Sherwood, William Hall

1854

Distineuished American pianist, composer and teacher, who has exerted a great influence for good upon American music and whose career has been eminently successful. He was born at Lyons, N. Y., the son of the Rev. Lyman H. Sherwood, and to his father he owes much   of his subsequent success. He received his first instruction from him, graduating from the Lyons Musical Academy, of which his father was founder and principal, then studying with Edward Hamburger, Pychowski and William Mason. He later went to Europe, becoming a pupil of Kullak and Deppe at Berlin and later of the great theorist, Weitzmann, finishing his studies at Weimar with Liszt and Richter. Sherwood was organist at the English Church at Stuttgart and at the English Chapel at Berlin, then returned to America in 1876, and settled in Boston, where he became connected with the New England Conservatory. He next went to New York and in 1889 moved to Chicago, where, he was head of the piano section of the Chicago Consevatory, until 1897, when he founded the independent Sherwood School. He has been married twice, first in 1874 to Miss Mary Fay, a well-known pianist and in 1887, his second wife eing Miss Estelle F. Adams, a pupil. Mr. Sherwood has appeared in all the principal cities of the United States as a pianist, in Canada and Mexico, and is the only American ever invited to play with the leading German orchestras. He was most cordially received abroad, and is generally regarded as the first American piano virtuoso. He has composed considerable high-grade music for the piano and is the author of a number of works on music, among them Music Study and Interpretative Technique. His compositions include mazurkas; suites; scherzo-caprice; a gypsy dance; an Allegro Patetico and a scherzo-symphonique, besides numerous studies, several of which have been used by Kullak, his former teacher, in his more advanced classes. Mr. Sherwood is a member of the American College of Musicians and one of the examiners of the piano department.