Peter Christian Lutkin
1858 — 1931
Peter Christian Lutkin was an American organist, choral conductor, and composer. He was a professor and dean at Northwestern University.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Peter Lutkin.
From the period sources
Peter Christian Lutkin, described as an “able American teacher, conductor and composer” by The New Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians (1924), received his training in Chicago before pursuing further studies in Berlin, Paris, and Vienna. His notable teachers included Mrs. R. Watson, Eddy, Gleason, Stepanov, Moszkowski, and Leschetizky, and he also studied at the Berlin Hochschule. Lutkin began his career as an organist and teacher in Chicago in 1872, serving at St. Clement’s from 1884 and St. James’ from 1891 to 1897. He also taught theory at the American Conservatory in Chicago starting in 1888.
In 1891, Lutkin joined Northwestern University in Evanston, becoming dean of the music school in 1895, a position he held from 1897 according to Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians: American Supplement (1920). He was instrumental in bringing the school to “high efficiency,” and also achieved “notable success with various choral enterprises.” Since 1908, he conducted the annual Chicago North Shore Festival in Evanston, an event that consolidated the work of local musical clubs and the university’s School of Music. This festival, known for its “artistic excellence,” featured a chorus of around 600 voices, sometimes augmented to 1100, and a children’s chorus of 1500, performing in the Northwestern University Gymnasium, which seated 5000. Under Lutkin’s direction, the festival introduced works such as Bantock’s ‘Omar Khayyam’ and Pierne’s ‘St. Francis of Assisi,’ alongside “comparatively unknown” pieces by composers like Elgar and Coleridge-Taylor, bringing “fame to the conductor, Dean P. C. Lutkin, to the University and to Evanston,” as Grove’s (1920) records. Lutkin also lectured at the Western Theological Seminary, publishing his talks as Music in the Church (1910), and contributed to the editing of both the Methodist and Episcopal Hymnals.