| |
So wrote Henry Dike Sleeper, long-time chair of the Music Department at Smith in the early twentieth century,
in an article about music at the College. The Department was established
in 1903, along with a "concert course" that brought celebrated
musicians to the campus. In those
years, when one quarter of the student body was enrolled in some
form of musical instruction, the "course" brought international stars
to the campus, among them Sergei Rachmaninoff, who played his first
concert in America here in November 1909. And into the nineteen-
seventies the course brought us such
organizations and artists as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the
Cleveland Orchestra, Rudolph Serkin, and Marilyn Horne.
Smith's long commitment to musical performance and study is demonstrated by the impressive list of
musicians who have taught at the College, which includes composers
Roger Sessions, Ross Lee Finney,
Alvin Etler, George Walker, Ronald Perera, Stephen Albert, and John
Duke, who taught in the Department for forty-four years. From
1939 to 1950, one of the world's greatest musical scholars, Alfred Einstein, the unmatched expert on
the Italian madrigal and on Mozart, taught music history at Smith and
helped to enrich the extraordinary holdings of its music library soon
named for his colleague, composer/conductor Werner Josten. When
Josten arrived at Smith, in 1923, he put on a remarkable series of first
performances in America of operas
by Monteverdi, Handel, and Johann Joseph Fux — a series, like the work
of Einstein, that put the musical life of the campus on the international
map.
The Department has had a number
of graduates go on to distinguished
musical careers in performance, among them the soprano Nancy
Armstrong (MM '72), the guitar
player Peter Blanchette (MM '94), the violinist Alicia Edelberg '72, and
the cellist Jennifer Morsches '90. Opera singer Judith Raskin '49, got
her start at Smith when her piano teacher, John Duke, gently suggested she discontinue her lessons.
This led her to the studio of his colleague, voice professor Anna Hamlin,
and the rest, as they say, is history. Composer Alice Parker '47
worked for many years with conductor Robert Shaw.
Other Smith alumnae who have
achieved important conducting positions include Amy Kaiser '67, Director of the St. Louis Symphony
Chorus, mentored at Smith by Iva Dee Hiatt, and Carolyn Kuan'99,
now Assistant Conductor of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.
Further Smith alumnae who have
significant careers include composer
and pianist Joan Panetti '65, professor of chamber music at the Yale School of Music;
musicologist Lesley Wright '71, chair of the Music Department at the University of
Hawaii; and musicologist Sindhumathi Revuluri '00, assistant professor of music at Harvard University.
Current members of the Department include composers, performers, scholars, and theorists well
known in their respective fields. A wide variety of course offerings and
ample opportunities for performance with choral and instrumental
groups allow students to pursue their interests, with professional
guidance, in the classroom and in
concert.
By celebrating one hundred years of
music at Smith we hope to enrich
and encourage musical study and performance on the campus for
many years to come.
|
|
About
the
Department
The
Major
The
Minor
Performing Groups
Faculty & Staff
Facilities
Performance Calendar
Course Catalogue
|
