Parsons, Albert Ross

1847-

American organist, pianist and teacher. Born at Sandusky, Ohio. He began to take piano lessons when he was six years old from Robert Denton in Buffalo, and played at a concert there when nine years old. From 1858 to 1863 he was organist in one of the Indianapolis churches, and then went to New York, where for three years he studied under Ritter. Going to Leipsic in 1867 he became a pupil of the Conservatory, where he took piano lessons from Moscheles, Papperitz, Reinecke and Wenzel and counterpoint and fugue from Paul and Richten In 1870 he removed to Berlin, where he studied at Tausig's High School for pianists and at Kullak's New Academy of Music. Since 1872 he has lived in New York, where he teaches and where, from 1874 to 1879, he was organist of the First Reformed Church, then of Holy Trinity, and since 1885 of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. He became president of an American Society for the Promotion of Musical Art in 1890; was one of the founders of the American College of Musicians of the State University of New York, of which society he has been president since 1893; also examiner for piano at Evelyn College, Princeton, and of the Metropolitan College of Music at New York. In 1875 he was editor of Benham's Review, and held the same position on the staff of The Orpheus from 1879 to 1885. He has written musical, archaeological and genealogical literature and edited the Complete Works of Chopin and Schumann and Wagner's Beethoven. Of his songs and piano-music, may be mentioned: The Night Has a Thousand Eyes; Break, Break; Crossing the Bar; a national anthem, My Country Tis of Thee; Humoresque-Tarantelle; and The Lion and the Lizard.