Alumni, come see who’s new on the Wall! The Sayville Alumni Association is proud to announce the newest member of our Wall of Distinguished Alumni: Dr. Frederick Fisher Hammond, Sayville High School Class of 1954 — scholar, harpsichordist, and world-renowned authority on Italian Baroque music.

Born in Binghamton in 1937, Hammond came from Sayville High School to Yale University, where he earned both his bachelor’s degree and his doctorate and studied harpsichord with the eminent Ralph Kirkpatrick. He taught at the University of Chicago and Queens College before joining UCLA, where he remained for nearly a quarter century. And he was far more than an academic: an accomplished performer on harpsichord, clavichord, and organ, he played throughout the United States and Europe and served as a continuo player with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

His great scholarly subject was Girolamo Frescobaldi, the Italian composer and keyboard virtuoso — Hammond’s 1983 Harvard University Press biography became a foundational work, and Bard College later called him Frescobaldi’s definitive biographer. In 1986 he founded the E. Nakamichi Festival of Baroque Music in Los Angeles, and in 1988 the Italian Republic named him a Cavaliere of the Order of Merit for his service to Italian culture.

In 1989 Hammond joined Bard College as the Irma Brandeis Professor of Romance Culture and Music History — the college’s first full-time music historian — and stayed until his retirement in 2013, also serving as music director of New York’s Clarion Music Society. He died on March 3, 2023, in Rhinebeck, New York, at the age of 85; in 2025, Bard’s Baroque Ensemble performed a concert in his memory and rededicated two of his own restored harpsichords.

Come see for yourself — read Dr. Hammond’s full profile on our Wall of Distinguished Alumni, and join us in honoring a Sayville graduate whose scholarship and music carried the sound of Baroque Rome to the world. Welcome to the Wall, Dr. Hammond!