"What's important for me is to communicate the vision that I have in sound with the audience that's hearing it." -- John Eaton
For other people named John Eaton, see John Eaton ."
John Eaton, Jr. (December 5, 1829 – February 9, 1906) was a U.S. Commissioner of Education and a brevet brigadier general during the American Civil War.
"But nevertheless, it's music ultimately that matters in opera, and opera is a piece of music reaching out as a vision in sound reaching out to the world.""However, yes, especially as one gets older, you know, you really hope that your music will become more generally available, even though some of the performances might be riddled with faults.""I really write for people.""I think a lot of composers get into trouble just making up a plot and expecting an audience to follow that.""I think I was first to do live performances on a modern electronic sound synthesizer.""I think one of the greatest enemies in the use of technology, however, is the idea that if you use the technology you have to throw other things out of the window.""I think the composer and production staff of an opera have a real responsibility to use visual elements of all kinds to make clear to the American audience, at any rate, exactly what is going on.""I want the audience to be so involved in the sweep of the music.""I'm thinking in terms of a point of departure, a field of action for performers to express an expressive need of mine which hopefully the context of music would convey.""I've just simply used what I've used because of the great, great expressive potential of it.""If you look at the timing of many of the Greek dramas from the theatrical point of view, it's all off, and I think the reason for that is that music played a very important part.""In other words, I think that if an audience listens to something as an experience of how in tune it is or something of that kind, that the whole point is somehow being missed, and the music has failed.""It's not important to me to found a school; it's not important to me to have disciples.""Nevertheless, one doesn't have time to think, oh, well, this is a quarter tone sharp, or flat.""The way that I got involved with microtonal music was, frankly, through jazz.""We need it to capture the energy of contemporary life.""We need to have as broad a range as possible, because life itself has that kind of range.""We need to open up the future. We also need to keep everything valuable from the past.""Well, let me, first of all, say, that as a microtonal composer, I've never been much of a theorist.""Well, opera began with an intent to resuscitate Greek drama, that is, modern opera as we know it.""Well, the very best operas are the ones written by the very best composers."
Eaton was born in Sutton, New Hampshire, and attended Thetford Academy in Vermont. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1854, studied at Andover Theological Seminary, and was ordained in 1862 to the Presbyterian ministry.
Eaton served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. In November 1863, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant appointed him as the Superintendent of Negro Affairs for the Department of the Tennessee; there Eaton supervised the establishment of 74 schools. In 1863, Eaton was made colonel of the 63rd Regiment of Colored Infantry, and, in 1865, he was advanced to brevet brigadier general.
General Eaton edited the Memphis Post in 1866–1867. He was appointed United States Commissioner of Education in 1870 and served with great efficiency in the Bureau of Education. Commissioner Eaton also reorganized the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.
In 1886–1891, Eaton was president of Marietta College, and, in 1895, he was appointed president of Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka, Alaska. In 1898, he became inspector of education in Puerto Rico and played a role in the centralization of its educational system. His educational writings dealt largely with the education of freedmen. Eaton also wrote a history of Thetford Academy. He died in Washington, D.C.
