Frederick Grant Gleason (born 17 December 1848 in Middletown, Connecticut - died Chicago, 6 December 1903) was an American composer, and director of the Chicago Conservatory from 1900-1903. Gleason's father was a banker. Like many other well-to-do gentlemen, Gleason senior was an amateur flautist. He considered music a pleasant pastime but not a serious occupation. He wanted his son to enter the ministry - a good old New England tradition. But the son insisted on becoming a composer, and the father yielded. Gleason spent much of his early life in the neighboring city of Hartford, as a pupil of Dudley Buck, going in 1869 to Leipzig to study with Ignaz Moscheles and Hans Richter. After six years in Europe he returned to America, and in 1877 went to Chicago as a member of the faculty of the H