A New York Times obituary at the end of March told the world of the death of a remarkable woman. Under the headline “Doris Hodgkins Monteux, Singer and Music Memoirist,” the short article describes her as the author of two books about music, a singer, the co-founder of the Domaine School for Conductors, and the widow of the great French conductor Pierre Monteux.

Here, surely, is a case where such facts mean little, and, taken together, tell no story at all. Her books on music, although entertaining, are trifling—one is a view of her husband from their poodle’s point of view. Her singing was an affair of limited scope that took place sixty years ago and more.

The obituary was on firmer ground in mentioning her role in L’École Monteux, as the conducting school was often known. But even here the mention pales beside the reality. It was as a student at this peculiar institution, artificially planted each August for four weeks in the isolated Maine hamlet of Hancock, that one could best know Doris Monteux. The reality made plain there was that she was not just a co-founder of the school: she was its very life. She raised money for the school and selected the students; she arranged their housing with local families and oversaw their feeding in the French restaurant run by her son (by an earlier marriage) and daughter-in-law.

All this activity went on more or less behind the scenes. Publicly, Doris Monteux—“Mum”