Dwight, John Sullivan

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Dwight, John Sullivan

Dwight, John Sullivan, American music critic and editor; b. Boston, May 13, 1813; d. there, Sept. 5, 1893. He graduated from Harvard in 1832, and was one of the founders and most active members of the Harvard Musical Assn. After studying for the ministry, in 1840 he took charge of the Unitarian Church at Northampton, Mass. His literary and socialistic proclivities, however, gained the mastery; he gave up his pastorate, and entered the ill-starred Brook Farm Community as a teacher of German music and the classics. Returning to Boston in 1848, after the failure of the socialistic experiment, he devoted himself to literature, founded Dwight’s Music Journal in 1852, and remained its ed. in chief until its discontinuance in 1881. A prominent feature in this periodical was the valuable historical essays of A.W. Thayer. The entire journal is available in reprint (N.Y., 1968). Dwight also publ. Translations of Select Minor Poems from the German of Goethe and Schiller, with Notes.

Bibliography

G. Cooke, /. S. D., Brook-Farmer, Editor, and Critic of Music (Boston, 1898).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire