Percy Goetschius

Percy Goetschius
Born	(1853-08-10)August 10, 1853 Paterson, New Jersey
Died	October 29, 1943(1943-10-29) (aged 90) Manchester, New Hampshire
Occupation	Music educator
Spouse	Maria C. C. Stephany ​ ​ (m. 1899)​
Children	2
Signature

Percy Goetschius (August 10, 1853 – October 29, 1943) was an American composer, music theorist, and teacher who won international fame in the teaching of composition and music theory.^[1]

Goetschius was born in Paterson, New Jersey.^[2] As a youth, he was encouraged in his musical ambitions by Ureli Corelli Hill, a well-known conductor and violinist at the time, who was a friend of the Goetschius family.^[3] Young Goetschius held the positions of organist at Paterson's Second Presbyterian Church from 1868 to 1870 and at the same city's First Presbyterian Church from 1870 to 1873, as well as that of pianist to Mr. Benson's Paterson Choral Society. Although his family had intended him to become a surveyor's assistant, he went to Stuttgart, Württemberg (Germany), in 1873 to study composition and music theory at the Royal Conservatory with Immanuel Faisst, and soon advanced to become Faisst's teaching assistant and eventually a professor. In 1885, King Charles of Württemberg conferred upon him the title of Royal Professor. He composed much, and also reviewed musical performances for the Stuttgart and broader German press. Syracuse University conferred an Honorary Music Doctorate on Goetschius for the academic year 1892–1893.^[4] In 1892, he took a position in the New England Conservatory, Boston, and four years later opened a studio in that city. In 1905, he went to the staff of the Institute of Musical Art (which later merged into Juilliard School) in New York City, headed by Frank Damrosch. Goetschius retired from the Institute in 1925 and spent the remainder of his life in Manchester, New Hampshire, continuing to write into his eighties.

Goetschius's notable pupils include Pauline Alderman, Henry Cowell, Lillian Fuchs, Howard Hanson, Swan Hennessy, Julia Klumpke, Daniel Gregory Mason, Wallingford Riegger, Bernard Rogers, Alice Marion Shaw, Carrie Burpee Shaw and Arthur Shepherd. Although Goetschius as a teacher had a fundamentally conservative outlook, he appears to have been sensitive and supportive towards his students' individuality, encouraging, for example, Henry Cowell's early experiments with tone clusters.^[5]

Goetschius published several textbooks on theory, including:

As of the mid-20th century, use of Goetschius' books, as texts, is rare; albeit, the books contain original theoretical ideas and pedagogical approaches that endure today.

Perhaps the most important theory put forth by Goetschius is that of natural harmonic progression, which first appeared in The Theory and Practice of Tone-Relations. According to Goetschius' theory, the triad V in a key resolves to the tonic triad I because of the acoustically perfect interval of the fifth between the root of V and that of I:

Goetschius believed that, since the upper tone of the fifth is a harmonic of the lower, a chord rooted on the upper tone demands to be "resolved" by progressing to the chord rooted on the lower tone. Moreover, this theory is extended to other chords in a key, so that the normal tendency of a chord (triad or seventh chord) in a key is to progress to the chord rooted a fifth lower.

My family name is (or should be) pronounced get'she-us. The family hails from Switzerland (1714), where the name was Götschi. One of my ancestors, middle of the 18th century, an earnest Latin scholar, affixed the Latin terminal us.

— Percy Goetschius, as he told the Literary Digest^[6]

He was married twice, the second time to Maria C. C. Stephany on June 14, 1899. He had two children.^[2]

Percy Goetschius died at his home in Manchester, New Hampshire on October 29, 1943.^[7]

• Percy Goetschius, Theorist and Teacher (Ph.D. dissertation), by Mother Catherine Agnes Carroll, RSCJ (1910–1996), Eastman School of Music (1961); OCLC 31051516, 12860645
  Note: Mother Carroll had been a long-standing music professor at Manhattanville College
• A History of Harmonic Theory in the United States, by David M. Thompson (PhD) (born 1951), Kent State University Press (1980); OCLC 681085691
  As of 2017, Thompson is Professor Emeritus at Marian University, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where he taught music theory, history, music administration, and American music

• Works by Percy Goetschius at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Percy Goetschius at the Internet Archive
• Free scores by Percy Goetschius at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)