John Manley Barnett

He had been studying since the age of 10 with the Moscow-and-Berlin-trained New York Philharmonic cornetist/trumpeter Max Schlossberg (1873-1936), considered "The Founder of the American School of Trumpet Playing in the Twentieth Century".

Barnett also studied composition and counterpoint with Reginald Mills Silby of New York and Princeton, New Jersey.

John Manley Barnett (September 3, 1917 - December 6, 2013) was an American conductor.

He was born in Manhattan, New York, to optician Guy Carlton Barnett and Bernadette Emma (Manley) Barnett.

In 1927, when Barnett was ten years old, his family relocated to Englewood, New Jersey.

By 1930, the family was living on Knickerbocker Road in Englewood.

When Barnett was 7 years old, Haworth Grammar School teacher Clifford Demarest of Tenafly, New Jersey realized the youth’s talent and placed him on trumpet in the school orchestra, where he received his initial musical ensemble training.

Barnett continued studying with Demarest through grammar and high school, playing solos in Demarest’s Tenafly High School Orchestra and the Beethoven Orchestra of Tenafly (which Demarest founded).

By 1930, Barnett received awards for his trumpet and piano playing, winning two silver medals in the Junior Division at the New Jersey State Musical Contest given at Newark.

At the time, he was a freshman at Englewood High School (Dwight Morrow High School) studying with a member of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra who was preparing him for entry into the Orchestra when he reached the age of 21.

From 1930-36, Barnett also studied violin with Hugo Kortschak, piano with Janet Daniels Schenck (founder of the Manhattan School of Music), and trumpet with Max Schlossberg at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City where he obtained a Master's degree.

Having played with the Heckscher Symphony Orchestra, the 13-year-old cornetist was featured as soloist in the 310th Infantry Band ("Col. Moore’s Own Band") on August 12, 1931 at Winton J. White Stadium.

When he was 15 years old, he received a scholarship from the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York which provided for instruction in orchestral conducting, advanced music theory, composition and piano study.

Barnett’s professional career began in 1931, when he was accepted into the National Orchestral Association under conductor Léon Barzin, with whom he studied conducting for five years.

He would receive that scholarship from 1932-37.

During the summer of 1932, he studied music at Columbia University summer school in New York City, a four-week extension course in Boston, and in the fall entered Carnegie Hall’s preparatory course to become a cornetist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

In June 1936, accompanied by Barzin, Barnett sailed to Europe to study in Paris, Romania, London and other European cities for a year.

Funded by a conducting scholarship from the New York Philharmonic Society (the first of its kind), he first went to Paris, where he studied with composer and conductor of the Orchestre de Paris George Enescu and spent July and August at Enescu’s estate in Romania.

Barnett was the only conducting pupil that Enescu ever accepted.

In August of that year, he traveled to Salzburg, Austria, where he studied with conductor Bruno Walter, Felix Weingartner and the Vienna Philharmonic at the Mozarteum Academy.

While in Austria, he visited Linz and St. Florian, "the Bruckner cities", and attended the Bruckner Festival.

Returning to Paris via the Orient Express, he spent September 1936 through March 1937 in Copenhagen and Prague studying with the Russian conductor Nikolai Malko, traveling with him through England, Denmark and Russia and studying operatic conducting in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev.

He spent over a year studying conducting in Europe, returning to Paris in the summer of 1937 to resume his conducting studies with Georges Enescu.

He returned to the United States along with his mentor Georges Enescu later in 1937, mere months after his father died in February.

Upon his return to America in 1937, Barnett was appointed assistant conductor to Leon Barzin of the National Orchestral Association, and was invited to conduct for the New York Federal Civic Orchestra (part of the WPA Federal Music Project) twice a week in Brooklyn and New York.

In 1939, the 21-year-old conductor was appointed regular conductor of the Stamford Symphony Orchestra in Connecticut.

He followed previous conductor Hugo Kortschak, Dean of Music at Yale University.

At the time, Barnett was known as the "youngest professional symphony conductor in the United States."

In addition to his new post, he retained his other conducting posts in Brooklyn and New York.

One of his conducting performances included an appearance at the 1939 New York World's Fair, where he conducted the Federal Knickerbocker Orchestra of New York at the WPA Building on May 28, 1939, part of which was broadcast over WNYC.

Also, in 1939, Barnett was awarded the position of Principal Conductor of The New York City Symphony Orchestra after successfully guest conducting a semester-long Beethoven Cycle at Columbia University.

In The New York City Symphony’s Carnegie Hall series, he assisted famed conductors Thomas Beecham, Fritz Reiner and Otto Klemperer, even taking over two of Dr. Klemperer’s Carnegie Hall concerts on short notice.

Barnett would later conduct Demarest’s arrangement "Bach Doric Toccata" in January 1940 which Demarest had written in the summer of 1939 and premiered with the Beethoven Orchestra of Tenafly that fall.

In 1941, Barnett was appointed conductor of the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, a newly-formed, all-professional organization sponsored by the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, which debuted on November 12, 1941.

Barnett joined the United States Army as a Chief Warrant Officer from 1942-1946, enlisting at Yaphank, New York on February 27, 1942.

Before the war, he was the conductor of the New York City, Brooklyn and Stamford (CT) Symphony Orchestras.

Over the course of the war, he organized bands in many military camps in the United States and overseas.

During the war, on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1944, he married South Carolinian Ruth Allen Gilland in the Army Chapel at Fort Rucker in Alabama.

He died in Los Angeles, California December 6, 2013 at the age of 96.

Barnett began studying music at the age of 5 when his mother taught him piano.