The Polyphony of Philip Morehead

A Transition in Tempo

In the deep, resonant quiet of Dwight, Ontario, a few hours north of Toronto, the air is thick with the scent of pine and the occasional cry of a loon. It is a stark contrast to the subterranean bustle of the orchestra pit at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where Philip David Morehead spent nearly a quarter-century ensuring that the chaotic machinery of grand opera didn’t fly apart at the seams. Yet, for Morehead, the transition from the baton to the birch trees is simply a change in tempo, not a cessation of the music. He is a man who has spent a lifetime mastering two distinct but surprisingly compatible arts: the organization of sound and the organization of meaning.

The Dual Destiny of Sound and Word

To the casual observer, the conductor and the lexicographer occupy opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum. One deals in the ephemeral, the emotional, the sweeping gesture; the other in the static, the precise, the minute definition. Morehead, however, inhabits both worlds with a rare and gentlemanly ease. He is the editor of The New American Roget’s College Thesaurus and The New International Dictionary of Music, as well as a seasoned maestro who has navigated the treacherous waters of Die Meistersinger and Billy Budd. In his life, as in the scores he studies, everything is a matter of finding the right note, or perhaps, the right word.

A Lineage of Logic and Language

Morehead’s dual destiny was perhaps written in the stars, or at least in the genetics. Born in New York City in 1942, he is the son of Albert Hodges Morehead, a name that looms large in the mid-century American intellectual landscape. Albert was the Bridge Editor of The New York Times, a lexicographer, and a games expert who could play cards with General Eisenhower and edit an encyclopedia with equal aplomb. Growing up in such a household, Philip absorbed the rigorous architecture of language and logic. But where the father found order in the shuffle of a deck, the son found it on the keyboard. He began piano at four, eventually finding his way to Swarthmore College—where he majored in French, a nod to the linguistic inheritance—and then to Harvard for musicology and the New England Conservatory for piano performance.

Refining the Ear in Fontainebleau

Like many serious American musicians of his generation, Morehead made the pilgrimage to France to study with Nadia Boulanger, the formidable doyenne of pedagogy who taught everyone from Aaron Copland to Quincy Jones. One imagines the young Morehead in Fontainebleau, refining his ear under Boulanger’s terrifyingly precise gaze, learning that music, like language, tolerates no vagueness. If you are going to play a C-sharp, you must mean it; if you are going to define a word, you must capture its soul.

The Orchestral Air Traffic Controller

His professional trajectory took him from the vibrant, scrappy opera scenes of Boston and Tulsa to the grandeur of Chicago. Arriving at the Lyric Opera in 1981, he eventually ascended to the role of Head of Music Staff. It is a title that sounds bureaucratic but conceals a terrifying amount of responsibility. The Head of Music Staff is the opera’s air traffic controller. They manage the assistant conductors, the coaches, the pianists; they ensure that the covers (understudies) are ready to step in at a moment's notice. When the star tenor wakes up with a frog in his throat, it is the music staff who must ensure the show goes on. Morehead was the steady hand on the tiller, conducting performances of The Mikado and Die Fledermaus, and covering heavyweights like Jenůfa and Der fliegende Holländer.

The Dictionary as a Score

But when the curtain fell and the lights went out, Morehead often returned to a different kind of manuscript. Following the death of his father, Philip—along with his brother—took up the mantle of the family’s lexicographical empire. He updated and edited the Roget’s Thesaurus, a task that requires a conductor’s sensitivity to nuance. Is the word you need "sound," "tone," "timbre," or "resonance"? The choice changes the color of the sentence just as an oboe changes the color of a chord. He also authored The New International Dictionary of Music, a volume distinguished by its democratic embrace of American composers and its refusal to segregate the popular from the classical. In Morehead’s dictionary, Led Zeppelin and Louis Armstrong sit comfortably alongside Palestrina and Puccini, a lexicographical harmony that reflects his own broad tastes.

A Laboratory for the Avant-Garde

This openness to the new was most visible in his work with CUBE, the Chicago-based contemporary music ensemble he founded with his wife, the oboist and composer Patricia Morehead. For decades, CUBE was a laboratory for the avant-garde, a place where living composers could hear their works realized with precision and passion. Here, Morehead was not preserving the canon but expanding it, conducting world premieres that required a completely different set of muscles than the standard repertoire. It was high-wire walking without a net, and he loved it.

A New Key in the Canadian Shield

Now retired from the Lyric, Morehead has not slowed down so much as modulated to a new key. In Dwight, he conducts the Whispering River Orchestra and plays bassoon in the Muskoka Concert Band, trading the velvet seats of the opera house for the community spirit of the Canadian shield. He continues to refine his dictionaries, ensuring that the definitions of our world remain sharp even as the language shifts under our feet.

There is a pleasing symmetry to Philip Morehead’s career. A conductor stands silent on the podium, using gestures to draw sound from others. A lexicographer sits silent at a desk, using definitions to give voice to others' thoughts. In both roles, Morehead has been the invisible intermediary, the man who ensures that the message—whether sung in German or written in English—is received with clarity, beauty, and meaning. He is the maestro of the word, the definer of the note, proving that a life lived between the lines is often the most interesting life of all.