DEATH OF C. H. MORSE FORMER MUSIC DIRECTOR
The death occurred in Boston, June 5, of Professor Charles H. Morse, Director of Music at Dartmouth from 1901 to 1916. Professor Morse, who was the first Director of Music at Wellesley College and later founded the Northwestern Conservatory of Music in Minneapolis died at the Carney Hospital following a brief illness. He was 74 years old, having been born at Bradford, Mass., in January, 1853. In addition to his services at Wellesley and at Dartmouth Professor Morse was also one of the founders of the American Guild of Organists.
The degree of Bachelor of Music awarded to Professer Morse by Boston University's College of Music in 1877 is said to have been the first ever given to a music student in the United States. He was only 22 when he assumed the directorship of the music department at Wellesley, and its growth was remarkable during his ten years' tenure of the position, its equipment increasing from eight pianos and two teachers in 1875 to thirty-six pianos, two pipe organs, eleven teachers, and a music hall costing $25,- 000 in 1885.
The ensuing six years Professor Morse devoted to the establishment and direction of the Northwestern Conservatory of Music. He returned East in 1891 and for eight years was organist and choirmaster of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. Since its organization in 1891 he had been First Vice-President of the Brooklyn Institute's Department of Music. In 1894 and 1895 he was unanimously elected President of the New York State Music Teachers' Association.
Professor Morse had also been conductor of the Gounod Club of Minneapolis and of the Connecticut Valley Choir Union. He was musical editor of the Plymouth Hymnal and had been President of the Alumni of the New England Conservatory of Music, a trustee of the Conservatory, editor of The Church Organist, The Wellesley Collection and other volumes of music. He retired on a Carnegie pension in 1918.
He was twice married. His first wife, the former Frances Kimball, died in April, 1917; the second, the former May C. Conant, whom he married a year later, died in 1922.
