Wilfred Conwell Bain


Wilfred Conwell Bain was an American music educator, a university level music school administrator, and an opera theater director at the collegiate level. Bain is widely credited for rapidly transforming to national prominence both the University of North Texas College of Music as dean from 1938 to 1947, and later, Indiana University School of Music as dean from 1947 to 1973. Both institutions are major comprehensive music schools with the largest and second largest enrollments, respectively, of all music schools accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music. He was born in Shawville, Quebec, and died in Bloomington, Indiana.
James R. Oestreich, classical music critic for The New York Times, referred to Bain as a "legend" who lifted the Jacobs School of Music to national prominence from 1947 to 1973.

Contributions to collegiate schools of music

Bain's major contribution to higher music education was uniting what formerly had been three different kinds of music learning centers:
  1. Conservatories, a European model where student musicians trained exclusively in music to become music makers – instrumentalists, singers, composers, and conductors;
  2. Music Departments at liberal arts colleges – including those of Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and Chicago – that had two basic functions: preparing young music scholars for futures in higher education, as functioning scholars in musicology, music history, and music theory, and serving as curricular enrichments for general students;
  3. Teachers Colleges, that trained young musicians expressly to be teachers of pre-collegiate music, the K-12 curricula of the nation.
At two public institutions, Bain put all three models together into comprehensive music schools with the critical mass needed for major productions in opera, large chorus, and symphony orchestras. And, Bain integrated these large, comprehensive music schools within their host colleges: first at the University of North Texas, second at Indiana University at Bloomington. Putting talent aside, Bain strongly felt that a music degree from a comprehensive music school that was embedded within a liberal arts university was a more powerful degree, for both undergraduate and graduate students. Bain capitalized on the intellectual assets inherent of a university. The science core requirement, for example, might offer musical acoustics taught by physics professors. The English departments and theater wings might collaborate with the composition department. The music schools of North Texas and Indiana, often, were beneficiaries of talented students not majoring in music.

The first college degree in jazz studies

While at the University of North Texas College of Music, Bain, as dean, presided over, advocated, and spearheaded the country's first degree program in jazz studies during the 1946–47 school-year.

Focus on vocal and opera

Until Bain, opera education was a discipline relegated to conservatories in urban settings. While at North Texas, and more so while at Indiana University, Bain not only stressed opera, he built enrollments, quality, and performance-frequency to levels never witnessed in their respective regions. Bain viewed opera as the "perfect vehicle for the musical experience – for the student, for the faculty, and for the audience." He said that "Opera is the crossroads where they all meet." "And, opera is the public review of a music school's total work." Bain believed that, at Indiana, he had built a great music school, in part because of its size, which allowed it to achieve the critical mass, the power and drive of a faculty and hundreds of talented students.

The construction of the university opera hall

When the Musical Arts Center at Indiana officially opened in April 1972, it was the first of its kind at a university. Before then, there were performance venues at universities with great aesthetics and acoustics, but few equipped specifically for both education and state-of-the-art professional level opera productions. The hall's proscenium is 69 feet. Like the Met, the hall has four stages: The main, two side stages, and a rear stage. The side and rear stages are equipped electrically controlled wagons on which complete sets can be assembled and them moved onto the main stage. And on the main stage, there are traps every 6 feet. The house's pit is on elevators and is 55 by 60 feet. The lighting equipment was, at the time, sophisticated, capable of presetting over 200 cues. The hall has a full audio/visual recording studio with facilities for live radio and TV broadcasts. Bain saw the facility not as a gigantic auditorium, but as a giant, varied classroom. There are dozens of rooms for rehearsals and classrooms, three for ballet, and several of identical size for staging rehearsals. A typical production could involve 200 students, faculty and staff. And, while one work is being performed, several others can be in rehearsal simultaneously. Bain felt that the hall was as good as that of the Metropolitan Opera, if not in many ways superior. Although the Met seats 3,700 while IU's hall seats 1,450, Bain regarded it as an advantage because it makes possible a more intimate theatrical experience for the audience, it doubles the need for performances, and it puts less strain on young voices.

Dean of deans

Bain has been called "The Dean of Deans," for various reasons, including the fact that several students under him at both North Texas and Indiana went on to become heads of music at notable institutions of higher learning. Some of these people include:
Bain had been a pupil of John Finley Williamson, Father William J. Finn, Isidore Luckstone, Hollis Dean, and Percy Grainger
EdD Thesis
Wilfred Conwell Bain, The status and function of a cappella choirs in colleges and universities in the United States, New York University School of Education

Honors and awards

Honorary degrees

Bain was born to James Alexander Bain, a Methodist minister, and Della Bain, née Hawn. The couple married February 15, 1905 in Renfrew County, Ontario. They had three other children: Howard Erskine Bain, Donald John Bain and Doris Evelyn Bain, Doris Bain earned a bachelor of music in 1938 from Houghton College and a master's degree in music education from the UNT College of Music and became a music educator with emphasis in choral music. In May 1918, Bain immigrated to the United States with his parents, crossing the Canadian-American border at Ogdensburg, New York.
On July 1, 1929, Bain married Mary Elizabeth Freeman. On November 27, 1941, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen during a ceremony in Federal Court in Sherman, Texas
He later married Elisabeth Bain ; widow of John Holmes Myers, PhD, CPA, former Indiana University Professor Emeritus Accounting. Betty is a prolific author of young people's books, particularly in areas of U.S. history. Betty had one son from her previous marriage, Thomas Perkins Myers.