CHARLES HARRISON MILLER
Picture from 'History of Public
School Music in the United States', by Edward Bailey Birge.
Copyright (c) 1966 by
MENC. Used with permission.
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Charles H. Miller was director of music in the Rochester Public Schools for twenty-one years. He retired in 1938. During his career, he taught public school music methods at Nebraska Wesleyan University, Rutgers University, and the Eastman School of Music. As a founding member of the Music Supervisor's National Conference (later M.E.N.C.), he served as the organization's Secretary in 1915, President in 1918, and as a member of the Music Education Research Council at its inception in 1918 as the educational council of the conference. Prior to his tenure at the Eastman School, Miller was the Supervisor of Music in Lincoln, Nebraska where he pioneered in making voice training classes a regular part of the high school curriculum. He later developed the Rochester Music Guild which has grown to include choral and orchestral groups of professional stature.
Charles Miller died in 1955 at the age of 87. His obituary was posted in the Rochester Times-Union (June 3, 1955). It read as follows:
Charles Harrison Miller, who guided the development of the music program in the Rochester public schools for 20 years, died early yesterday (June 2, 1955) in Albuquerque, N.M. He was 87. Mr. Miller served as director of music for the Board of Education from 1918 through 1938, when he retired and was succeeded by his assistant, Alfred Spouse, present director. Mr. Miller died in an Albuquerque hospital to which he had been admitted about a month ago. For the last several years he had been living with his daughter, Mrs. Jessie Siegel, at Los Alamos. His wife died more than a decade ago. The body is to be returned to Rochester for burial. Tentative plans call for funeral services next Friday afternoon.
Mr. Miller has been credited by local educators with paying the most significant role in the early development of the school music program. When he became director the program consisted of only two orchestras and two glee clubs and employed eight teachers. At his retirement in 1938, some 75 teachers were directing scores of orchestras and choirs. As a graduate of Wesleyan College of Nebraska and the New School of Methods in Chicago, Mr. Miller became director after a year of teaching in the school system here. During his tenure many of the leaders of the current music program were employed. He was a member and former officer of the National Council of Music Educators and a member of the Music Committee for the National Secondary Education Board.
At the time of his retirement, Mr. Miller was credited by his successor, Spouse, with several major innovations in developing the Rochester school music program. One of these was the plan under which the late George Eastman, a close friend of Mr. Miller, donated instruments for free use by school pupils learning to play. The innovations, Spouse wrote in 1938, included:
"The band and orchestra program, which entailed engaging the first supervisor of instrumental music in the country. The establishement of voice training classes in our senior high schools. The establishment of Saturday morning sining organizations. The teaching of music in the elementary schools with a new method which omits all drills and the use of the syllables do, re, mi, etc."
Many of the ideas advanced by Mr. Miller in Rochester later were adopted by school music programs throughout the nation.
His obituary was also posted in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and a brief repeat was posted in the Rochester Times-Union detailing funeral services.
Rochester Times Union. Charles H. Miller, Music Leader, Dies. Obituary. 3 June, 1955.
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. Charles H. Miller. Obituary. 5 June, 1955.
"Notes from the Field." Music Supervisors Journal (September 1938), 71.
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Submitted by
Barry Kraus
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