Person
Ringgenberg, Calvin
United States desconocida - desconocida
Organist, teacher and choir director who spent his career in the United States.
Ringgenberg began his music education at the age of seven in Ames (Iowa), and completed them in 1910 at the Iowa State College, where he studied under Alexander S. Thompson, and later received instruction from Genevieve Westerman at Drake University. At the age of eighteen, he entered the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where he specialized in organ and piano under Wallace Goodrich and Alfred Devoto. He graduated as a piano soloist in 1915 and as an organist in 1916. During his student years in Boston, and after graduation, he worked as the organist and choir director of the Central Congregational Church in Newton (Massachusetts) between 1914 and 1917, and even received a special mention from Harvard University in the 1915/1916 school year. He also served as organist and music director of the First Congregational Church in Fall River (Massachusetts) from 1918 to 1920.
After his military service, Ringgenberg accepted the post of director of the Conservatory of Music at Jamestown College in North Dakota, where he directed the Jamestown Choral Society, which won several state awards. In 1921, he went to France to study piano with Isadore Phillip and organ with Charles-Marie Widor at the Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau
In 1924 Calvin graduated in organ under Clarence Eddy and in composition under Carl Busch from the Chicago Musical College. That same year he was appointed director of the Conservatory of Music at Albion College in Albion (Michigan), where he stayed until 1926. While there, he directed a choir of twenty-four students which debuted at the Methodist Episcopal Church on March 30, 1925. That year he did a concert tour with a repertoire that included works like "Sleep, Kentucky Babe", "Comrades, Let's by Laughinb", "Landsliding", "The Sea Hath Its Pearls" and "Soldier Chorus".
In 1926, Ringgenberg was hired by the College of Music at Bradley Polytechnic University, where he taught piano, organ and music theory and was later named dean. He also taught harmony, piano and organ at Washington University and collected autographed photos of famous artists and composers of the time, which explains why he wrote to ask Manuel de Falla for a signed portrait on August 30, 1935.