Harry Benjamin Jepson


Harry Benjamin Jepson was an American organist and composer and the first University Organist of Yale University.
Jepson was born August 16, 1870, in New Haven, Connecticut. He attended Hillhouse High School. Jepson studied at Yale under Horatio Parker and Gustave Stoeckel, earning a B.A. in 1893 and a B.M. in 1894. While at Yale he was the organist for New Haven's Christ Church and Old Center Church. He then studied in Paris under Charles Marie Widor and Louis Vierne.
He was appointed instructor at Yale in 1895, eventually rising to a full professorship in 1907. He also directed the Battell Chapel choir. He retired in 1939; Charles Kullman was among the performers at the musical service in held for his retirement.
Among his students were Edward Shippen Barnes, Seth Bingham, Edwin Arthur Kraft, Virginia Carrington-Thomas, and Frederick Kinsley.
Jepson died August 23, 1952, in Noank, Connecticut. He was succeeded by Luther Noss as University Organist.
Yale's Harry B. Jepson Memorial Scholarship is named after him, and he oversaw the design and construction of the renowned Newberry Memorial Organ in Yale's Woolsey Hall, as well as its 1915-1917 and 1929 renovations.

Selected compositions