Dorothy Whitson Freed (10 February 1919 – 1 April 2000) was a New Zealand author, composer, and music historian. She made significant contributions to the field of music librarians, and authored several books and articles regarding musical information and resources in New Zealand.[1]
Freed was born in Dunedin, New Zealand. Her father was James Gerald Stokely Doorly, a mariner and Antarctic explorer, musician, and author, and her mother was Forrestina Muriel Whitson.[2] She was the younger of two daughters.
Early in her childhood, her family moved from New Zealand to Williamstown, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. She completed her public education in Melbourne, before returning to New Zealand in 1936, when she was 17. In New Zealand, she found work in a secretarial and media role. She married her husband William Ian Freed in 1940, and together they had three children.[3] Neither wanted marriage, but wed out of necessity after a casual affair resulted in pregnancy and the two failed to find an abortionist. The marriage was unhappy and the two eventually separated.
While Freed was raising her three children, she enrolled at Victoria University College to study composition. She studied under Douglas Lilburn, and graduated with a Bachelor of Music in composition in 1958, at the age of 39. In 1959, she qualified and began her career as a librarian in Wellington. She also underwent additional compositional training from 1964 to 1966, when she travelled to London and studied with composers Peter Racine Fricker and Elisabeth Rutyens.
From the start of her tenure as a librarian in 1959 to her retirement in 1986, Freed worked tirelessly as a music librarian, as well as an advocate for other New Zealand composers. As part of her work, she helped to found SOUNZ, the Centre For New Zealand Music, which is an online library that contains a large selection of scores, CDs, books, and resources.[4] This library also contains biographical information about composers, helping to create a comprehensive database for the preservation of New Zealand music.
In addition, she founded the New Zealand division of the International Association of Music Librarians in 1982, and then served as its president. The association holds annual board conferences, launches collaborative projects between library branches, and publishes journals, which all help to strengthen the library community in New Zealand.[5]
In 1958, Freed won the New Zealand Broadcasting Service/Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) Award for a New Zealand song. She also won the Phillip Neill Memorial Prize in composition, an award seeking to acknowledge the compositional accomplishments of students in New Zealand. In 1980, she was again recognised by APRA for outstanding services to music. She was awarded a Lilburn Trust Grant for services to music librarianship and music in New Zealand in 1991.[6]
In the 1998 Queen's Birthday Honours, Freed was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to music.[7]
Freed left behind two personal memoirs, written towards the end of her life. “A Grandmother’s Story” was written for her granddaughters, and follows her personal account of her early life, her marriage, her time at the University of Wellington, and her career as a musician and librarian. The other memoir, “I Seem To Have Forgotten The Elephants”, contains 32 shorter memoirs from various parts of her life. She never sought to publish her memoirs, but they are available on her personal website, which is maintained by Freed’s grandniece.[8]
Selected works include: