M U S I C

The following feature story appeared in the campus publication MOSAIC in November, 1996. Although some of the courses, students, and faculty members referenced in the story may have changed in the meantime, it still provides a full and accurate picture of the Music Department. For the most current course information and faculty listing, we encourage you to visit the program's homepage.

For more articles on the music department, click here.

Music and the educational enterprise of the liberal arts

"Our educational purpose," says Professor Gerald Moshell, "is to make music and to study it." That deceptively simple explanation belies the complexity and importance of music at Trinity, for the College's music department offers an exceptionally diverse assemblage of courses as well as many extraordinary opportunities for students "to make music."

The teaching of music here seeks to introduce students to beautiful music (surely goal enough itself) as well as the history and theory of its structures. "In my classes," explains Assistant Professor Gail Woldu, "whether they focus on women's roles in music, hip-hop, or Debussy, we are really concerned with ideas and the different ways we can perceive music." This concern with both pleasure and understanding places music at Trinity near the heart of the educational enterprise of the liberal arts. "This is what an education in the liberal arts is supposed to be about," according to department chair Professor John Platoff: "to add to the students' modes of thinking by teaching them to think broadly and in as many different ways as possible."

Connecting the ear and the brain

This expansion of students' cognitive skills is facilitated by the "breadth and diversity of our course offerings," according to Platoff. Western art-music is the core of music education at Trinity, but courses in world music, jazz, hip-hop culture and rap, rock, and Broadway musicals expose students to musical traditions beyond Bach and Mozart, Stravinsky and Copland.

This amplitude is partly a response to the importance Trinity students place on music. "Our students are always involved with music: they listen to it while they study, work, or socialize; their behavior underscores how important music is for them," according to Platoff. "What we try to do," he says, "is to help them connect the ear and the brain - to help them understand the music they love, to introduce 'new' music and help them understand its importance while they grow to love its beauty."

"We ask them to consider," continues Platoff, "what their music means to them versus what Beethoven meant to Viennese audiences in 1805 and what the Javanese gamelan means to Indonesian listeners today." Students are quickly caught up in the faculty's love of music and their contagious enthusiasm. Maia Fujisawa '97, an English major, speaks for many when she describes her excitement in examining Mozart's works and discovering "how the music fits together as a specific structure and how it developed out of a specific historical period."

The liberal arts form the department's defining context and distinguish its program from that of a traditional conservatory. "The liberal arts program," explains Associate Professor Douglas Johnson, "provides a richer context for music and an interlaced educational experience." This interlacing is exemplified in both the music faculty's guest lecturing in such courses as engineering, math, history, English, languages, and physics and by the large number of music majors who choose a second major.

"We believe," says Johnson, "that all learning feeds into making one a better musician, and because they must study music in a broader educational context, our graduates are in a far better position to make choices after graduation than are their peers at conservatories."

"Absolutely!" agrees Christina Lynn Fisher '92, who majored in music while at Trinity and, after obtaining a master's in music from Yale, is attending Fordham Law School. Elizabeth Joyce '98, a lawyer now attending Trinity in the Individualized Degree Program (IDP), has discovered that "studying music here helps you develop all kinds of mental skills and the analytical discipline that prepares you for whatever you will do."

Making music

Those who have recently seen the department's 17th annual musical theater revue "Cut! Print!" can readily appreciate the special contribution that the department makes to the College's cultural life. Few, if any, other colleges provide such a wealth of musical offerings. "In fact," says Moshell, "of the top 25 national liberal arts colleges ranked in U.S. News & World Report and of its top 25 national universities, Trinity is the only institution with an active and ongoing departmentally supported musical-theater program."

And what a program it is! In the fall, the department puts together an ensemble production of show music organized around a theme. Each January, over a music-filled weekend just as the semester begins, the department puts on a repertoire of several small-scale shows in a "black box" setting. And then in the spring the department mounts a full-scale production. Audiences agree with Platoff's assessment: "Our performances are light-years beyond what anyone would expect to find in a college performance." This is a fact duly noted by the quarterly, The Sondheim Review, which in 1995 featured on its cover a Trinity performance of Stephen Sondheim's adaptation of The Frogs; Trinity was the first educational institution -- indeed, the first non-professional group -- to have been so honored.

(Sondheim himself, by the way, will be coming to campus March 9 for a public "Conversation" in conjunction with the department's production of his Sunday in the Park with George.)

Trinity students have many other opportunities to make music and display their musical skills and gifts. There are the departmentally sponsored Concert Choir, Instrumental Ensemble Program, and Jazz Ensemble; there are the non-departmental, student-generated singing groups: the Accidentals, After Dark, the Chapel Singers, the Gospel Choir, the Pastoral Musicians, the Pipes, the Trinitones, and a bevy of ad hoc groups; and there are the many private lessons arranged by the faculty with teachers from the greater-Hartford area.

The faculty

The department embodies the dual commitment to studying and making music. Platoff, a pianist, teaches courses in music history and the psychology of music and has written on Mozart. Moshell, a conductor and pianist, directs the Concert Choir and the Musical Theater Program and teaches courses in music history and theory. A composer who plays the gamut of stringed instruments, Johnson teaches courses in theory and composition and directs the Instrument Ensemble Program. Woldu, who has recently joined the department after a stint as assistant dean of the faculty, teaches a range of courses but specializes in the music of Debussy, Ravel, and Fauré; she is currently conducting research on the late 19th-century French composer Vincent d'Indy. College Organist and Director of Chapel Music John Rose and Chapel Composer-in-Residence Robert Edward Smith teach in the department's private lessons program.

The Hartford connection

Hartford is an important feature of the music program. A culturally rich city offering music of almost infinite variety, Hartford is home to many fine musicians, excellent musical groups, and institutions like the Hartford Symphony. Maureen Kay '99 talks about the "magical experience" of attending her first opera, Don Giovanni, performed by the Connecticut Opera at the Bushnell, an experience Platoff regularly arranges for students. The numerous opportunities for concerts, private lessons, guest lectures, and field-work in music add a significant dimension to the study and practice of music.

The future of music at Trinity

Department members eagerly anticipate the new larger and more congenial facilities that are an important component of the Trinity College Campaign. While they are currently working wonders with their relatively cramped quarters, it is clear that student interest, course offerings, and performances have outgrown the available space. "The Austin Arts Center was constructed in the 1960s for a men's college that had 900 students and that offered no majors in the arts," says Platoff. "When the College has new facilities," Platoff predicts, "music will explode on the campus. While Western art-music will remain central to what we study, there will be an even greater plurality of music genres from an even greater number of cultures." It should prove to be an interesting time for Trinity, for, as Platoff remarks, "a strong music program with ample teaching and performance spaces has a way of attracting the brightest and most interesting students."

                                                                                                -- Mark Warren McLaughlin