Charles Alexander Fullerton

MENC President 1911-1912

Born October 11, 1861 Manchester, New Hampshire

Died December 14, 1945, Cedar Falls, Iowa

B.S. degree in music, Iowa State Teachers College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1890

Teacher and administrator, rural Iowa schools

Professor, Iowa State Teachers College 1896-1934

Professor Emeritus, Iowa State Teachers College 1934-1945

Significant publications:

Fullerton, Charles A. Choir Songs and Practical Instruction in Public School Music.

Cedar Falls, IA: Fullerton & Gray, 1900

________. The New Song Book and Music Reader. Cedar Falls, IA: Fullerton & Gray,

1910.

________. A One Book Course in Elementary Music and Selected Songs for Schools.

Revised and Enlarged. Chicago: Follett Publishing Company, 1931.

Fullerton, Charles A., Margaret Fullerton, and Irving Wolfe. Together We Sing. Chicago:

Follett Publishing Company, 1950.

Professional accomplishments:

Speech to first meeting of Music Supervisor’s National Conference entitled “How Can

We Develop Skill in Sight Reading Without Sacrificing Musical Spirit?” 1907

Member, National Research Council of Music Education 1928

Invited presentation of “Choir Plan” to European teachers 1931

Charles Fullerton believed that all people should have opportunities to sing, especially in rural areas where music teachers were scarce, and he advocated a method to foster musical singing based on songs rather than note reading. Former music supervisor Frances Elliott Clark undertook a project at the Victor Talking Machine Company that resulted in the first recording of children’s songs from Fullerton’s The New Song Book and Music Reader published in 1910. Fullerton used the recording as a musical model, developing a teaching process he called the “Choir Plan.” According to this plan, students gradually progressed from listening to the recording while looking at their books to singing along with the recording, and finally, to singing without the recording. Fullerton claimed that this method was better for helping students become musical, expressive singers in the short amount of time allotted for music classes than teaching them to sight sing note by note. For more than twenty years, he used the model with rural school children and adult classes at Iowa State Teachers College, actively promoting his ideas through writings, presentations, and concerts with rural choirs.

Personal biography:

Married Alma Gray 1897, wife killed in traffic accident in Paris 1931

Children: Roderick Craig Fullerton, Craig Kerr Fullerton, Margaret Gray Fullerton,

Ruth Fullerton

Quotes:

“The aristocratic notion that the mass of the people are to get their music merely as listeners is contrary to experience and contrary to American ideals.”

C. A. Fullerton, “An Experiment in School Music,” Music Educators Journal 22, No. 5 (December 1936): 26.

“We should abandon the notion that so-called music appreciation can be added to people from the outside – that a community is becoming musical because it has a band and an orchestra, or a glee club and a choir, or that a nation is becoming musical on account of its radios and motion pictures, however helpful these may be; indeed we should accept the fact that the real background for musical growth and appreciation is, as nearly all music educators know, the participation of the individual in the successful recreating of music.”

“We should develop music festivals and let the contests fade away. . . .Music is robbed of much of its charm when it is used merely for beating someone.”

C.A. Fullerton, “What of the Second Hundred Years?” Music Educators Journal 24, No. 5 (March 1938): 77.

Sources Used:

Birge, Edward Bailey. History of Public School Music in the United States, new and

expanded ed. Reston, VA: Music Educators National Conference, 1966.

Fullerton, C.A. “An Experiment in School Music,” Music Educators Journal 22, No. 5

(December 1936): 26-27.

________. “Music in Rural Communities,” Music Supervisors JournaI 14, No. 2

(December 1927): 35-

________. “Musical Growth Through Musical Experiences,” Music Educators Journal

27, No. 6 (May/June 1941): 64-65.

________. “What of the Second Hundred Years?” Music Educators Journal 24, No. 5

(March 1938): 26-27, 76-77.

Thuerauf, Jeff. “C.A. Fullerton Biography,” MENC Founders of 1907. Available from

http://www. public.asu.edu/~aajth/history/fullerton~c.a./fullerton.html; Internet.

Waters, Lorrain E. “Charles A. Fullerton,” Music Educators Journal 32, No. 3

(January/February 1946): 23.

Wolfe, Irving. “Rural School Music Missionary,” Music Educators Journal 46, No. 5

(April/May 1960): 26-28.

Submitted by Kaye Ferguson, October 2002