Tribute to
Anthony Wentworth Morss

by John Sigerson

[Print version of this article]

Our special thanks go out to the family of the late Anthony Wentworth Morss for helping to make this concert possible.

Tony Morss, who passed away on August 6 at age 87, worked with the Schiller Institute for almost three decades. In 1990 he pioneered a performance of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio at the Verdi tuning of C = 256 Hz, and was a tireless campaigner for returning to that standard. Following his retirement as director of Verismo Opera, he joined the bass section of our chorus, and was a source of joy and inspiration to all of us.

Tony was a beautiful soul, in exactly the way Schiller describes this in his essay “On Grace and Dignity.” Schiller writes there:

We call it a beautiful soul, when moral sentiment has assured itself of all emotions of a person ultimately to that degree, that it may abandon the guidance of the will to emotions, but never run the danger of being in contradiction with its own decisions. Hence, in a beautiful soul individual deeds are not properly moral, rather, the entire character is . . .

It is thus in a beautiful soul, that sensuousness and reason, duty and inclination harmonize, and grace is its epiphany. . . . All movements which issue from her grace become light, soft, and yet vigorous. Merry and free shall the eye gleam, and therein emotions glow. From the gentleness of the heart shall the heart receive a grace such as no pretense can feign. There shall be no tension seen in gestures, no coercion in willful movements, for the soul knows of none. The voice shall become music and move the heart with the pure flow of its modulations. Architectonic beauty may arouse pleasure, admiration, and amazement, but only grace can delight.

Truly, Tony Morss was such a delightful person, and the world is a better place for his having graced it.