Kate Sara Chittenden

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Kate Sara Chittenden (April 17, 1856 – September 16, 1949) was an American music educator, piano teacher, and founder of several music schools and programs. She was born in Hamilton, Canada West, to American parents; her father was a Vermont-born dentist. Her family included notable ancestors, such as William Chittenden, one of Guilford, Connecticut’s founders, and Thomas Chittenden, the first Governor of Vermont. Her cousin Charles Curtis Chittenden became president of the American Dental Association.

Chittenden began learning piano at age five, studying with an aunt, then with Jules Fossier and Lucy H. Clinton. She won the Dufferin Medal for Art in 1873 while at Hellmuth Ladies’ College in London, Ontario, and later studied with Lucy Nelson and Albert Ross Parsons.

After graduation she taught at Hellmuth College. In 1876 she moved to New York City to work with Lucy Nelson. She served as organist and choir director at Calvary Baptist Church in Manhattan from 1879 to 1906. In 1906 she helped found the American Guild of Organists and was a charter member of the MacDowell Club. She originated a form of piano instruction called the synthetic method.

Chittenden founded the American Institute of Applied Music in New York City, serving as its dean from 1900 to 1932. She led the piano department at Vassar College from 1899 to 1930 and was named professor emeritus after retirement. Newspapers also credited her as the first woman lecturer for the New York City Board of Education, teaching from 1892 to 1919. She led the piano department at Catherine Aiken School in Stamford, Connecticut (1890–1914) and at Putnam Hall School in Poughkeepsie (1899–1903). She became a life member of the Music Teachers National Association in 1883 and founded Hartley House Music School in 1889.

Her students included Paul Ambrose, Mabel Madison Watson, and June Weybright; Annabel Wood Mansfield was her protégé and successor at Hartley House. In 1926 she published Tetrad Arpeggios: Dominant and Diminished Seventh. Kate S. Chittenden died in New York City in 1949 at age 93.