MSNC Comes of Age: George Oscar Bowen and the 1928 Conference

Abstract

1928 convention of the Music Supervisors National Conference (MSNC) marked the coming-of-age of that organization. Since the founding of the MSNC in 1907, music education had consistently grown in importance and quality in American schools. increasing popularity of school bands had given added vitality to music programs throughout the nation, although some music supervisors believed that the increased prominence of bands in the schools was a threat to long-established choral programs. Some of the growth in public school music education could be attributed to the general prosperity of the nation after World War I. In 1928 that prosperity was near its zenith, before the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent economic depression that gripped the nation in the 1930s. 1928 MSNC convention celebrated American music education better than any previous meeting. program was more varied than those of previous conferences and the performing ensembles, nearly all of which were vocal, were reportedly of higher caliber. This was the first biennial MSNC conference and the organizers wanted it to be of extremely high quality. Previous conferences had been smaller in scope and attendance. Successive conferences during the 1930s, though increasing in number of participants, suffered from the economic depression of the period. According to Edward Bailey Birge, music education (and education in general) suffered from the general economic malaise of the 1930s, and because conference attendees had less money to spend, these events had to be somewhat less grandiose than they might have been otherwise. (1) As president of the MSNC, George Oscar Bowen presided over the 1928 convention. Originally from upstate New York, Bowen was a successful choral director with an outstanding public school teaching career. Since 1924 he had taught at Central High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a city that enjoyed an unprecedented oil boom in the 1920s. Immediately before coming to Tulsa he taught music education courses at the University School of Music in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and prior to that he held joint appointments with the Flint Community Music Association and Central High School in Flint, Michigan. Early in his career he taught in Cortland and Yonkers, New York, and Northampton, Massachusetts. (2) Throughout his tenure as president of the MSNC, Bowen worked on preparations for the national convention, which originally was to be held in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, or Rochester, New York. Because of a lack of hotel rooms in those cities, Chicago was chosen for the site. convention was held on Sunday, April 15, through Friday, April 20, 1928, in the Stevens Hotel. (3) Advertisements for the hotel in the Music Supervisors Journal claimed that, with 3,000 rooms, each with a private bath, it was the largest hotel in the world. (4) For a number of reasons the leadership of the association had decided to change from yearly conferences to every-other-year meetings and this was the first biennial meeting. Edward Bailey Birge, one of MSNC's founders and a former president of the organization, said of the 1928 conference, The year 1928 marked the coming-of-age of the National Conference, dating from the initial meeting in Keokuk in 1907. (5) More than 4,600 participants attended, while MSNC membership at that time was approximately 5,400, (6) up from about 3,000 three years earlier. (7) Michael Mark and Charles Gary, in A History of American Music Education, said that Bowen planned a historic gathering for Chicago's mammoth Stevens Hotel.... Both musically and organizationally the meeting was one of the most significant in conference history. (8) conference was widely advertised in music education journals. March-April 1928 issue of School Music stated: National Conference of ours is doing things. It is no mere body of theorists dealing in scientific jargon. Nor is it merely a group of time-worn pedagogues talking unscientific twaddle. …