EUGENE–An anonymous $1.2 million gift to the University of Oregon School of Music is funding the creation of an endowed professorship–the school’s first–honoring the memory of former Dean of Music Robert M. Trotter (1922-1994).

Music school officials have begun an international search for a senior faculty member, whose strengths and interests parallel those of the late music dean. The search, commencing in October, is to fill the post, effective Sept. 16, 2000.

UO President Dave Frohnmayer says the Trotter endowment "underscores the high quality of the education our music school delivers to its students as well as the significance of the scholarship and artistic talents of our music faculty. Obviously, we are very grateful to the donors for their generosity and foresight."

The gift, which endows the Robert M. Trotter Memorial Fund, also qualifies as a match under the Knight Endowed Chairs program for a position as yet to be announced. This represents two significant new sources of faculty funding for the School of Music, according to Dean Anne Dhu McLucas.

"This gift means all the more to many of us who remember Robert Trotter, because it is in his name and because it seeks to carry on so much of what he stood for," says McLucas, dean of the music school since 1992. "His spirit is very much alive and well at this school, and I am sure that this gift will perpetuate it into the next century."

Trotter was dean of the UO School of Music from 1963 until 1975, and continued his association with the music school until his death in 1994. He was the personification of a life-long learner and had a particular fascination with world music.

In that spirit, McLucas says proceeds from the Trotter Memorial Fund will be used, in the words of the donors, "to support a humane, forward-looking teacher of analysis and criticism, pedagogy and musicianship, who is at once comfortable with music education and ethnomusicology, music majors and non-majors, and professional musicians and lay people. This teacher should be ready to teach courses to non-majors as readily as majors, and to relate to the community as readily as the academy."

The UO School of Music, more than 100 years old, is one of only three comprehensive music schools on the West Coast, offering undergraduate through doctoral degrees. It includes among its faculty internationally recognized performers, composers and theorists.

For more than 30 years, the School of Music has been home to the internationally acclaimed Oregon Bach Festival and the Chamber Music Series. With nationally recognized graduate and undergraduate programs, the UO music school has been the source of performers, composers and music educators for Oregon and the region for many years.

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