Dramatic commitments livened Wiprud, who had hoped to spend his upperclass years in the Dunster courtyard—his father was a Moose—were dashed when he was banished to the Quad.

“The Quad was not the place to be,” Wiprud says. “It was a crushing disappointment when a friend and I got Currier.”

But like most Quadlings, Wiprud learned to enjoy life away from the bustle of the River, especially after a Roman encounter with a new friend.

Wiprud’s time at Harvard coincided with the popularity of the movie “Animal House,” and he paid tribute to it by working with fellow Currier resident Kim Lovejoy ’79 to plan a toga party for the House.

“We had a great toga party, and the rest is history,” Wiprud says.

The two were married in 1981.

EN ROUTE TO COMPOSING

Juggling biochemistry, drama, and piano, it was not until Wiprud began attending theory classes at Harvard that he set his sights on composing.

“My mind, being sort of scientific and systematic, really latched onto theory as a really exciting discipline when I realized I could apply that to create new things,” he says. “It gradually took over my brain.”

Music also gradually took over Wiprud’s academic life.

He says his admittance into Fred Lerdahl’s Music 51: “Theory I”—a first-level music theory class for music concentrators that required an entrance exam for admittance—was a watershed event in his life.

“I feel like getting into that was really important to me,” Wiprud recollects. “It opened the door to high level music training, that if it hadn’t opened, I don’t know if I would’ve gotten so carried away.”

Wiprud’s eventual transition to music came as a surprise to those who knew him.

“The thing about Ted was, he was pretty straight-laced and very focused, so this whole music thing caught a lot of us by surprise,” says Nicholas S. Fish ’80, who was Wiprud’s high school classmate and freshman roommate in Wigglesworth E-11. “I think everyone kind of assumed that Ted would be passionate about what he was doing, just a very smart and focused guy who followed his heart when everybody else thought he was going to follow his head and go into the sciences.”

Fish also remembers Wiprud as a gentleman.