William Loyd Hooper

William Hooper attended Southwest Baptist College (now Southwest Baptist University) in Bolivar, MO, at that time a small two-year college. Following graduation, Hooper and his new wife served the First Baptist Church of Picher, OK as Minister of Music and Education.

Then, it was on to William Jewell College in Liberty, MO in 1953. While attending Jewell he had a student pastorate in Denver, MO. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in philosophy and was awarded the David Alan Duce Award in Philosophy at commencement exercises. Following graduation Hooper taught public school vocal and instrumental music, kindergarten through high school, for two years at Essex, Iowa.

Graduate studies followed at the University of Iowa where he earned a Master of Arts degree in music in 1956 with a concentration in voice. Hooper was awarded a graduate assistantship and was the librarian for the University Chorus.

The next four years were spent in Bolivar, MO as professor of voice at Southwest Baptist College, a small junior college. He directed the College Choir, trained both men and women quartets that were used in college recruitment, and organized a sixteen-voice College Chorale.

Doctoral study followed at George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. In 1956 he received the Ph.D. degree in music with a concentration in church music. While at Peabody he was a Jesse Jones Scholar and served the First Baptist Church in Old Hickory, TN as part-time minister of music and education.

After his two years of doctoral candidacy were finished, Hooper went to The New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 1962 as professor of music theory. Two years later he was promoted to Dean of the School of Church Music, a position he held until 1974. As Dean he played a leading role in getting the Seminary accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the School of Church Music accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music. Hooper also led the School of Church Music to begin a doctoral program in church music. While at the Seminary he was baritone soloist at St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church.

In the summer of 1969 Hooper and his family traveled to Zambia to work with churches there in training choirs. A year of sabbatical study began in the fall of 1969 in London, England. Hooper studied music composition privately with Humphrey Searle at the Royal College of Music. He returned to New Orleans in the fall of 1970.

Hooper has been a composer since high school days. He began composing by arranging charts for his dance band with Stan Kenton and Igor Stravinsky as his models. His first serious composition and performance came as a freshman at Southwest Baptist College with a piece for wind band titled “Daydream.” It was also performed at Northwestern University under the title “Music for a Motion Picture.”

Beginning in 1962 and continuing to the present many choral compositions have been written and published by Concordia Press, Broadman Press, Carl Fischer and Word Music. Also in 1962, Hooper’s first book, “Church Music in Transition” was published. The cantata “His Saving Grace Proclaim” was published and recorded in 1968.

In 1973 Le Petite Theatre du Vieux Careé in New Orleans asked Hooper to compose incidental music for their production of Anouhil’s play “Becket.” In 1973 he won the Delius Composition Competition and in 1974 he won the New Times Composition Competition.

A move was made back to England in 1974. Hooper was head of music at Newstead Wood School for Girls in the London Borough of Bromley for five years and serving as worship pastor for Emmanuel Baptist Church in Gravesend, Kent. In 1979 the church called him as pastor. While serving as pastor he completed a year of study in psychotherapy at the Westminster Pastoral Care Foundation.

He and his family returned to the United States in 1983 to become Dean of the School of Fine Arts at Southwest Baptist University, retiring from that institution in 1998. Since retirement he has continued his ministry as Minister to Senior Adults at First Baptist Church, Bolivar, MO.

Major compositions have included “Jubilee”, a cantata celebrating the 50th anniversary of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (1968), “Canticle of Praise” (children’s cantata, 1968), “The Vision of Nahum” [2001] and “By the Grace of God for Chorus and Instruments” (2002) to celebrate the 125th anniversary of Southwest Baptist University. In addition to “Church Music in Transition” Hooper has also written “Music Fundamentals” (1964), “Ministry and Musicians” (1982) and “Fundamentals of Music,” 4 vols. (1986). Numerous other instrumental and keyboard pieces have been composed as well.

Hooper was married to the former Doris Jean Wallace and has two children, William, Jr. and Carol Ann Cooper, seven grandchildren, and three great grandchildren.

--William Loyd Hooper, email to Tina Schneider, 22 March 2014.