the effect of complete naturalness and lack of conventional virtuoso approach remained with him through all the years. Although as a child he had been an “infant prodigy” he was completely devoid of affectation or exhibitionism. His playing was characterized by a buoyancy and rhythmic vitality that “made the inner parts audible.”
He was a defender of American music and musicians, and once said he pitied the man who “couldn’t enjoy good jazz or Gilbert and Sullivan for what they are worth.” But his heart was with Bach and Mozart and Beethoven, and under his hand their music lived and breathed and spoke to those who listened.
George W. Martin
1951/1952 Century Association Yearbook