William Carl Holmes
1928-1999
William Carl Holmes, Professor, Emeritus in the Department of Music at the University of California Irvine, died of cancer in Laguna Beach on October 11, 1999. He battled his adversary with unflinching resolve and courage to the end, demanding of his several doctors clear explanations of its every fearsome aspect. As he had wished, he remained at home, attended by nurses and loving friends. Born in Orville, Ohio on April 26, 1928, he graduated from the College of Wooster in 1951 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. A Ditson Scholar at Columbia University, he received his M.A. in 1954 and was awarded the Ph.D. there in 1967 with a dissertation, "Orontea: A Study of Change and Development in the Libretto and Music of Mid Seventeenth-century Italian Opera." During his residence at Columbia, he supported himself by playing the flute, the organ at nearby churches, writing liner notes for Mercury Records, translating, editing music, and reviewing for The Musical Courier.
The dozen years between M.A. and Ph.D. were rich and productive, beginning with his first article in a field then little studied. Some notion of his editor's high esteem proceeds from the 24-year old graduate student's first article, “ “Pamela Transformed” ,” appearing in the fall 1952 Musical Quarterly in the company of no less than Schoenberg, Deutsch, Hyatt King, Lowinsky, Mendel, Sachs, and Gombosi! Between “ “Pamela” ” and completing his Ph.D., he published important entries on opera for MGG, the New Catholic Encyclopedia, and the Enciclopedia Ricordi. Following research from 1956 to 1959 in Rome, he returned to Columbia for an assistantship. Cornell appointed him Instructor (1961), Assistant Professor (1964) and tenured Associate Professor (1968). There he not only conducted its chorus for several terms, but led performances of operas by Haydn, Mozart, and Cesti, and found time to be reviews editor for Notes (1965-68).
Irvine appointed him Associate Professor in the fall of 1968. Mindful of “ “Pamela Transformed” ,” he conducted performances here of Piccinni's Buona Figliuola. Spurred on by dissertation interests, he also led Cesti's Argia and, at UCLA, advised on the West Coast premiere of Orontea. Previous to and following his promotion to Professor (1972), he published a host of musical editions, articles, reviews, book chapters, and two books which established his position as a leading authority on Italian opera and its staging. Running parallel with his editions of Cesti's Orontea, Scarlatti's Statira, and Verdi's La Forza del Destino are essays about these operas--among them, his monograph on Statira (1983), and the critical notes for and several essays on La Forza (1986, 1991). The latter stemmed from performances at Irvine in 1980 of his edition of the first (St. Petersburg) version of Verdi's opera held in conjunction with the Sixth International Verdi Congress. He also contributed lengthy book chapters about opera in England and the Americas and on the melodrama (1977, 1982).
Studies on Vivaldi, and on Venetian and Florentine theatres led to Opera Observed. Views of a Florentine Impresario in the Early Eighteenth Century (Chicago, 1993). This gracefully-written and informative book, climaxing a decade of work on the Albizzi papers in the Guicciardini archives in Florence, was widely reviewed and well received. Its usefulness is extended by his penultimate article (proofs for which he saw): an extraordinary series of indices of personaggi found in the Albizzi papers. His final contribution, concerning a Legrenzi opera given at Pratolino in 1685, will soon appear in a group of essays for an Irvine colleague, one who remains forever grateful for the wise counsel and high distinction of his friendship.
An appealing modesty could not mask his profound knowledge, not just of his own field, but of most other historical periods of music. He was as at ease teaching liturgical chant, the 13th-century motet, and Beethoven string quartets as he was with Bach's organ music--often performing it on Irvine's baroque instrument for which he had ordered the specifications. Several years before retiring in 1994, he thoroughly re-tooled himself in computer and internet technology for his graduate bibliography course. Thus, the department eagerly recalled him after retirement to teach graduate students. Both they and his undergraduates relished his brisk, sometimes even biting wit (one, however, that was never malicious). In class and indeed in conversation with colleagues, he often took extreme positions to make his interlocutor clarify and defend an argument. Students and colleagues agree that he was a natty dresser, admiring particularly his seemingly endless stock of spiffy bow ties. A superb cook, he would invite students year after year to elegant dinner chez lui, and without apparent effort feed 20 or more. Afterwards, and in return, they were then charmed into sight-singing canons.
From the moment he joined the School of Fine Arts at Irvine in the fall of 1968, Holmes was its moral and intellectual center. He served as Chair of the Music Department (1972-74), Associate Dean (1974-77), and Dean (1980-81). A powerful department builder, in 1974 he recruited and appointed two brilliant young scholars, one of whom remains, the other gone on to an equally distinguished career. His service to the Irvine Academic Senate and the Universitywide Senate was legendary and continued even into his retirement. He was also the founding president of Irvine's Phi Beta Kappa chapter. Junior and senior faculty members of his own and other departments revered him for his mentoring and for his sound advice. Both his modesty and his organizational capacities were exemplified in a two-day conference which, virtually single-handedly, he meticulously arranged for the present writer in April 1999.
Although by then he was suffering mightily, two months later he was still able to attend a splendid concert of operatic arias and instrumental arrangements offered him by a grateful department, at which the Vice Chancellor and a former Dean extolled his outstanding contributions to the life of our campus. And not least, generations of grateful students, inspired by his extraordinary teaching abilities and his scholarship, had written moving testimonials to these qualities.
He served the American Musicological Society long and well--as its Reviews Editor (1968-72), twice elected to its Council (1976-79; 1991-94), and as member and chair of the Einstein Award Committee (1989-92). Our profession has lost a major scholar and distinguished teacher, and his family and friends, a steadfast, caring, and warm-hearted person. Typical of the man was his clearly expressed desire for neither funeral nor memorial. Thus, on November 13, in the pleasant setting of a Laguna art gallery, well over 100 invited friends, family members, colleagues, and students, attended an elegant cocktail party, pursuant to his wishes not to memorialize him, but instead joyously to celebrate these relationships.
-H. Colin Slim
