Ima Hogg - Education and Musical Interests

Education and Musical Interests

Music was always present at the Hogg household, and Ima began learning to play the piano at age three. Although her younger brothers attended public school, Ima was enrolled at a private school and received private music lessons. In 1899, she entered the University of Texas at Austin (UT), where her favorite courses were German, Old English, and psychology. She later remarked that "No freshman was ever more immature, more unprepared, more frightened than I." She joined the female social club known as the Valentine Club, and helped to inaugurate the first sorority on the UT campus, Pi Beta Phi. After two years at the university, she moved to New York City to study piano and music theory at the National Conservatory of Music.

Near the turn of the 20th century, Hogg's father began speculating in oil. He purchased 4,100 acres (17 km2) of land near West Columbia in 1901, land that had been part of the Varner plantation. After two years of study in New York City, Ima Hogg returned to Texas, dividing her time between the plantation and Houston, where her father had a law practice. Under her supervision, the house was later remodeled and a portico was added to what had been the back of the house; she made this the new front entrance, orienting the house away from Varner Creek.

On January 26, 1905, Jim Hogg suffered an injury in a train accident. For the next year Ima nursed him as he struggled to regain his health, but on March 3, 1906, she discovered her father dead in his bed. Ima was devastated; to quell her grief, her brother William took her to New York City. During her stay she immersed herself in concerts and museums.

In 1907, she vacationed in Germany, and enjoyed her time so much that she chose to remain in Europe to continue her piano studies. For the next two years she studied music in Vienna under Franz Xaver Scharwenka, pianist to the court of Francis Joseph I of Austria, and in Berlin under Martin Krause. After returning from Europe, Hogg settled in Houston with her brother William. Although the city had a population of about 100,000, it had no museums or parks and no professional theater, music, or ballet groups. Hogg chose to teach music and continued in this vocation for the next nine years. One of her first pupils was Jacques Abram, who later became a concert pianist. By 1913, Hogg had become president of the Girls' Musical Society and was on the entertainment committee of the College Women's Club, which organized a small theater group known as the Green Mask Players. That year, she organized the Houston Symphony Orchestra. Hogg served as the vice-president of the Symphony Society when the first session of the Board of Directors convened. In 1917 the Board of Directors requested that she serve as president; she went on to serve 12 terms.