Three hundred and sixty-five days go by and it is a year. Ten of those years pass and it is a decade. Ten decades pass and the overwhelming feeling of a hundred years passing by is a century filled with rich memories and evolution. The upcoming year, 2019 – 2020, the Bobcat Bands are planning many events to celebrate the Bands’ hundredth anniversary. The Texas State Bands Centennial Music Project is one of the projects taking part in the annual online giving “Step up for State” campaign, which is occurring October 3 through today for 1,899 minutes (corresponding to the year in which the university was founded). The fund drive is an opportunity to support the commission of a new composition dedicated to the elite TXST Wind Symphony.
John Fleming, the dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication, asked Dr. Kevin Mooney to write a decade-by-decade history of the music program at TXST. “I’m proud to be a Bobcat, and, being associated with the School of Music, am honored to have been asked to document its history,” Dr. Kevin Mooney said. While researching, Dr. Mooney has found details that contrast to the modern-day marching band of about 350 students. “The Bobcat Band enjoys a reputation for exciting half-time performances and exhibits an impressive force on the field. This is quite in contrast to its early days,” Dr. Mooney said. “Dr. Robert A. Tampke was the first faculty director of the band, as the band was student directed prior to his arrival in 1923. He recalled in a 1978 interview that when they first played as a college band (there were ten or twelve [students] in the band at the time), they were stopped at the gate when they arrived at the field and asked to pay admission.”
“One interesting thing that I discovered was that among the first seventeen faculty members when the doors first opened to students of that first fall class in 1903 was a music teacher, Miss Mary Stuart Butler. Butler Hall here on campus was named after her. She was primarily a voice teacher, but she taught every college student, since at least one music course was required for all students.”
— story by music-major Jennifer Gutierrez