Will Earhart

Will Earhart (April 1, 1871 - April 23, 1960) was a pioneering American music educator.

Born in Franklin, Ohio, Earhart studied violin, piano, counterpoint and harmony. He began teaching in Miamisburg, Ohio and later became music supervisor in the public schools of Greenville, Ohio.

In 1898, he moved to Richmond, Indiana to become Director of the Richmond High School Orchestra, believed to be the first complete high school symphony orchestra. He helped to found The Richmond Civic Orchestra, a forerunner of the Richmond Symphony Orchestra.

In 1912, Earhart became Director of Music in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, where he remained until his retirement in 1940. In 1913, he founded the Department of Public School Music at the University of Pittsburgh.

He was a member of the Music Educators National Conference for nearly half a century and was its president in 1915. He is a member of the Music Educators Hall of Fame. He was also a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity, initiated as an honorary member in 1923 by the Iota chapter at Northwestern University.

He died in Portland, Oregon in 1960, aged 89.

Earhart believed strongly in the value of musical beauty. He advocated teaching music with an emphasis on creating pleasing sounds, deriding the "machine-like chug-chug-chug-chug" that he heard from amplified bass instruments in 1950s rock and roll. At the forefront of the aesthetic education movement in the 1940s, Earhart outlined the three appeals of music as sensory, mind, and feelings, and believed that all children had the ability to be musical if properly nurtured. According to Earhart, music in the schools was fully justified on aesthetic, intellectual and educational, and social grounds. He believed music should be studied by all children, not just who might choose it as a profession, so they might enjoy it for the rest of their lives. He encouraged all people to avoid placing too much emphasis on material objects at the expense of those things of significant beauty that required time and effort to appreciate.

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