Frederick Hammond (1937–2023), Irma Brandeis Professor of Romance Culture and Music History

To the Bard College Community:

It is with sadness that I inform the Bard community of the death of our colleague, Frederick Hammond, just a few days ago. He served as Irma Brandeis Professor of Romance Culture and Music History at Bard between 1989 and 2013, when he retired. Fred suffered from progressive heart disease; he was quite ill during these past months. But his mind and spirit did not weaken. Last August he celebrated his 85th birthday. A memorial service is being planned according to his wishes, and he will be interred in the Bard College cemetery.
 
Fred was an exceptional scholar and performer. He was a member of a pioneering post World War II generation of American music historians, many of whom, like Fred, were not only scholars, but performers. He was an undergraduate at Yale University, where he also completed his PhD. He taught first at the University of Chicago, then at Queens College of the City University of New York, and subsequently, for almost a quarter century, at the University of California, Los Angeles, before coming to Bard. He was the first full-time music historian in Bard’s history.
 
Fred was a distinguished scholar of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music. He is best known for his definitive biography and study of the works of Girolamo Frescobaldi. His other major contributions to scholarship concern patronage and culture during the Baroque era in Rome, primarily the contributions of the Barberini family. His scholarly interests made Fred Hammond an expert and connoisseur of all things Italian, including its ancient and modern history, its literature, and above all, its language.
 
This summary does not do justice to the exceptional depth, mastery of detail, and subtlety of Fred Hammond’s learning. He was a true scholar who loved archives, manuscripts, and the joy of searching for clues and evidence to solve historical riddles and paradoxes, small and large. He inspired and trained many younger scholars, including the late James Harold Moore, a protégé from Fred’s years at UCLA who discovered major works of the Baroque long thought forgotten and who solved the mystery of performance practices inside the church of San Marco in Venice, the subject of one of Fred’s last publications.
 
Fred Hammond was a distinguished keyboard player. He was a student and protégé of Ralph Kirkpatrick, the eminent harpsichordist and expert on Scarlatti. Fred studied with Kirkpatrick at Yale. Fred’s primary instruments were the harpsichord, clavichord, and the organ; his knowledge of the history of these instruments was astonishing. He played continuo in professional performances for most of his life. In the 1980s he was the continuo player for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Fred directed the E. Nakamichi Festival of Baroque Music in Los Angeles, and the Clarion Music Society in New York. At Bard, he played in many a Bard Music Festival, including a delightful performance of an opera by Franz Joseph Haydn.
 
Fred was charming, wonderfully articulate, and generous to others. His command of English, in writing and speech, was elegant and exemplary. His writings mirrored an ideal of clarity and refinement. His concern for the beauty of language betrayed a lifelong love, not only of the intersection of words and music found in sacred music, opera and song, but also of poetry, particularly the work of W. H. Auden.
 
As a performer and scholar, Fred’s range was astonishing. He was as well versed in the music of the 19th and 20th century as he was in the music of the 18th, 17th, and 16th centuries. The exceptional range of his expertise was available to Bard undergraduates, not only in Annandale but in the Bard Prison Initiative. Fred was the first to teach music history in BPI. He did so with great imagination and style; he considered teaching in BPI a high point in his career as a teacher.
 
Fred had a special gift for friendship. He maintained friendships all over the world. Our neighbor, James B. Ottaway, a life trustee, was a friend from their years together at Yale. Fred’s circle at Bard included the late Irma Brandeis, the late William Weaver, and our colleagues James Bagwell and Karen Sullivan. In the over 30 years Fred was a member of the Bard community, he never failed to volunteer his services, whether at Commencement (playing for the memorial service as organist) or student concerts. Fred possessed a deep love of this college.
 
On a personal note, I first met Fred Hammond as a first-year student in college, when I played in a performance under his direction of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Many years later, through Jim Ottaway, we became reacquainted. Bard was able to realize Fred’s dream, to return to the east coast as a teacher, scholar, and performer. Reading Fred Hammond’s work, and remembering many performances with him, the refinement and beauty of his understanding of music, art, architecture, and literature stand out. If Fred Hammond had chosen not to become a musician, he might have been a poet of great distinction, not unlike his dear friend, the late James Merrill. 
 
Bard will miss Fred, as will musicians, scholars, and friends, here in the Hudson Valley, on the east coast, and others in Europe. His life and work will be remembered, as will his devotion to the towering achievements of the human imagination.

Leon Botstein
President
Bard College

Post Date: 03-07-2023