Hunter, George (George H.) (1918-2011) | University of Illinois Archives
Name: Hunter, George (George H.) (1918-2011)
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Historical Note: George Hunter was born in 1918 in Columbus, Ohio. He studied piano, cello, and trumpet in high school, and graduated from Indiana University. He was accepted to study piano in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, but the war intervened and he spent five years in the army, serving as a band leader in Georgia. After the war, he went to Yale to study composition with Paul Hindemith and received his Masters Degree in 1947. He joined the University of Illinois faculty in 1948, where he taught music theory, composition, counterpoint, harpsichord and early music performance. Hunter probably began playing viols and recorders at Yale, though it is not clear whether he played the viola d'amore. Hindemith ran a Collegium Musicum at Yale, which might have influenced George Hunter to form the first Collegium Musicum at the University of Illinois in 1951. In 1963 he received a grant from the Ford Foundation to travel to Holland for year to study early choral music, and when he returned he founded the University of Illinois Concert Choir, which he conducted until his retirement in 1982. He passed away on March 26, 2011.