Career
Gleason"s father was a banker. Like many another well-to-do gentlemen, Gleason senior was an amateur flautist. He considered music a pleasant pastime but not a serious occupation.
Gleason spent much of his early life in the neighboring city of Hartford, as a pupil of Dudley Buck, going in 1869 to Leipzig to study with Ignaz Moscheles and Hans Richter.
Gleason was also active as a music critic. In 1897 he became president of an organization called the "American Patriotic Musical League".
He was general director of the Chicago Conservatory from 1900-1903. Gleason"s compositions include: the Festival Ode (words by Harriet Monroe) sung by 500 voices with orchestra at the opening of the Auditorium Theatre, Chicago on 9 December 1889.
Processional of the Holy Grail written for the Chicago World"s Fair.
A symphonic Poem, Edris, based on a novel by Marie Corelli. The tone poem Song of Life (after a poem by Swinburne). A Piano Concerto; a cantata with orchestra,The Culprit Fay.
And two operas: Otho Visconti and Montezuma.
The former was produced at Chicago in 1907. He left other scores in manuscript, with instructions that they were not to publicly performed until fifty years after his death.
