Brother Gerald Muller will retire at the end of this spring semester with more than 35 years of teaching experience at St. Edward’s University.

Muller has been teaching various types of music courses for more than 62 years in high schools and universities around the country.

He started music very early and sang opera during his childhood.

“I had a fine soprano voice. I was trained to sing opera and I knew how to sing properly,” Muller said.

His musical career took him to San Antonio, where he sang opera, but also to many different places around the world: Oregon, California, the Northeast, even Wales and England. It enabled him to sing, conduct and work with celebrities such as Robert Shaw, the famous chorale director.

“To sing with him was the highest honor,” Muller said. “I worked with the very best choral directors around the world and I learned from all these wonderful people.”

He also had the privilege to teach Don Williams, younger brother of John Williams, an archbishop, and cardinal William Levada.

When he arrived at St. Edward’s, he founded the present music department and he has been supportive of its development since then.

“35 years ago, I was a department of one,” Muller said.

From nothing, he brought a music program to St. Edward’s. He mentioned that, when he came here, the pianos were out of tune, the sound isolation was terrible and he had to deal with a very tiny budget.

“’How can you teach in this dump?’ someone once asked me, for we could hear on the first floor everything that was going on in the second one,” he said, smiling.

In such subpar conditions, he worked hard to develop music at St. Edward’s, in the city which later became the Live Music Capital of the World.

Muller organized two major concerts per semester, conducting both the choir and the Omni singers.

“We did lovely choir music,” Muller recalled. ”I was blessed.”

What he had to give, he gave to the university: his talent, passion for music and even his inheritance, with which he bought four pianos for the campus. One of them is located in the Maloney Room.

Muller is thankful for his time at St. Edward’s and leaves with a positive spirit.

“It has been a great run and I leave it with no regret. I have no more to give,” he said.

Muller’s students always appreciate not having any pressure and being able to enjoy more music than lectures in the classroom. Muller is now ready to retire after his last semester teaching music history courses.

“I must say I have accomplished all my goals,” he said.

His goals: writing books, going to the University of Notre Dame and doing music were all reached through his Brotherhood in the Holy Cross Congregation. Thus, Muller wrote a hundred books for children and several for adults. One is about the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

These books are available for free online.

“All the gifts God gave me were developed by being a Brother,” he said.

He is very satisfied with what he accomplished at St. Edward’s. The music department now includes 14 instructors, two among them who hold a doctorate and the best jazz people in town, according to Muller.

Being a Brother of the Holy Cross Congregation, he has lived a life of sacrifice and joy for the community of St. Edward’s.

“The Brothers of Holy Cross are some of the best-educated Brothers in the world. We are a family, we spread the word of God, we love our students. We know them and teach them well. It’s a life of total giving. That’s the way it should be, what Jesus wants,” Muller said.

After offering his life to God and others, at the age of 86 and with several health complications, Muller still rocks with a few St. Edward’s students in the band Brother Muller and His Brothers.

“My life is God and music. It has been amazing. I have been blessed. It is not an easy life, but is a happy life and a blessed life. It is all about faith, all God giving,” Muller said.