Introduction

Biography

Beck gra­du­ated from War­ren G. Hard­ing High School (1948) and Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty (BA, BS 1952).

After work­ing for a year in Stu­dent Un­ion ac­ti­vi­ties at the State Col­lege of Wash­ing­ton, he spent two years in the U.S. Ar­my. Dur­ing this time, he be­came in­creas­ing­ly in­volved in ar­rang­ing for va­ri­ous mu­sic­al groups.

After dis­charge from the mi­li­ta­ry, he re­turned to Ohio State and com­plet­ed Ba­che­lor of Mu­sic and Mas­ter of Arts de­grees with com­po­si­tion as his ma­jor.

He then served as a fa­cul­ty mem­ber of the Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty School of Mu­sic for se­ven years, teach­ing har­mo­ny and the­ory.

Beck left the uni­ver­si­ty to be­come own­er and man­ag­er of the Uni­ver­si­ty Mu­sic House, a re­tail sheet mu­sic store in Co­lum­bus.

In this ca­pa­ci­ty, he was able to ob­serve the bu­si­ness side of the mu­sic in­dus­try, gain­ing in­sight in­to the com­plex­ities of mu­sic pub­lish­ing and mer­chan­dis­ing.

As his com­po­si­tions found their way in­to print and po­pu­la­ri­ty, he joined forc­es in 1972 with John Tat­gen­horst in the cre­ation of Beck­en­horst Press.

His re­pu­ta­tion as a com­pos­er and his ex­pe­ri­ence as a cho­ral di­rect­or soon led to an in­creas­ing de­mand for ap­pear­anc­es as guest con­duct­or and lec­tur­er at va­ri­ous mu­sic­al cli­nics and fes­ti­vals through­out Am­er­ica.

He was al­so mu­sic di­rect­or of the Uni­ver­si­ty Bap­tist Church in Co­lum­bus, and was ac­tive in the mu­sic field un­til his death.