Douglas B. Moore, Mary A. and William Wirt Warren Professor of Music, Emeritus
The cello is known for its range and agility and so are you. You have not only taught music for cello but have performed, conducted, arranged, and published it. Your love affair with the instrument has been a sweet obsession. You have toured widely as a soloist and chamber player and made five recordings. You have performed with the Cello Forum, a quartet whose unusual repertoire ranges from classical to popular. You have organized Cello-brations—performances by more than a dozen cellists—and taken part in World Cello Congresses at which hundreds of cellists perform together. You have also made your name as an arranger and publisher of music for cello—ranging from “Marriage of Figaro” to “Stars and Stripes Forever”—that has been performed by everyone from middle school squeakers to Yo-Yo Ma. Somehow you found time to serve as Vice President of the College Music Society. You have lavished similar devotion to your students, colleagues, and audiences here in Williamstown. You have performed in almost every of the more than one hundred concerts of the Williams Trio, with the Williams Chamber Players, and as principal cellist of the Berkshire Symphony. You have curated the College’s collections of music and of musical instruments, directed our English Handbell Choir, and served as chair of the Music Department during a time of unprecedented growth in student performance. You are known also as an agile hiker of mountains across the country and of these surrounding purple hills—as someone who might walk to work some morning via the top of Pine Cobble. And you are free now to set out on even wider journeys of exploration and performance.
I hereby declare you Mary A. and William Wirt Warren Professor of Music, Emeritus, entitled to all the rights, honors, and privileges appertaining thereto.
June 3, 2007