Caroline Keating Reed
"A Woman of the Century"
Background information
Birth nameCaroline Morton Keating
Born?
Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
DiedMarch 9, 1954
Occupations
  • pianist
  • music teacher
Instrumentspiano
Spouse(s)
William Gordon Reed
​
(m. 1891)​

Caroline Keating Reed (née, Keating; died March 9, 1954) was an American pianist and music teacher.[1][2] In 1903, she published Rudiments and technique for the piano.[3]

Early life and education

Caroline (nickname, "Carrie") Morton Keating was born in Nashville, Tennessee,[2] and reared and educated in Memphis, Tennessee where her father, Col. John McLeod Keating, was the half owner and managing editor of the Appeal.[1] In 1856, he married Josephine Esselman Smith. They had two children, Caroline, and Neil McLeod Keating.[4]

Early in her childhood, Reed displayed her fondness for music, in which art her mother was proficient, the leading amateur singer in the city, a pianist and harpist. As soon as Reed could comprehend the value of notes and lay hold of the simplest exercises, her mother began to train her. She became the pupil of a local teacher, Emile Levy, and went forward very rapidly. Her parents determined that her earnestness should be seconded by the very best teachers in the U.S., and Reed was sent in 1877 to New York City, where, under Sebastian Bach Mills, she made great progress, but still more under Madame Teresa Carreño . She also took lessons from the pianist, Mrs. Agnes Morgan. She subsequently studied under Richard Hoffman and under Rafael Joseffy.[2] She studied harmony and thorough bass with Mr. Nichols. To those lessons she added later on the study of ensemble music as a preparation for orchestral works, under the guidance of leading members of the New York Philharmonic Club. During the two last years of her stay in New York, she played in several concerts in that city and its vicinity. As an artist, she was recognized by the musicians of New York and the musical critics of the press. In January 1884, she returned home.[1]

Career

Before entering upon her successful professional career, she gave several concerts in Memphis and surrounding cities. The following year, she became a regular teacher of the piano-forte and singing, having been fitted for the latter branch of her art by three years of study under Achille Errani.[1]

She was very practical in her philanthropy, and since first forming her class, which always averaged forty pupils, she was never without one or more whom she taught free of charge. For two or three years she gave lessons gratuitously to six pupils, who were unable to pay anything. She has contributed frequently to charitable purposes, either by concerts or with her earnings.[1]

Since her marriage in 1891, she continued to teach. She also prepared a primer on technique for beginners.[1][2]

Reed was broad and progressive in her views of life, especially those concerning women and women's work. When a mere child, she was wont to declare her determination to earn her living when she grew up. In stepping out from the conventional life of a society belle and conscientiously following the voluntary course she marked out for herself, she was a new departure from the old order of things among the favored young women of the South. Thoroughly devoted to her art and in love with her vocation as a teacher, she stood among the best instructors of music in the country. She had no patience with trifiers, and no money could induce her to waste time on pupils who were not as earnest and willing to work as she was herself.[1]

Personal life

In 1891, she married William Gordon Reed, Sr. They had one child, a son, William Gordon Reed, Jr.[5]

Caroline Morton Keating Reed died March 9, 1954, and is buried at Forest Hills Cemetery and Crematory, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.[6]

Selected works

  • Rudiments and technique for the piano, 1903

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). "REED, Mrs. Caroline Keating". A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life. Charles Wells Moulton. p. 601. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Logan, Mrs John A. (1912). The Part Taken by Women in American History. Perry-Nalle publishing Company. p. 765. Retrieved 30 June 2022. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  3. ↑ Library of Congress Copyright Office (1903). Catalogue of Title Entries of Books and Other Articles Entered in the Office of the Register of Copyrights, Library of Congress, at Washington, D.C. Treasury Department. p. 716. Retrieved 30 June 2022. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  4. ↑ Speer, William S. (April 2010). Sketches of Prominent Tennesseans: Containing Biographies and Records of Many of the Families who Have Attained Prominence in Tennessee. Genealogical Publishing Com. p. 380. ISBN 978-0-8063-1715-1. Retrieved 30 June 2022.
  5. ↑ Social Register of Memphis. Penn-Renshaw. 1925. p. 93. Retrieved 30 June 2022. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  6. ↑ "Caroline Morton Keating Reed". www.familysearch.org. Retrieved 30 June 2022.
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