Music In the Center

PROJECTED NEW WEBSTER HALL TO INCLUDE DIVERSE FUNCTIONS

You MAY BE thinking of the projected Dartmouth Center as intended only for theatricals or great College occasions. Instead, the Center will meet many other needs of the College.

For instance, music. At present, the music department is housed in Bartlett Hall, built originally for the Dartmouth Christian Association. Bartlett provides sufficient room for music instruction, but the classrooms and offices are not well arranged, and it is impossible to make the interior attractive or completely soundproof. When the Center is built, the offices of all the department will be on the top floor of the forepart of the building. On that same floor will be a large music library, a record library, a seminar for small classes, and a pantry, so that tea may be served in the library or offices. Access to this floor is controlled by an open general office at the head of the flight of stairs leading to this floor.

On the floor below, in this same part of the building, will be two music classrooms on opposite sides of the building, and on the floor below that, still another classroom and the Capehart Room, again on opposite sides, so that music may be played in all four rooms at once without interference.. The Capehart Room will contain the machine and records given the College by the Carnegie Foundation, and used almost every day of the college year.

The forepart of the Center, then, above the ground floor, is designed to be used distinctly as a part of the College's instructional plant. It will make Bartlett Hall available for other uses and provide the music department with educational facilities adequate for years to come.

EXTRA-CURRICULAR MUSIC

But besides curricular music, extra-curricular music is also provided for, in the basement of this same part of the building. The Glee Club and the jazz bands

will have their own sound-proofed practice rooms. For the Band, a semi-circular room, with terraced floor, will give space enough for even a larger band than appears now at football games. Besides, there will be a large number of individual practice rooms for singers, piano-players, or other instrumentalists.

But the most remarkable feature of this level of the building is the Recital Hall. This will seat slightly more than 200 on a sloping floor. The platform is large enough to accommodate groups of performers the size of Little Symphonies or smaller, such as quartets or octets; or, of course, the Recital Hall may be used for any musical or other performance for which intimacy with the audience is desired. Besides, motion pictures may be projected there, and it is planned to have equipment available for radio broadcasts from this room.

In short, the facilities provided in the Center for music, both instructional and extra-curricular, will be as complete as possible, and will meet all foreseeable needs of the College.

In the office area adjoining the Little Theatre the Council on Student Organizations will be housed, with offices for the graduate manager and his staff, for heelers and managers and publicity. Of course, the Director of the Players, the technical director, and their staffs will also have offices here. But on the upper floors of this section of the building will be additional seminar rooms for classes in playwriting and screen-writing, with a fine library close by. This library will accommodate the rapidly growing collection of the Irving Thalberg Library of the Motion Pic- ture, and probably other books useful in dramatic instruction. On these floors also will be located the headquarters of the College Film Service, already so favorably known to the alumni. The offices and projection room of the Audio-Visual Education Department, which is developing so remarkably under Haven Falconer '39, will be in this area of the building. Here classes which are receiving instruction through motion pictures will meet for that purpose. A photographer's dark-room, and equipment for cutting film will be located conveniently close by. On the roof will be space for film storage.

Also on the topmost part of this end of the building the radio studio and workshop will be built, with equipment for practice and regular broadcasting. Located here, the studio will be capable of considerable expansion if the need arises, as, for instance, with the development of television. Classes in radio technique will be held here, and the already existing instruction in radio writing given.

Thus the Center will bring together a number of activities now scattered among various buildings, usually in cramped quarters. It will provide adequate space for these activities now, and room for development where development can be foreseen. Besides taking care of the needs of dramatics and college festivals, it will add greatly to the instructional and administrative equipment of the College.

Bouchard. ENGROSSED IN BRIDGE, LEFT TO RIGHT, ARE: MIKE CHOUKAS, HAROLD WASHBURN, JIM RICHARDSON, CRAVEN LAYCOCK AND DEAN NEIDLINGER. ABOUT TO MAKE A BILLIARD IS CHARLES PROCTOR, WITH MAURITZ HEDLUND LOOKING ON DUBIOUSLY.