John Milton Ward
John Milton Ward, Professor of Music at Harvard from 1955 to 1961 and William Powell Mason Professor of Music from 1961 to 1985, died in his home on Follen Street in Cambridge on December 12, 2011, in the ninety-fifth year of his age. Ward was a path-breaking scholar in many fields, through whose classroom passed for three decades every undergraduate and graduate student in music at Harvard; a teacher whose conviction and thoroughness were impressive and inspiring, if sometimes intimidating. Many generations remember his undergraduate course in the history of music, and his introductory course for graduate students—a combination of boot camp and conversion experience—is forever inscribed in the memories, and in the scholarship, of those who experienced it. He put it very plainly: “I was simply trying to teach them to read and write.” Well-wrought oral presentation, responsible use of evidence, and clear and concise writing were Ward’s chief concern....