Rebecca Wilder Holmes

Rebecca Wilder Holmes (June 12, 1871 – January 17, 1953) was an American musician. She was a violinist, and taught at Mount Holyoke College and Smith College. She was founder and first director of the Smith College Symphony Orchestra.

Rebecca Wilder Holmes
A middle-aged white woman with dark hair and brows, wearing a dark dress with a scooped neckline
Rebecca Wilder Holmes, from the 1925 yearbook of Smith College
BornJune 12, 1871
Benson, Vermont
DiedJanuary 17, 1953 (aged 81)
Los Angeles, California
Occupation(s)Musician, music professor
RelativesHarris Hawthorne Wilder (cousin)

Early life and education

Holmes was born in Benson, Vermont,[1] the daughter of Henry M. Holmes and Elizabeth Wilder Holmes. Her father was a clergyman. Her maternal uncle Solon Wilder was a composer, hymn writer, and music educator; her cousin Harris Hawthorne Wilder was a biology professor at Smith College.[2] She trained as a violinist in Berlin, under Joseph Joachim,[3][4] with further studies under Hugo Heermann in Frankfurt and Julius Eichberg in Boston.[5][6]

Career
A white woman standing, holding a violin and bow
Rebecca Wilder Holmes, from a 1901 publication

Holmes taught and played violin concerts in New England in the 1890s.[7][8] She was described as a "gifted young violinist", "making rapid strides to the front in her profession", in 1900.[9][10] She played a Guarneri violin made in 1721 and an Amati violin made in 1660 at a chamber concert in 1904.[11]

She was a professor of music at Smith College from the 1890s until her retirement in 1936.[12] She was founder and director of the Smith College Symphony Orchestra.[13][14][15] She also taught violin at Mount Holyoke College.[16][17] From 1924 to 1925 she taught at the Springfield National Institute of Musical Art.[18] She had a well-known collection of antique instruments and old musical manuscripts, many of them gathered on visits to Europe.[19][20]

Publications
  • "Plan of Study in Outside Violin Instruction as Basis for Credit in the High School" (1917)[21]
  • Progressive Scale and Chord Studies for the Violin (1922)[22]
  • "Harmonics in Theory and Practice" (1925, musical composition)[23]

Personal life

Holmes lived with an older brother and a niece in Los Angeles in her later years. She died there in 1953, at the age of 81. Her niece and namesake Rebecca Haight Hathaway was a cellist.[24][25] Her collection of musical instruments was sold or donated to Smith College by 1974,[26] and one of her harp guitars is in the musical instrument collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.[27]

References
  1. Holmes's birth date and birth place are from her Emergency Passport Application dated August 1, 1914, in the US Passport Applications 1795-1925, via Ancestry.
  2. "Collection: Harris Hawthorne Wilder Papers". Smith College Finding Aids. Retrieved 2022-06-15.
  3. "A Delightful Musicale". The Morning Journal-Courier. 1896-10-22. p. 3. Retrieved 2022-06-16 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. "News from the Churches". The Morning Journal-Courier. 1896-10-24. p. 8. Retrieved 2022-06-16 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. Mount Holyoke College, The Llamarada (1910 yearbook): 28.
  6. The Musical Blue Book of America. Musical Blue Book Corporation. 1922. p. 136.
  7. "Successful Pupils Recital". The Morning Journal-Courier. 1898-03-30. p. 2. Retrieved 2022-06-15 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. "A Notable Musical Event". The Morning Journal-Courier. 1899-12-28. p. 2. Retrieved 2022-06-15 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. "Miss Rebecca Wilder Holmes". Musical Courier. 40: 7. April 18, 1900.
  10. "Rebecca W. Holmes". Musical Courier. 40: 25. January 10, 1900.
  11. "About College". The Smith College Monthly. 11: 608. June 1904.
  12. "Smith Honors Five Women". The Boston Globe. 1936-06-15. p. 15. Retrieved 2022-06-15 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. Tarlow, Karen (1981-10-28). "A Brand New Symphony Orchestra is Born". Daily Hampshire Gazette. p. 21. Retrieved 2022-06-16 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. Hamburger, Elizabeth (May 1925). "Fifty Years of College Traditions". The Smith Alumnae Quarterly. 16: 308.
  15. Legate, Laura (April 1910). "Orchestra Concert". The Smith College Monthly. 17: 428.
  16. College, Mount Holyoke (1924). General Catalogue of Mount Holyoke College, 1837-1924. The College. p. 16.
  17. "Musicale of Woman's Club". Vermont Phoenix. 1916-02-18. p. 1. Retrieved 2022-06-15 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. "Departmental Notes". The Smith Alumnae Quarterly. 16: 63. November 1924.
  19. "Musical Texts for Collectors". The Baltimore Sun. 1932-07-26. p. 8. Retrieved 2022-06-15 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. "Trans-Ocean Air Mail Postcard Received Here". The San Francisco Examiner. 1929-08-10. p. 2. Retrieved 2022-06-16 – via Newspapers.com.
  21. Holmes, Rebecca Wilder (1917). "Plan of Study in Outside Violin Instruction as Basis for Credit in the High School". Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Proceedings 1916: 124–129.
  22. "Music and Musical Literature". The Violinist: 167. November 1922.
  23. Catalog of Copyright Entries: Musical compositions. Library of Congress, Copyright Office. 1926. p. 1140.
  24. "Smith to Graduate its Largest Class". The Boston Globe. 1922-06-19. p. 5. Retrieved 2022-06-15 – via Newspapers.com.
  25. "With Viol Da Gamba". The Honolulu Advertiser. 1941-03-30. p. 36. Retrieved 2022-06-16 – via Newspapers.com.
  26. Music Library Association. Committee on Musical Instrument Collections (1974). A survey of musical instrument collections in the United States and Canada. Internet Archive. [Ann Arbor, Mich.] : Music Library Association. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-914954-00-2 – via Internet Archive.
  27. Scherr, Emilius Nicolai. "Harp-guitar". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Retrieved 2022-06-16.
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