Music

CHAIRMAN, DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC

THERE are four domains of music for which the Hopkins Center should be an immeasurable boon: the domains of (1) the Creative, (2) Performance, (3) the Scholarly, and, perhaps most important, (4) Listening. Paragraphs on each may assist the reader to a realization of the potential of this "leisure time" building.

1. Creative music, at least in part, already receives the sanction of many undergraduates who show real interest in the contributions, as source materials in artistic communication, of folk music and jazz on the campus. A growing number of students participate in the "hoots" sponsored by the Folk Singers Club, and many bring their guitars and join in the folk songs they know. Jazz groups - either long-established ones like the Barbary Coast Orchestra or more recent ones like the Chiefs and the Sultans - use many arrangements made by their own members. The great vogue of "cool" jazz in these postwar years and the interest such jazz has engendered in "long hair" music have deepened the awareness of even the average undergraduate in the implications of America's creative imperative in music and allied arts such as the musical theater.

The Jazz and Folk Room in the Hopkins Center will be a unique facility at Dartmouth; and it also bears implications for creative music in the country at large, for such authentic musical interest when it represents a balance of the heart and the mind cannot help but have the most permanent results among its practitioners. True, a first-class composer is needed at Dartmouth on a long-term faculty basis, but such visits as we have already had from creative musicians have proven how quickly student creative ability responds when encouraged.

2. Performance in music in the Hopkins Center will give full rein to rehearsals by such groups as the Glee Clubs, the Handel Society Chorus and Orchestra, the Marching and Concert Bands, and the Madrigal Singers. Not only will the Auditorium permit performances by these groups but at least one of the large rooms - the Choral Room - will, with its tiers, allow a space for student recitals or chamber music during which the performers would occupy the "podium" space and the audience occupy chairs located on the tiers where the choristers would normally sit.

Fairly frequent recitals by the Faculty of the Music Department may be anticipated as an aftermath of additional concert hall space. And outside concert attractions suitable to the audience of 900 allowed by the new Auditorium should provide Hanover with a musical diet much more varied than is permitted by present facilities.

The many practice rooms and studio-offices included in the plans for the Center would insure a still greater increase in the growing number of students who study piano, voice, wind or string instruments with music staff members at Dartmouth. Very clearly the undergraduate today wants to perform music as much as he did in years before the gramophone, radio and television.

3. The scholarly in music need not always be reserved for classrooms, as may be seen by the inclusion of a music library in the Hopkins Center. The presence of a sizable collection of books and scores in the comfortable library now contemplated will bring the musicologist and critic close to those active and creative phases of music in which they are playing an ever larger role in American musical life. The library would doubtless be used for browsing and reference by those active in music in the Center.

4. Music listening takes talent very much akin to the balance of the mind and senses required in the other musical pursuits. Since the advent of the phonograph record, especially the LP, the accessibility of great music to the intelligent listener has been so facilitated that the Hopkins Center should be a "natural" as a place for hearing recordings distributed from a desk not too remote from the "hi-fi" booths off to the side in the Top of the Hop. Like the motor car, the LP record fits that favorite American blend of the assembly-line with free will to "go" individualistically where one wants. Records are now borrowed from the Tower Room collection in impressive number, and it can be imagined how even more students would respond to the best electronic equipment and the inviting surroundings of the Hopkins Center.

The experience of listening while seeing is an ineradicable one, as television shows us. It stands to reason therefore that the "sidewalk superintendent" premise on which the viewing windows have been installed for watching the Glee Clubs, the Bands, the jazz players, folksingers and other groups rehearse will entice at least an interest from non-participants and, quite possibly, tempt them before long - as one finds true in athletics - to participate in the musical activity of their choice at their own "duffer" level.

In 1948, weighing values in the postwar world, Life magazine published a report of a round table on "The Pursuit of Happiness," in which several distinguished business and professional persons, including three philosophers, pooled their ideas as to how Americans could achieve this "third right," Along with statements on the moral, economic and political bases for happiness was included the dictum that an "inner" life was a requirement for happiness and that, in particular, "there should be more encouragement of the arts at all levels, not only in terms of creation but also in terms of enjoyment."

Professor James A. Sykes

PROF. PAUL R. ZELLER Director of the Glee Club

Ground floor plan showing musical facilities at south end of the Center