 Charles C. Hirt, was a pioneering USC educator in choral music who became something of a choir leader to the nation, directing thousand-voice ensembles to open and close the 1984 Olympics, inaugurate Disney World and rededicate the renovated Statue of Liberty. Hirt, who founded and chaired USC’s departments of church music and choral music and over 30 years, built the music program of the Hollywood Presbyterian Church from a quartet into eight choirs, died Feb. 3 in Los Angeles.
He was, in the words of William Dehnning, retired chairman of the two USC departments that Hirt founded, and a former student of Hirt’s, “quite possibly…the single greatest representative of all that was powerful and formative in choral music.” Born in Los Angeles, reared in Glendale and educated at Occidental College and USC, Hirt achieved an international reach with his visionary baton. He was invited to direct festival choirs in Vienna, Belgium, France, England and Japan and to lecture around the world. He led the young people’s nationwide chorus, American Youth in Concert, through tours of Europe and led his own groups from USC through Western Europe, then-communist Eastern Europe and Israel.
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