William Hall Sherwood

William Hall Sherwood (January 31, 1854 – January 7, 1911) was a late 19th and early 20th century American pianist and music educator who, after having studied in Europe with notable musicians, became one of the first renowned piano performers in the United States. He founded the Sherwood Music School, which was acquired by Columbia College Chicago in 2007.

Family history and early life Sherwood was born on January 31, 1854, in Lyons, New York to Reverend Lyman H. Sherwood and Mary Balis Sherwood. Sherwood's paternal grandfather was a judge and a Senator and his grandmother, who was also a skilled musician, had ancestry traces back to the English nobility. Mary Balis Sherwood was a well-educated woman, born near Catskill, New York where she grew up in a home that had been given to her great-grandfather for service in the Revolutionary War. Lyman H. Sherwood was an Episcopal minister, a college professor, and a talented musician.

In 1854, the year of William Hall Sherwood's birth, his father left the ministry to pursue his interests in music further by opening the second incorporated music school in the United States, the Lyons Musical Academy in Lyons, New York. At age nine, Sherwood began attending this school and learning piano. Due to his rapid progression, Sherwood began teaching younger students at the Lyons Musical Academy in 1866.

Music instruction abroad During the summer of 1871, Sherwood took five weeks of piano lessons with the American composer and pianist, William Mason. Recognizing Sherwood's talent, Mason encouraged him to study piano in Europe. Sherwood first traveled to Berlin, Germany with his father, where he began piano studies with Theodor Kullak. Kullak criticized the limitations of Sherwood's small hands and expressed concern that he would not do great legato octave work. Recognizing this challenge, Sherwood drafted his own manipulations of the joints within his thumbs, practiced slowing and accurately, and over time was able to successfully demonstrate his octave exercises to Kullak.

During the winter of 1871, Sherwood moved to Stuttgart due to health problems, where he simultaneously studied composition with Carl Doppler and worked as the organist at the English Church at Stuttgart.

Music educator During the summer of 1889, Sherwood began holding workshops and lessons for piano teachers at the Chautauqua Institution’s summer Music School Festival. Sherwood continued to travel back to Chautauqua every summer to provide instruction at the camp, until the summer of 1910 before his death.

In Fall 1889, Sherwood and his wife moved to Chicago, Illinois as he became the Director of the Pianoforte Department in the newly established School for Music and Dramatic Art within the Conservatory of Music. In 1895, Sherwood left his position at the Conservatory of Music to establish his own school, the Sherwood Music School, at the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Illinois.

While managing his own school, Sherwood also acted as a piano faculty member for the Siegel-Myers Correspondence School of Music. In 1906, Sherwood began writing lesson plans, exercises, studies, and compositions for piano for distance students learning piano methods by mail order. Siegel-Myers advertised this as an opportunity for their students to learn from “American’s Foremost Pianist.” These correspondence courses in piano by Sherwood served as the foundation for the Sherwood Music School when the administration chose to add an Extension Division after Sherwood's death.

Death Sherwood remained the president of his school and the director of the piano department at Siegel-Myers until he suffered a stroke and became bedridden from paralysis in late 1910.