author
Thomas Whitney Surette
1861–1941
A longtime champion of music appreciation, this American composer and teacher worked to make serious listening feel open and human rather than remote or academic. He is especially remembered for founding the Concord Summer School of Music and for writing warmly argued books about how music fits into everyday life.
2 Audiobooks
The Appreciation of Music - Vol. 1 (of 3)
by Thomas Whitney Surette, Daniel Gregory Mason
Music and Life: A study of the relations between ourselves and music
by Thomas Whitney Surette
About the author
Born in Concord, Massachusetts, Thomas Whitney Surette was an American musician, composer, and teacher who lived from 1861 to 1941. He studied piano with Arthur Foote and composition with J. K. Paine at Harvard in the late 1880s and early 1890s, then built a career that mixed composing, lecturing, and teaching.
Surette cared deeply about helping ordinary listeners feel at home with music. Sources describe him as a major force behind the spread of music-appreciation courses in the United States, and in 1915 he founded the Concord Summer School of Music, a project closely tied to his belief that music education should be accessible, lively, and practical.
He also wrote books that carried those ideas to a wider audience, including Music and Life and, with Daniel Gregory Mason, The Appreciation of Music. His reputation rests less on celebrity than on influence: he spent decades encouraging people to listen more thoughtfully and to treat music as part of a full, engaged life.