Retired flute professor Whitman releases memoir, ‘Countermelodies'

Ernestine Whitman, a flute professor on the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music faculty for 33 years before retiring in 2011, has written a memoir that explores a harrowing time in her life, when unrelenting psychological harassment from a teacher-turned-colleague in Atlanta threatened to unravel her dreams of a musical life.

Countermelodies: A Memoir in Sonata Form, published by She Writes Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster, was released Sept. 24. Whitman will read passages from the book and lead discussion during a campus visit at 3 p.m. Oct. 5 in Shattuck Hall 156. It is free and open to the public.

Whitman was halfway through her undergraduate years at Emory University in Atlanta when she won an audition for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. As second flute, she would sit beside a former teacher, the principal flute, who had been a father figure to her in her teen years, a time when her relationship with her father was strained. When her former teacher-her long-time hero-turned on her and began to relentlessly harass her, it set Whitman on an often-painful years-long journey in which she would have to fight for both her art and her mental health. One very low point, she said, came when he covertly flashed a switchblade knife at her in the middle of a concert, attempting to ruin her solo.

While she then left Atlanta-and her harasser-to earn her master's at New England Conservatory and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in flute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she continued to battle self-doubt, often turning to men who would exploit her. Through it all, she kept her music alive. The skills that landed her in a major symphony orchestra in her early 20s continued to flourish.

In 1978, Whitman applied for a position on the Lawrence faculty, which proved to be the much-needed start of a new chapter in her life.

"I knew Lawrence's reputation for excellence in both academics and music, and that it was one of only a few schools with a conservatory attached to a small liberal arts college," Whitman writes in Countermelodies.

She got the position of flute professor and relocated to Appleton. The fit, she said, "turned out to be just right," and teaching flute would become her "second calling."

Her love for teaching grew with each passing year.

"The constant search for a richer flute tone guided my teaching, and nothing thrilled me more than hearing a student's gorgeous sound soar above other instruments in the student orchestra," Whitman writes. "Even the less ambitious students-those who wouldn't get into the orchestra-had breakthrough lessons when, after months of painstaking work that seemed to yield no results, their sound would burst forth with color, beauty, and depth."

Outside of the classroom, Whitman developed deep friendships with colleagues in the Conservatory. One of them was Howard Niblock, an oboe professor. That friendship would eventually lead to a romance, and then a marriage that has now surpassed four decades.

Whitman writes that to this day, years after the death of her former teacher-turned-harasser and decades since she last saw him, she has contradictory feelings about him. His teaching first inspired her to pursue music, but the psychological damage he later wrought "left the deepest scars."

She said her difficult decision to leave Atlanta, eventually bringing her to Lawrence to teach, would be her saving grace. Staying may have sent her into a depression too deep for recovery, she writes.

"Even if I'd survived, most of the things I treasure wouldn't be part of my life: I wouldn't have developed a passion for teaching, nor would I have met the wonderful students I've taught, many of whom remain good friends. Most significantly, I would never have met Howard, and my amazing son would not exist."

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