Leo Sowerby
Leo Salkeld Sowerby (1 May 1895 – 7 July 1968) was an American composer and church musician. He won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1946 and was often called the “Dean of American church music” in the early to mid 20th century. Biography. Leo Sowerby, son of Florence Gertrude Salkeld and John Sowerby, was born on 1 May 1895, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he began to compose at the age of 10. His interest in the organ began at the age of 15, and he was self-taught at the instrument. He studied composition with Arthur Olaf  Andersen at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. Early recognition came when his Violin Concerto was premiered in 1913 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He spent time in France during the First World War in the role of bandmaster. In 1921 he was awarded the Rome Prize (from the American Academy in Rome), the first composer to receive this. He began teaching at the American Conservatory of Music in 1924. He received the 1946 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his cantata, the "Canticle of the Sun", written in 1944. In 1919 Sowerby became associate organist at Fourth Presbyterian Church  of Chicago, and in 1927 he became organist and choirmaster at St James's Episcopal Church in Chicago, which was consecrated as a cathedral in 1955 while he was there. In 1962, after his retirement from St James's, he was called to Washington National Cathedral to become the founding director of the College of Church Musicians, a position he held until his death in 1968. He died in Port Clinton, Ohio, while at Camp Wa-Li-Ro in Put-in-Bay, Ohio, the summer choir camp where he had taught for many years. He is buried in Washington National  Cathedral. His substantial output includes over 500 works in every genre but opera and ballet. His later works, composed while he was at St James's, Chicago, and Washington National Cathedral, are primarily church music for choir and organ. For Sowerby's notable pupils Selected works. Solo voice with accompaniment. Originally published by H. W. Gray, reprinted by the Leo Sowerby Foundation, Bryn Mawr, Pa., Theodore Presser, sole selling agent, 1996.