then won a Koussevitzky Prize, which afforded him the opportunity to study with Mexican composer Carlos Chavez at Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center. Miller had been recommended for the prize by Aaron Copland, who called Miller one of the “young talents whose music commands attention.” Miller later earned a master’s degree in composition from the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford, where he taught for 12 years before joining the faculty of Oberlin. Over the course of his career, Miller won two Ohio Arts Council Awards, a composition award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Cleveland Arts Prize, among other honors. Miller’s compositions—he wrote roughly 70 of them in all—were performed by a number of fellow Oberlin faculty members, including Peter Takács, Gregory Fulkerson, Daune Mahy, and Marlene and Michael Rosen. Though his works tended toward the upbeat, Miller was most proud of The Seven Last Days, an apocalyptic piece he wrote for chorus, orchestra, film, and tape. “Ed had a fantastic attentiveness to the general flow of music,” says Professor of Violin Gregory Fulkerson, for whom Miller wrote a piece called Beyond the Wheel in the mid-1980s. Fulkerson played it in Cleveland and New York, where a New York Times critic praised it for its “shimmering otherworldly texture.” Seven years after his retirement, Miller relocated to New Mexico with his wife, Judi Miller, a former Oberlin professor of psychology.
expect the same quality in his teaching that he expected of them in their work,” says Marilyn McDonald, professor of violin and a longtime friend of the Miranda family. “He was an inspiration to all in the vigorous manner with which he lived life.” In his life and in his work, Miranda expressed great pride in his native country. He was dedicated to studying the music of Portugal, including composer Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos, about whom he published a monograph in 1992. More recently, he edited two editions of the composer’s music; the last of them, Works for Voice and Instruments, was finished in 2014 and was shared with Miranda at the hospital. An Oberlin resident since 1983, Miranda and his wife Sharon delighted in spending summers together at their cottage in New Hampshire. In retirement, Miranda became active in various community groups, including the Peace and Justice Committee, the Community Peace Builders Program, and the Interfaith Hospitality Network. He was also a member of the Views from Oberlin group, which submits columns to the Oberlin News Tribune on various sociopolitical topics. In addition to his twin passions for music and law, Miranda was a talented jeweler who was fond of fashioning pieces for his wife, their children, and friends. Impeccably prepared for seemingly any circumstance, Miranda years ago composed a canon to be played at his memorial. He titled it “Farewell to Clef Reading.”
GIL MIRANDA (1932-2014) A native of Lisbon, Portugal, Gil Miranda graduated from the School of Law at Lisbon University and the National Conservatory of Music, then studied composition and music theory with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Upon returning to Lisbon, he practiced law and taught at the St. Cecilia Academy of Music. Miranda immigrated to the United States in 1975, focusing his career on music. He held professorships at the University of California, Santa Cruz; Dartmouth College; and the Oberlin Conservatory, where he taught Aural Skills until 2000. Throughout the years, he customized each course to the specific students in attendance, and he devised new plans for each class every week. “He was a demanding teacher in the best sense of the word; he inspired his students to
L. DEAN NUERNBERGER (1924-2013) From 1968 through 1989, Professor of Music Theory L. Dean Nuernberger led the Medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque music ensemble Collegium Musicum, inspiring countless young musicians in that time. Even in his later years, Nuernberger remained close to his music: In 1983, he began writing a requiem following the death of his mother. He returned to the piece and revised it in 2009, upon the death of his wife, Barbara Elaine Nuernberger. As word spread of Mrs. Nuernberger’s death, former Collegium students led by Peter Gibeau ’81 united to perform a portion of the piece at her memorial service. Collegium Musicum alumni reconvened at Oberlin in August 2010 to perform and record Nuernberger’s Requiem.
OBERLIN CONSERVATORY MAGAZINE 2014
Gibeau, a music professor at the University of Wisconsin, later returned to the piece to ensure that it could be performed and recorded in full. Nuernberger attended much of the taping at Oberlin. Nuernberger “was such a spectacular teacher,” alumna Rae de la Crétaz ’73 said at the time. “He was so generous to us—he nurtured us as people. Most of the people here will tell you he was far and away the most important teacher any of us had.” Nuernberger was born in Nebraska and served in the U.S. Army in France during World War II.
PATRICIA BAKWIN SELCH (1930-2014) With her husband Frederick, Patricia Bakwin Selch devoted a lifetime to creating one of the world’s most comprehensive collections chronicling American music history. Six years after the death of Frederick Selch in 2002, Ms. Selch gifted their collection to the Oberlin Conservatory, ensuring that their treasures would illuminate that rich history for generations to come. Housed in the conservatory’s Special Collections Library in the Bertram and Judith Kohl Building, the Selch Collection includes some 800 instruments, 9,000 rare books, and a large collection of artworks depicting musical themes. Ms. Selch was also the benefactor of the new Frederick R. Selch Professorship of Musicology, a critical component in the expansion of music studies at Oberlin, and the Frederick R. Selch Classroom, a technologically superior learning space in Bibbins Hall that was christened in 2012. The Selches were honored with a series of events on campus in the fall of 2012. Five exhibits showcasing key components of the collection were featured across campus throughout the fall semester. “I’m so happy that the collection will be made available in these ways,” Ms. Selch said at the time. “People have traditionally gone to places like Oxford to study American music history. Why go there when now they can come here?”
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