Jon Appleton

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Jon Appleton (born Jon Howard Appleton, 1939 in Los Angeles, California) is a composer, author and the Arthur R. Virgin Professor of Music at Dartmouth College and Visiting Professor of Music at Stanford University. He was educated at Reed College, the University of Oregon and Columbia University.

A composer of both instrumental and electro-acoustic music, Appleton is best known in the United States for the latter, much of it composed for the Synclavier, a digital performance instrument he helped to develop. His instrumental and choral music is best known in Russia, France and Japan.

Appleton has been awarded Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Arts and American-Scandinavian Foundation fellowships. He has been a fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology and M.I.T., and a Visiting Professor at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan and teaches each year at the Theremin Center at the Moscow Conservatory of Music.

List of works, publications and recordings can be found at: http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~appleton/

Recent News:

In the Spring of 2004, Mr. Appleton argued with the administration, through the use of letters published in The Dartmouth, Dartmouth College's daily newspaper, that grades received by students during one of his music classes were fair, despite student complaints that the grades were bringing down their grade-point averages. Citing the need for high standards and expectations within colleges and universities Appleton defended his grading system and implied that the College was unfairly pressuring him to raise his grades. Mr. Appleton has been known to use The Dartmouth on numerous occasions to voice his opinions, including op-eds criticizing the administration for allowing Dartmouth to drop to a ranking of 138 out of the world's top 200 universities through a failure to retain those best for the college and hiring inappropriately [1], lambasting Dean of Faculty Carol Folt for her ineffectualness [2], and supporting the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra's practice of hiring outside players to fill its ranks [3].

In September, 2005 Mr. Appleton announced that he would be leaving Dartmouth at the end of the 2005-06 academic year for a visiting position at Stanford University, citing as his reasons the administration's failure to "curb grade inflation, reduce class size and stay on the cutting edge" [4]. This resignation marks the end of 38 years at Dartmouth for Professor Appleton.