Thomas A. Brown - 1933 - 2007
Music professor had a classic dispostion
Honored DePaul educator was seen as a '19th Century man at times' who had an integrated version of the arts
DePaul University music professor Thomas A. Brown's scholarly pursuits extended to art, literature and history, fields he often combined in his classes.
Dr. Brown, 73, died of complications from pneumonia Friday, March 2 at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, said his son Jonathan.
Dr. Brown began teaching at DePaul in the mid-1960s and continued until 2000. In addition to music history and appreciation, and vocal literature, he taught seminars with professors in other disciplines, combining music, Shakespeare, art and architecture.
"He was hugely into an integrated version of the arts," said Rev. James Halstead, chairman of the religious studies department at DePaul and former student of Dr. Brown's.
A skilled pianist, Dr. Brown taught private piano lessons to young beginners as well as accomplished adults, and he was a frequent lecturer at the Lyric Opera and at smaller music societies. His dramatic analyses of operas were combined with musical interludes on the piano and bits of gossip connected with the work and its composer, Halstead said.
Dr. Brown's embrace of the classics was coupled with a disdain for popular culture. "It'll be gone in 10 minutes, it'll change," he'd tell colleagues interested in literary or musical flavors of the day. "[Composer Robert] Schumann, you think that's going away?"
According to his son, the day after the famous highway chase involving O. J. Simpson, Dr. Brown asked one of his students, "This O. J. Simpson, is he famous?"
On trips abroad, he immersed himself in the history and literature of another time. He'd stroll through Russian cities, seeing through the eyes of the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, "only dimly aware of what was going on around him," his son said.
A tall man given to plaids and explosive color in dress, he finished lectures covered in chalk dust and loped about campus with a distinctive gait, lost in thought. Not unaware of the figure he cut, "he thoroughly enjoyed the imitations people would do of him," his son said.
"I guess you'd describe him as a 19th Century man at times," said Mark Meyer, a student of Dr. Brown's in the mid-1990s who remained a friend. "Jubilant in the classroom. He loved the subjects he taught."
At the time of his retirement, Dr. Brown was given the Via Sapientiae Award for exemplary service, the highest academic award given to a member of DePaul's faculty and staff, a university spokesman said.
Dr. Brown grew up in Milwaukee, where his father, Raymond, was concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Dr. Brown played piano from a young age, but his parents didn't want him to rely on music for a career and urged a diversified education, his son said.
Dr. Brown received a bachelor's degree in European history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He received a master's degree in the same discipline from Harvard, where he was a teaching assistant of the late historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
He received a doctorate in musicology from the University of Wisconsin in the mid-1960s. His thesis, "The Aesthetics of Robert Schumann," was published in 1968.
Mr. Brown divorced his wife, Mary, in 2001.
In addition to his son Jonathan, Dr. Brown is survived by another son, Jeffrey; and a sister, Marion.
A memorial service is set for 6 p.m. Friday at DePaul's School of Music Recital Hall, 804 W. Belden Ave.
Trevor Jenson, Staff Reporter,
Chicago Tribune, March 9, 2007, page 10
