I don’t know much about the Schoenberg scholar Dika Newlin, who just passed away. But from 1965 to 1978 she taught at North Texas State University, and I remember my high school composition teacher speaking of her with reverence and awe. Then one day in college, in a library, I ran across her name and realized she was a woman. I had always thought he was saying “Deacon Ewlin,” as though it were a religious honorific, like “Reverend.” Perhaps because of that, I never managed to bring her into focus. The composer Mason Bates studied with her in Virginia, and speaks highly of her as well.