User:Pitchperfect/John Franklin Botume
 | This is not a Wikipedia article: It is an individual user's work-in-progress page, and may be incomplete and/or unreliable. For guidance on developing this draft, see Wikipedia:So you made a userspace draft. Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
John Franklin Botume (November 21, 1855 – October 17, 1917) was a singer and vocal pedagogist.
Life and Career
John Franklin Botume was born in Boston, Massachusetts on November 21, 1855 to Elizabeth Augusta (Lord) Botume and John Botume, Jr., a successful businessman with the Baldwin, Botume & Co. packing company. John Franklin was the only son and had two sisters. Coming from a well-to-do family, Frank (as he frequently went by) attended the Boston Latin School and then entered Harvard College. While Frank’s parents had him cut out for a career in law, he started deviating from their plans and began pursuing singing. He studied many years under the Italian voice teacher Vincenzo Cirillo.
After graduating from Harvard in 1876, he attended Harvard Law School for a year and then taught music in Boston and Cambridge as he read law. In 1881 Frank was admitted to the Suffolk County Bar and began dividing his time between practicing law and teaching the music he enjoyed. Finally, four years later, Frank broke for good with the law profession and dedicated all of his time to singing.
For the rest of his life, Frank was heavily involved in both teaching and performing music in and around Boston and New York City. In 1883 he was listed in the Boston Musical Yearbook as the director and accompanist of the “Gounod Quartet” and a bass singer in the “Cecilia” Club.[1] During the summers of 1889 and 1891, he traveled to Paris, London and Munich to study with well-known singing teachers.
From 1891 to 1892 Frank was the resident director of the Boston branch of the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts, and from 1892 to 1893 Principal of the opera department of American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. Soon after, he left that position to become the choirmaster at the historic St. James Church Episcopal Church in Roxbury, a post he would hold for 20 years. There, his duties included training and directing the vested choir and soloist quartet. All the time, he continued to teach voice privately.
About a year prior to his death, Frank retired from his job as choirmaster, continuing to teach privately. By this time he had lost one eye due to a fishing accident and was in poor health. John Franklin Botume died suddenly of a hemorrhage October 17, 1917 in Boston at age 61. He was never married nor had any children.[2][3][4][5][6]
Works
- Modern Singing Methods, Their Use and Abuse (1885)
- Exercises in Vocal Technique (1894)
- Respiration for Advanced Singers (1897)
- Voice Production Today (1916)
Botume also published several songs for both solo voice and choir, including “Morning Love Song” (1896) and “The Trill,” (date unknown), and an arrangement of scenes from the earliest opera still extant, Jacobo Peri’s Eurodice (1895).
References
- ^ G. H. Wilson. Boston Musical Yearbook. Boston: [unknown publisher], 1883-4, pp. 48, 50.
- ^ Harvard College-The Class of 1876 Seventh Report of the Secretary Covering the Class history for Twenty-five Years to MDCCCCI. Compiled by Secretary, Harvard College. Boston: Merrymount Press, 1901, p. 15-16.
- ^ Harvard Graduates Magazine, Vol. 26 1917-1918. Boston: Harvard Graduates’ Magazine Association, 1917, 1918, pp. 286-7.
- ^ Additional biographical information obtained through personal correspondence with J. F. Botume’s great great niece Martha Winters and from her webpage on John Franklin Botume.
- ^ [Obituary Notice]. Boston Evening Transcript. Thursday, October 18, 1917.
- ^ "Order for Interment in the Cemetery of Mount Auburn" [unpublished].
Source
Text for this article has been excerpted by permission of the author from the "Biography" section of J. F. Botume Modern Singing Methods, Bel Canto Masters Study Series (Pitch Perfect Publishing, 2009).