Benjamin A Kolodziej

In Music from the Hilltop, Benjamin A. Kolodziej studies three significant academic musical figures to weave a narrative that not only details the role musical studies played in the development of Southern Methodist University but also relates a history of church music and pipe organs in Dallas, Texas. Bertha Stevens Cassidy (1876–1959), the first organ professor and the only woman on the faculty of the new university, established herself as a leader and veritable dean of the church music community, managing a career of significant performances and teaching. Her student and protÉgÉ, Dora Poteet Barclay (1903–1961), broadened the pedagogical horizons for her students. Many of her own students achieved great professional heights as performers and church musicians.Robert Theodore Anderson (1934–2009) was intellectually able to bridge the gap between the theologians of the Methodist seminary and the performers at the Meadows School of the Arts. He consulted with the Dallas Symphony to prepare for the installation of an organ in the new Meyerson Symphony Center—an organ that would influence concert hall instruments in subsequent decades.

This is the tenth in a series of monographs--Shaping American Lutheran Church Music--published by the Center for Church Music, Concordia University Chicago, River Forest, Illinois., highlighting people, movements, and events that have helped to shape the course of church music among Lutherans in North America. In this volume, Benjamin A. Kolodziej uncovers and records the story of the Lutherans who undertook the daunting and uncertain work of carving out a new life in a new land, and of the music that accompanied them. The book is rich in historical and contextual detail, and Kolodziej overcomes the difficulty of delineating different Lutheran sects--immigrants aligned to whatever iteration of the Lutheran church was available, --to tell the stories of the church's past in clear and compelling prose. The book will be a great help to scholars, historians, and musicians alike.