_ _ S -W V p ' S . ! 7w F 1 J 1 ' ________ _ y maleo la melodic"a Practice I Makes Perfect Secluded in practice rooms on North Campus, mastering their craft, music students often find themselves isolated from University life Peter Witte, a senior French Horn major at the School of Music, practices his instrument for many hours a day. By Michael Lustig Photos by Alexandra Brez M7fusic is an important parti of almost everyone's life. We turn on the radio whenever we get into a car. We pop in a tape, or compact disk, to help us study or to relax. We wait hours in long lines for and pay small fortunes to see our favorite perform- ers in concert. But to a few people, music is more than just background noise. It is life. It is a commitment to endless hours of practice - playing that one chord over and over, stretching the vocal cords to hit that one note, and doing it again to make sure it's right. For many students in the University's School of Music, their instruments, or voices, are their lives. While much different than study- ing economics or physiology, the mission of the School of Music is really no different than the mission of the University as a whole. "We try in our own way to be consonant with the research-oriented mission of the University," said School of Music Dean Paul Boylan. "We're creating new knowledge." Boylan added that music faculty want their students to be "inquisitive and Lustig is a Daily reporter, Brez is a Daily photographer. intellectually curious," just like lib-, eral arts students are supposed to be. "I believe the School of Music is one of the crown jewels of the Uni- versity," said University President James Duderstadt, "contributing enormously to the intellectual and, cultural life of the rest of the Uni- versity." The history of music education at the University is undoubtedly bound up with former Dean Earl Moore, for whom the music school building is named. Moore, who entered the University as a student in 1908, be- came the first dean of the newly-des- ignated School of Music in 1935, and remained in that position for 25 years. "There is hardly a feature of the musical life of the University of Michigan to which Dean Moore did not contribute," Boylan said in the school's Spring, 1988 newsletter, Music at Michigan. As a composer, Moore wrote "Varsity," a theme heard at Wolverine football games. As a music educator, he cemented the foundations of the School of Music, and, through a national organization, helped outline a gen- eral college music curriculum. The school's library collection is the heart of this foundation, which attempts to represent the role of music in different cultures through- out history. A significant part of this is the Stearns Collection, do- nated to the University in 1894. It is "one of the finest, if not the finest" collections of ancient instruments anywhere in the country, Boylan said. The school possesses one of the only collections of Javanese gamalans, a collection of drums and gongs, in the United States; early synthesizers, like the Moog synthe- sizer, and an extensive, 22,000 piece collection of early 20th century American sheet music. That collec- tion has over 270 songs by Irving Berlin, and more than 4,500 items by Black American composers. The library also has "perhaps the largest collection of recordings of women composers" outside of the Library of Congress, Boylan said, and an extensive collection of 17th and 18th century compositions. The music school moved to North Campus in 1964, with the completion of a building designed by famed architect Eero Saarinen. Many students and faculty find the setting, on a hill overlooking the road up to North Campus and almost com- pletely surrounded by trees, serene and idyllic. A piano-shaped pond in front, is a popular place to relax on warmer days. Recently, a lone snowman stood overlooking the ice- glazed water. nside the building, it is sound that one notices. In the class- room halls, the sounds are somewhat ordered; a group of trum- pets in one room, a group of violins down the hall. It first seems to be an echo, but one quickly realizes it is repetition, the artist striving to get the note right. The practice halls resemble the carrels of the Grad Library, long off- white colored, tiny rooms with hot pink fluorescent lights glaring down from above. But in the Grad one is deafened by silence. In the practice halls of the music school one is surrounded by a cacophony of music in the making: lips gripped around a reed, forcing notes from a clarinet, a taut, horsehair bow gliding across the strings of a cello, fingers mov- ing up and down the length of a pi- ano keyboard, a soaring soprano. It is practice that dominates a music student's life. Laura Sankey, a junior majoring in oboe, says she knows people who practice from 30 minutes to six hours a day. Amy Van Roekel, a junior voice major, practices about two hours a day, but, for fear of damage to her vocal cords, must do it in smaller blocks of time. She also spends about an hour a day listening to music, where she focuses on the singer's style, inflection, and the use of voice. "You don't want to copy," Van Roekel said, "but you try and think of what she's doing and put it in your own." The School of Music is small - 810 students were enrolled in the fall term according to University Statis- tical Services. About 43 percent are graduate students, and over half, about 54 percent, are women. Many students, however, see the small size in somewhat of a negative light. The curriculum is structured so that all first-year students take mostly the same classes. For a bachelor's degree in music, a student must take 90 of 120 credits in music classes. This includes a major course of study, two terms of piano, four terms of ensemble performance, and classes in music theory and music history. Most incoming students also live in Bursley residence hall, so they spend most of their time on North Campus. "It was like I wasn't even part of the University - a lot of people fall into that rut," Sankey said, recalling her first year. "Half the people in the music school don't even know we have a university." Sankey, who is the School of Music's one representative to the Michigan Student Assembly, said, that as evidence of their isolation, The Daily was not delivered to the music school until this year. The nature of practice is one that promotes solitude, she said. "Two, three, four hours in a room by your- self, looking at four walls, is isolat- ing." Monica McCormick, a graduate student in violin, purposely chose to live in Ypsilanti, saying the atmo- sphere of the music school is "almost detrimentally isolating." Associate Dean David Crawford sees the isolation in both positive and negative terms. Isolation is bad because students aren't socially ac- tive, but it is good because some students are frightened by the "bigness" of the University and find the small setting of the music school "comforting." But McCormick said people in the School of Music may be getting a bit too comfortable. Many people did not know, for example, that for Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1988, hundreds of students on Central Campus boycotted classes. This year, she said, there were activities and recitals. Minority stu- dents, who comprise a little over 9 percent of the school, also performed recitals at the Michigan Union weekly during Black History Month. McCormick, who is a minority peer advisor, said minority students are beginning to become more fo- cused in what they want out of the school, "but they're tired of com- plaining" and want to see some positive changes. Many have joined Artists for Cultural Equality (ACE), a group of music, dance, and theater students. Positive changes have occurred, she said. Last year, for Black History Month, a display on Black music and the civil rights movement in- cluded pictures of Michael Jackson and Aretha Franklin. When students complained, no one would take re- sponsibility for arranging the dis- play. When the same pictures went up this year, McCormick said, com- plaints were met with an immediate dismantling of the display. McCormick said minority stu- dents at the music school are some- what isolated from activities of other anti-racist groups, such as the United Coalition Against Racism. "I don't know about a lot of UCAR things at all," she said. ACE is trying to do some of the things for the School of Music that UCAR and the Baker-Mandela Cen- ter for Anti-Racist Education are also trying at the University level. It sponsors speakers and visiting pro- fessors, and is planning a welcoming committee for prospective minority students. A goal of ACE is to try and get across the message that "just because it's a Black composer doesn't mean you only have to have Black stu- dents performing it," McCormick said. "It's music, period." Crawford said there has been a committee reviewing the overall curriculum of the music school for about a year asking, "What is the proper mix of European tradition and musical life in America?" For Van Roekel, an answer would be more jazz. She sees the School of Music as being too focused on its classical traditions, and even though she is most interested in singing jazz, she must major in classical singing because that is all that is offered. "I want to do more than get up and sing Carmen," she said, adding that she knows people who have left the School of Music, and even the University, because they cannot get a degree in jazz. Western Michigan University, Van Roekel said, offers a degree in Jazz Studies. Van Roekel did note that im- provements have recently appeared. There are more bands, more classes, and more teaching assistants this year than before, she said. usic may be their lives, but for only a select few will it be their livelihoods. "There are people here just to practice - and they'll be in Carnegie Hall next year," Van Roekel said. But only a lucky few will get that chance. "As musicians, most of us just aren't going to make it," Sankey Senior Ann Cancilla, an organ and music in one of the many practice rooms at the said. To resum6s work, wh hope to]t audition. and danc through sponsors and man cial strai Many turned to bacheloi which, vw centrate gives the experien a straight A BM\ course c school, mance m this type a liberal Katy dent, env cause "s complet sure if s after a c though s since thin Van tended to The Earl V. Moore School of Music Building houses many budding young performers who daily spend hours perfecting their music. PAGE 8 WEEKEND/MARCH 10,1989 WEEKEND/MARCH 10, 1989