Coeme, Louis (Adolphe)

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Coeme, Louis (Adolphe)

Coeme, Louis (Adolphe), American conductor, teacher, and composer; b. Newark, N.J., Feb. 27, 1870; d. Boston, Sept. 11, 1922. He studied violin with Kneisel in Boston and composition with Paine at Harvard Univ. (1888–90). After training in organ and composition with Rheinberger in Munich (1890–93), he became the first to obtain a Ph.D. in music at an American univ. with his diss. The Evolution of Modern Orchestration at Harvard Univ. in 1905 (pubi, in N.Y., 1908). He served as music director in Troy, N.Y. (1907–09), director of the Olivet (Mich.) Coll. Cons. (1909–10), director of the Univ. of Wise. School of Music (1910–15), and prof, at Conn. Coll. for Women in New London (1915–22). His works include the opera Zenobia (1902; Bremen, Dec. 1, 1905), the melodrama Sakuntala, incidental music, overtures, and symphonic poems, including Hiawatha (1893), a Romantic Concerto for Violin and Orch., a String Quartet, Swedish Sonata for Violin and Piano, piano pieces, songs, and partsongs.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire